Tag: investment landscape

Who’s investing? Meet 457 Angel Investing Groups Worldwide

As the glitz and glamour of the startup scene dominates the stage, it’s sometimes all too easy to forget the unsung heroes of financing: angel investors. Typically, angel investors provide the capital to startups when the scope of the need is too big for friends & family, but too small for venture capital firms. What’s an angel investor? An angel investor is an affluent individual who provides capital for a startup in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angels, as they’re often referred to, can also provide valuable management advice and important contacts to growing startups. Why engage in angel investing? Even though angels are investing at the most risky stage of a company’s life, make no mistake – many are extremely sophisticated, and are banking significant returns. Savvy angels have time-tested diligence processes, actively participate in the growth of companies, and have investment portfolios that are extremely valuable. What’s an angel group? Some angel investors organize themselves into groups in order to share research and pool their investment capital, as well as to advise companies in their portfolio....

Read More

All your questions, answered: 8 things to know about the medical cannabis industry [AMA with Dr. Morris Laster]

Medical cannabis is the next frontier of medtech investing, forecasted to become a $35 billion industry by 2020. How are the challenges of this industry being resolved? Your questions, answered: OurCrowd presents our first investor AMA (“ask me anything”) with medtech advisor, Venture Partner and 25-year industry veteran Dr. Morris Laster. Below, Dr. Laster addresses medical cannabis, providing answers and insight into the industry as well as the medtech advances made by Syqe Medical, developers of the world’s first meter-dosed botanical inhaler and OurCrowd’s current investment opportunity. Missed the live AMA? Have more queries about the medical cannabis industry? Don’t let your questions go unanswered!  Leave a comment below and we’ll answer them! —————- About Dr. Laster Dr. Laster is a physician with over 25 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry and with expertise in identification, development and management of advanced biomedical drugs and technologies. Dr. Laster is the Venture Partner responsible for Medtech investments at OurCrowd; he has founded and/or managed six companies that have gone public in the US, UK and Israel. He invented a novel device to access the circulatory system through the bone...

Read More

Medical Marijuana: Clearing the smoke on a miracle drug

This is a guest post by OurCrowd Venture Partner and medtech investment advisor Dr. Morris Laster.  If ever there was a ‘miracle drug’, the top candidate would be cannabis. The range of clinical conditions that have had the potential for treatment with marijuana is extensive ranging from approved conditions with cannabis derivatives such as Sativex for MS induced neuropathic pain and spasticity, or Marinol for cancer treatment induced nausea and vomiting, and AIDS cachexia. Other conditions include Type 2 diabetes, obesity, various neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s, or Huntingdon’s disease, glaucoma and the list goes on and on. The biggest challenges with medical marijuana are: Marijuana is best administered by smoking due to the combination of active ingredients and first pass kinetics Dosing variability due to individual smoking differences and plant material There is the potential for recreational drug abuse For the first time, there is a solution for the issue of dosing medical marijuana. Israel-based Syqe Medical has developed an inhaler that “druggifies” marijuana by providing clinically-proven standardized dosing, utilizing a cartridge based dose, uniform heating element and...

Read More