Ofer Adler - Incredimail

As I described in previous post, here is the first interview. Ofer Adler was the founder of IncrediMail (Together with Yaron Adler). He is a great guy, and very knowledgable about Internet and emerging technologies in general. In the past I wrote about Incredimail going public.

So, here it is:

1. Can you give a bit of background on Incredimail and about yourself

IncrediMail was founded about 7 years ago. The idea was inspired by the first 'mission impossible' movie, where I saw Tom Cruise using a very cool email program with graphic effects. I was intrigued by it, so I tried to look for something like this and during my search I installed many and many email products only to find out how little fun these products had to.

After exploring very deeply the email market and products, I came to the conclusion that although the web has gone through a major change when the graphics came in, in email no big change was made in years.

Before IncrediMail I spent about 8 years working in the Israeli capital market at companies like "Hevra merkazit", " Betucha", and Clal insurance investment department mostly as a trader.

I also spent about 3 years trading at the Tel Aviv stock exchange before it all got computerized. During that time I worked a lot with Excel and did lots of tests with macros and Excel's VBA.

I have found out more and more that usability was something that I was very interested about, and also that I spend more and more time in the Internet. For the last 8 years I think that I saw really a great number of software, sites, services and ideas of various subjects, and I constantly look for new and interesting things. Interesting things for me can be programs, add ons, sites, services, nice graphic, nice user interface, nice graphic user interface, gadgets, ideas anything which is cool in some way.

I also tend to save a lot of examples (splash pages, order pages, banners, software dialogs, graphics, icons and any other things that looks cool or interesting)- so I have a quite large amount of screenshots, flash files, text files, etc that I have been saving through our the years. (And it's constantly growing)

Because I started to save so many things, and I wanted to find some of them every now and then I started using tags while saving data. I have been doing it for more then 5 years; it was interesting to see how the tag concept got so big lately.

2. What is the most challenging moment you remember through the years at Incredimail.

When the bubble days were over, and we knew we had to make money, and that we will probably won't be able to raise any additional money, so either we survive with what we have, or we won't survive.

3. What are the 2 or 3 most promising (or just good) startups in Israel today (in the Internet space).

I think the Oberon media (it probably shouldn't be called a start up) the gaming company is probably one of the most promising private company that many people even don't know about, but at some point we will hear about them in an exceptionally big way.

Also I think that Metacafe is one of the fastest growing companies lately in the video area and I believe we will also hear good things about them soon. I am invested and a little involved in Metacafe, so it might seem I'm not objective, but I really think they are looking good, and their traffic is growing very nicely.

In Oberon media, I am sorry I didn't have the chance to invest.

Also I think that fixya.com has a very good and experienced entrepreneur, and therefore have a good chance in being successful.

4. What do you think about the hype around Web 2.0, and do you see this reflected in Israel.

I think that there is definitely a very big hype around this name, and there many interesting ideas, but I think that one of the most significant things about the 'web 2' concept is that in most of the cases , web 2 companies are not very interesting in the perspective of VC, or even Angels, because in most cases, even very nice ideas (which there are many of them), will be either be bought in a relatively small (small for VC or Angles, in comparison to the risk) amount, or will continue to work and maybe breakeven and earn some money, but in most cases it will not be in a way that that investors will enjoy it.

I think that some of the web 2 companies can be very good or nice to their founders, and employees, in the sense that they can be a nice business that operates on it's own, and In many cases don't need too much investment to begin with.

I think that it's very difficult to find examples of big exits, by 'web 2' companies.

From what I saw in Israel, It looks relatively similar to the rest of the world

5. Any specific areas or technologies, on the web, that you feel are very exciting.

I think that one very interesting area is of face and object recognition, for personal digital photography. I think that with all respect to Flickr and such, most people will not sit and write tags to their 1000's of picture, and these things will have to be automatic.

I tried to write a patent in this area about a year ago, but I saw that many companies where already there.

Today I think that one of the more promising companies in this area is riya.com, but Microsoft (and probably others) is very hot on this subject. There is also an Israeli company I saw that is also in this space.

I think a future photo manager should be able to instantly and automatically (without me entering any tags) be able to show me all the pictures that I appear in, that contain any specific object, or that were taken in the sea or any other place.

Not exactly web, but I think that if apple is not developing a media center computer in the about size of a VCR, or a DVD player, it's a really big shame, because it can be like the next iPod. (and I'm not talking about Mac mini)

Comments

[Aner Ravon]

I think Incredimail is a great inspiration. It demonstrated that (a) Sometime you don't have to invent a new light bulb. boring apps can be turned fun if you find the right twist. (b) Persistence is always better then looking for shortcuts.

[DanielGray]

I’ve been using incredimail for 2 years now and just found out about something new they’re doing. They have free screensavers and wallpapers (the program is called magentic).
Well, I enjoy incredimail so much I downloaded Magentic as well...
Boy was I not ready for this one!!!
First of all it has this AMAZING look and tunes and tunes of breathtaking backgrounds, it's free at www.magentic.com

all the best,
DanielGray

[DanielGray]

I’ve been using incredimail for 2 years now and just found out about something new they’re doing. They have free screensavers and wallpapers (the program is called magentic).
Well, I enjoy incredimail so much I downloaded Magentic as well...
Boy was I not ready for this one!!!
First of all it has this AMAZING look and tunes and tunes of breathtaking backgrounds, it's free at www.magentic.com

all the best,
DanielGray

[katy wood]

I love, love, love it and want to know how to keep my screensaver on all the time when I am not using my computer. It's wonderful and I thank you for having it available for us. Hugs from granny katy wood