Montreal Tech Watch

I met yesterday Yaniv Rivlin, who is responsible for the Comtribute’s launch, starting with a North American tour.

Part 1 – Comtribute.com

Comtribute.com launched this tuesday new tools allowing everyone to fund their favourite non-profit organization, without actually giving any money. Fans & friends are invited to install a toolbar, and also use a customized homepage, instead of google.com or yahoo.com. Every time there is a new web search, a few cents will be donated to the non-profit.

Comtribute hopes to capitalize on the search advertising business. Non-profits are invited to design & customize the toolbar, with a very wide variety of features available, from news ticklers, rss feeds, search fields, to quick links and web bookmarks.  Since the platform is hosted by Comtribute, they receive a portion of advertising revenue from Google or Yahoo (view Google’s CSE program) every time the user clicks on an ad or use the search engine. You can see for instance what Make a Wish or Students On Ice could do with Comtribute.

Yaniv Rivlin showcases Comtribute.com platform

A multi-level marketing mechanism was also introduced in the platform, since users are invited to refer friends. At any time, they can see how much their overall network contributed. It’s hard to criticize Comtribute, since they cater to non-profits. There’s something magic in creating value in an area where there wasn’t any in the first place (web searches), and one begins to wonder how much money can be raised from those tools. Comtribute can certainly win users by highlighting the fact that you can raise money for a non-profit without spending money. I would also like to see a more polished and simpler tool but in an era where Internet users are entertained by Twitter or Facebook, why not use your web time for good?

Part 2 – A case of Israeli Entrepreneurship

But enough of Comtribute, this is not really why I contacted Yaniv Rivlin. The company behind Comtribute was in fact an Israeli startup, funded there months ago by 2 local angel investors.

It’s striking to see a brand-new startup to launch right away with a North American Tour. Of course, amongst Montréal startups, Ben Yoskovitz with Standoutjobs and Austin Hill launched at a US web2.0 conference, but theirs was a relatively cozy move compared to what Comtribute.com is doing. It’s akin to a Montréal-based startup who would launch in Berlin and then start right away an European tour. It takes courage, imagination, not fearing to talk to foreign audiences, plus certainly a little bit more.

Why Montreal? Yaniv Rivlin has some family in Montréal and also participated in the Sauvé program and that’s why the North American tour is starting in Montreal. Yaniv also says it’s a good audience for their tool, and allows them to fine-tune the product as he goes through other cities.

I have noticed several blog posts on StartupNorth and also here and there seems to be a consensus that canadian companies should better focus on the domestic market and also should better focus on quiet niches.

Meanwhile, there’s a little country with only 7 million population and also 1/10th the size of Québec which is 2nd in the Nasdaq (71 companies, 2nd only after the U.S.), and new startups actively gaining audiences in North America from day 1.

I don’t think any Israeli entrepreneur tinkers long about what are his limits and what he can and can’t reach, like what I’ve read on the StartupNorth comments page. I’d like to see more entrepreneurs not stopping there, mobilize & leverage all the resources they have, and go everywhere they can go today.