Curiyo plug-in puts the data you want at your fingertips
While it would have been possible to build the product by scaling and compressing full-size web pages, this makes it so much simpler, Rosenschein says. (On the iPhone itself, the Curiyo window will appear as a new browser tab). Curiyo sports some other nifty tricks: borrowing a page from Twitter, users can “follow” other Curiyo publishers.
Let’s say you visit a site about Israeli movies that already has the Curiyo plug-in. Then you go to a news site that’s also using Curiyo, which is featuring an article about a new Israeli movie. One of the Curiyo tabs that opens when you click on the name of that movie on the news site might be for the first site you visited. Rosenschein says he’s still working out how the following and permissions will work, but the catchphrase is already ready: “Own your keywords even on other sites.”
Curiyo also hooks into social media and Google News, so information is not static the way that it might be if Curiyo only curated encyclopedia or dictionary entries.
A questioning environment
Rosenschein is aware that if the Curiyo plug-in slows down the load time of a website, publishers will quickly abandon the product. And if it’s too “in your face,” with garish colors and automatic pop-ins, users will flee too. So although he plans to make money on the business by eventually offering ads on Curiyo, he pledges that they will be presented “in a subtle and non-intrusive way.” “Curiyo’s primary monetization will come through working with partners,” he adds. Curiyo has raised just shy of $1 million, from two sources: Cedar Ventures and OurCrowd — whose CEO, Jon Medved, used to work for Rosenschein at Accent.
We asked Rosenschein, who grew up in Harrisburg, PA., graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976, and made aliyah in 1983, if he felt that moving to Israel affected the entrepreneur he eventually became. He pauses for a moment, then shakes his head no. “I probably would have gone into business even if I didn’t make aliyah,” he says. Indeed, he had some good exposure, meeting Microsoft’s Bill Gates in the early 1990s.
“But Israel in many ways makes it easier. Israelis as a culture love to question things, and that’s part and parcel of the environment that startups need. In Israel, much like in Silicon Valley, failure is not always tragic. I think if I lived in a culture where risk was frowned upon, it would be a lot harder.”
Will Rosenschein’s third time out prove to be as successful as the previous two? If you’re curious, just open a Curiyo window on “Bob Rosenschein.” There are seven tabs of instant information all about this hardworking Jerusalem business pioneer.
Brian Blum