July 12, 2015

Israeli entrepreneurs Or Arbel, Tomer London, Ben Rubin, Uri Haramati, and Itai Danino are spotlighted in Business Insider‘s new list titled, The 38 coolest startups in Silicon Valley.

The 38 companies are all private tech firms that have successfully raised venture capital funding.

Arbel, co-founder and CEO of Yo, is listed in the opening five picks. “Yo is the almost stupidly simple communication tool that briefly took the tech world by storm in 2014. The one-word correspondence app started out as a side project for Arbel, but it went viral and last year was valued at about $10 million,” the report reads. “Arbel is planning on bringing Yo back with Yo 2.0, which will include your location, a photo, or just the good old original yo.”

ZenPayroll’s London is listed with his cofounders Josh Reeves and Edward Kim in the 12th slot on the list for their payroll-processing startup that includes celeb angel investors like Ashton Kutcher and Jared Leto.

London, a Technion Institute graduate, counts his first success in the field of entrepreneurship when he won first place in the Technion-led BizTEC competition in 2009.

The Business Insider list also includes Ben Rubin, Uri Haramati, and Itai Danino, cofounders of Meerkat live-streaming app. According to the report, Meerkat has raised $18.2 million in funding and has nearly two million users.

“However, Meerkat is facing fierce competition from Twitter’s Periscope, another live-streaming app. Despite Perisciope’s advanced features, like the ability to replay videos, Meerkat cofounder Ben Rubin is confident there’s space for both to thrive. When he found out Twitter was launching its competition, he says “it was Saturday – all the team went back to the office to get ready to dive in.”