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To the beat of the crowd: Looking back at 20 years of digital music disruption

To the beat of the crowd: Looking back at 20 years of digital music disruption

Nov 12, 2015 |

In 1999, with little more than a clever piece of code, Shawn Fanning turned the music industry on its head. Napster, a P2P file sharing service, enabled music listeners to download MP3s and share them with others, for free. The genie was out the bottle and the music industry would never sound the same again. The disruption of the music industry in the last 20 years, however, is not just a story about musicians and record companies, but rather a compelling tale about coders, entrepreneurship, legal battles, and listener entitlement. Here are some of the key developments of the last two decades that shaped the music industry into what it is today, leading it into the 21st century, and beyond: 1995: File extension “.mp3” After the advent of the CD in the late 1970s, the next major stride in digital music technology came with the emergence of the MP3. An organization that went by the name of Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) set out to define standards in audio recording in the late 1980s. MPEG compressed music digitally by eliminating...

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OurCrowd’s portfolio company AppDome featured in Globes

Nov 11, 2015 | ,

OurCrowd portfolio company AppDome (formerly Nativeflow) was featured in Globes, the leading Israeli financial daily. AppDome has publicly launched its solution for the next generation of connected devices and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) technology. Israeli dynamic mobile application security-as-a-service AppDome has closed $13 million in Series A funding, led by Menlo Ventures. The round includes participation from original investors Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) and OurCrowd, together with new investor Draper Nexus. AppDome’s dynamic app wrapping technology protects enterprise and consumer apps along with their data. The solution is used globally to defend mobile apps from attack vectors such as malware, man-in-the-middle, pharming, and data harvesting. AppDome (Nativeflow) raised $2,085,000 from OurCrowd investors in May 2013, follow-on. Read more on Globes here....

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From File Cabinets to the Cloud: The Evolution of Data Storage Tech

From File Cabinets to the Cloud: The Evolution of Data Storage Tech

Oct 21, 2015 | ,

It is quite conventional to say that we are currently living in the information age, a unique period in history characterized by the shift from traditional industry to information-based industries. The term information age is a product of the advances and changes in computer technologies, which allowed for the gathering and almost instantaneous transmission of vast amounts of information widely available worldwide. One problem resulting from these developments is limited storage space, whether physical or digital. As technology advanced, data size increased, creating an endless demand for a place to store the plethora of information. But, where? And at what capacity? A Brief History of Data Storage Skipping past prehistoric and ancient storage ‘solutions’ (cave paintings, engravings on stone tablets), paper was the longest acceptable and primary means of data storage. In the hundreds of years that followed the introduction of paper to the West, not much has changed in terms of data storage devices. The oldest known ‘modern’ form of information recording appeared only 200 years before computers existed – the punch card. Developed in the early 18th...

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Israeli Exits through the Years: The Data Storage Industry

Israeli Exits through the Years: The Data Storage Industry

Oct 18, 2015 | ,

Not for nothing is Israel the #2 startup ecosystem in the world — it has more high-tech startups and a larger venture capital industry per capita than any other country. Over the past few years, Israeli M&A has been (and still is!) on fire with a lot of excitement and hype around several multi-million dollar deals. The interest of international tech giants in Israeli startups is nothing new, and as we know, one of the major strategies for Israeli startups is to transform into appealing acquisitions for large entities knocking on its door. Some of the top high-tech M&As in Israeli history have come straight out of the data storage industry. These companies working on developing various storage solutions (from software to hardware, and in between) typically exit in the mid-hundreds of millions of dollars range. Here’s an up-to-date look at the Israeli M&As in the data storage industry over the years: UPDATE: Storage giant Western Digital just announced (Oct. 21st, 2015) that it has agreed to buy SanDisk Corp for about $19 billion, marking yet another exit for Israel’s data storage sector! A look to the (near)...

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Find your power within the crowd: Are you in or out?

Find your power within the crowd: Are you in or out?

Sep 8, 2015 | ,

What is more powerful than an angel investor? An angel investor who creates networking opportunities, partnerships and other strategic relationships for their startup investments. We call it crowdbuilding, and it is part of what makes OurCrowd and our investor community stand out. Crowdbuilding strengthens our investor community by leveraging the collective power of the crowd. OurCrowd works together with our portfolio companies to determine key business development introductions and then reaches out to our 10,000 strong global investor base and employee community to identify and build those desired relationships. These efforts have resulted new customers, additional revenue channels, key hires, media publicity and industry expert advisory relationships. By the way, if you’re not yet an OurCrowd investor, or perhaps a member of the greater startup ecosystem with a desire to strengthen budding startups, you’re welcome to join us in these crowdbuilding efforts. Please reach out to me if you have any leads for the companies listed below, or any other of our portfolio companies. Appforma An autonomous marketing platform replacing ad agencies for SMBs. In North America, Appforma is...

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