Tel Aviv, Israel based LabPixies, which was founded in March 2006, was one of the early players in the exploding widget space. They’ve stayed small and focused on building really useful or really entertaining widgets, and have mostly kept a low profile. And while you may not have heard of the company, you’ll probably have heard of at least one of the widgets they’ve built, such as the official New York Times crossword widget.
The company competes with a small army of highly funded widget startups: Slide, Rockyou, Goowy, Clearspring, Gigya and Widgetbox, among others. 41 million people a month view their widgets, the company says, generating 750 million total widget views. At first they built widgets solely for the iGoogle platform, but have expanded to include Netvibes, Live.com and other platforms.
I’ve embedded a few of my favorites below - The New York Times crossword puzzle, Space Invaders, Defender and a Babylon language translation tool. The company also offers interactive advertising widgets that are a lot more interesting than normal ads.
The company has created all of this with very few resources. They’ve self financed to now with advertising revenue, and just closed a small $1 million round of financing from angel investors in Israel. They have ten employees.
| Gadget by LabPixies.com |
| Gadget by LabPixies.com |
| Gadget by LabPixies.com |
| Gadget by LabPixies.com |
these guys have solid apps. Been using their igoogle tech blog apps for over a year.
-just joined twitter. Follow me: jasonwilk
I say, there is a lot of stuff coming out of Israel right now! Is this the next hotpsot for development and innovation?
Nice!
This company looks very promising to me. If i were a VC, I would definitely pour some money into it. Good luck to them.
Kudos to them. They even have a Techcrunch widget: http://www.labpixies.com/gadget_page.php?id=39
Agree about their interesting ad-gadgets. LabPixies making ads that people actually want to click on.
I say, there is a lot of stuff coming out of Israel right now! Is this the next hotpsot for development and innovation?
Cool! most amazing widgets i have seen till date
Two identical comments from different users. Is this company using astroturf spam on the comments?
I think I used the LabPixies Widgets on Facebook too. The design was really fun. Also, they have a really cool toolbar that I put all my “To Do”s on.
Good luck
@ Subset - it’s a bit strange, and they’re not even ads for LabPixies. Maybe two people just had the exact same thought? In the same words?
I LOVE their facebook apps!
They’re really cool!
I love their iGoogle Theme : http://www.google.co.uk/help/i.....ocoyo.html !! One of the best!
They have a todo widget for iGoogle as well which is one of the most used.
Way to go LabPixies!
Cheers!
the widget market reminds me of barry bonds, amazing numbers, huge growth , but one gigantic asterisks , in the case of the widget market:
THEY DON’T PRODUCE ANY MONEY.
What I find truly interesting with this company are the following numbers:
- 41 million people a month view their widgets
- 10 employees
- self financed (+ $1 million from angels lately)
By definition, a start-up must be lean. At a time where the dumbest web 2.0 ideas can raise millions (or tens of millions), it is refreshing to see a true start-up. Lately, VCs tend to forget that a small team of focused and hungry founders/employees is a (the?) key to success.
Within 2, 3 years, bloated start-ups will collapse under their own weight while companies such as LabPixies will probably be still here and will be the ones providing a handsome return to their founders and investors…
PS:
Surprised by the previous comments on Israeli start-ups! Has everyone already forgotten about success such as ICQ?? Israel has been producing quite a few successful start-ups for a quite a long time.
How do you make money with these again?
how about checking out http://www.ezridez.com a new startup based on highly customizable and interactive widget. car enthusiasts will love it even more.
read about it on its blog http://ezridez.blogspot.com
Sweet I love my widgets and I hope this company continues to create new and innovated widgets.
Worth noting that LabPixies use Gigya’s technology to allow uses to grab and share these widgets. Gigya distributes widgets for any developer or advertisers, no matter what the platform.
Why I invested in Lab Pixies
http://www.fabricegrinda.com/?p=384
A few months ago, I had dinner at Le Colonial with Mark Gerson (the founder of Gerson Lehrman Group and Joe Sigelman (the founder of Office Tiger). As an aside, I was introduced to Mark by Jeremy Levine from Bessemer as they are investors in both Gerson Lehrman and OLX. Joe was the TA in one of my math classes in Princeton!
We decided to find young, smart aggressive people to find early stage startups for us outside of the beaten path. In Israel, we started working with Yaron Carni who introduced us to Lab Pixies.
Lab Pixies is one of the largest widget companies, and a leader for for iGoogle, Live and Netvibes. They are not as well known as Slide or RockYou given their focus on iGoogle rather than Facebook, but they are a fantastic company. The company has 41 million unique visitors per month and over 750 million monthly gadget views and the gadgets are awesome. The leading gadgets are ToDo List, Sudoku, Weather, Babylon Translation Box, Birthday Reminder and Backjack.
We were impressed by the team of 10 great engineers based in Tel Aviv and decided to invest $1 million in the company.
Ran, Oded, Nir, Udi: make it happen!
I think their hangman app is the best there is.
These guys really rocks. Very focused and smart.
We like the blue one the most!
I really like their widgets, with the new advertising channel they should show some nice revenues.
It’s my guess that the only truly profitable widgets (or widgets companies) will be the ones that make business app type widgets. Games are fun, but companies (larger media type companies with lots of traffic) will be able to have their own IT dept create them considering how easy the tools are becoming to create these little things.