Buzzilla raises its first capital

Buzzilla, a specialist in collecting and analyzing consumer content on the web, is completing its first round of raising capital. It has successfully raised $1 million from Jack Lahav, an Israeli investor who resides in the USA, and has many years of success in Israeli hi-tech investments. This venture sets the company’s post-money value at $20 million.

Buzzilla is Israel’s leading social media consumer research company. It has developed an exclusive system to crawl websites, making it possible to identify and analyze messages and reactions on forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and talkbacks to articles – all in real time. Fusing this technology with the company's own research methodology has enabled Buzzilla to discover valuable insights about consumer behavior on behalf of companies in a diverse range of fields.
The data typically leads to analysis of brand name product status, improvement of service systems, gauging the effectiveness of marketing processes, and more.

The company intends to expand its current applications to additional business arenas, such as finance, in the future.

Jack Lahav is a veteran investor in the Israeli hi-tech industry. His first investment was in Vocaltec, and he is currently involved in no less than 15 Israeli technology companies in various stages of development. Lahav served as Chairman of Quigo in its early years, before it was sold in 2007 to AOL for $363 million (the highest price paid for an acquisition in Israel that year).

In addition to his investment activities, Lahav is heavily involved in charitable work on behalf of the Israeli community through his Mincha L'Mechora Foundation. The Foundation focuses on supporting education by establishing computerized classrooms in outlying areas, and by awarding scholarships to students. Lahav also previously served as President of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces organization in the USA.

"Buzzilla's abilities really impressed me," Lahav said. "The company's agreement to expand into additional areas, while at the same time utilizing the enormous potential inherent in the advanced system it has already developed, will bring the company significant recognition in new fields it was not involved in before," he noted.

"This recruitment of funds is an expression of faith not only in our company, but also in the potential value of research studying consumer conversation content in social media," said Buzzilla CEO Yoav Pridor. He explained that the raising of capital will drive two company goals: development of a new generation of crawling technology and content analysis, and penetration of international markets.