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Photo: Shalom Bar Tal
Yair Goldfinger, one of Silent Communication owners
Photo: Shalom Bar Tal

Silent negotiating $20-30M sale

Startup owned by Sequoia Fund, Yair Goldfinger has raised about $6 million. Its flagship product: Visual voicemail solutions for mobile devices

Tel Aviv-based startup Silent Communication is holding $20-30 million acquisition talks, Calcalist has learned.

 

The nine-year old startup has developed a cellular application for visual voicemail management. The acquisition of Silent may be of interest to companies which provide added value to cellular providers, such as Comverse and Amdocs.

 

The company's two main investors – US VC fund Sequoia and entrepreneur Yair Goldfinger – are selling off assets: In the past year, Sequoia sold five Israeli companies in which it was invested at a total of about $700 million.

 

Over the weekend, Calcalist revealed that one of Sequoia's flagship companies in Israel, Kenshoo, was holding talks with search engine companies and digital advertising agencies over its acquisition for $300-$400 million.

 

In the past year Goldfinger, one of the founders of ICQ, has sold his holdings in five Israeli companies at a total of $330 million with earnings from sales amounting to about $50 million. Recently, Goldfinger established yet another startup company.

 

Silent has been dubbed "Little Comverse" over the recent years thanks to the application it developed which enables cellular providers to offer voicemail services in addition to those offered in the iPhone and Android stores.

 

The visual voicemail application adopted by Partner Communications last summer, allows users to see and manage a visual representation of their voicemail messages thereby saving money on airtime.

 

The company has also developed the technology which automatically adapts cellular provider applications to various cellular devices and operating systems.

 

According to IVC Research Center, since its establishment Silent Communications has managed to raise $6 million. Additional investors aside from Goldfinger and Sequoia are Judith Recanati's Gandyr Foundation and the California-based technology loan bank WTI from California.

 

Silent Communications was founded by Max and Zigmund Bluvband, Nadav Daniel and Shahar Hajdu.

 

Silent Communications, Seqouia and Goldfinger were unavailable for comment.

 

Click here to read this report in Hebrew

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 01.16.12, 09:22
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