Equity Crowdfunding

Doing Well While Doing Good: Impact investing in the Startup Nation

Doing Well While Doing Good: Impact investing in the Startup Nation

Aug 5, 2015 | , ,

Everyone dreams of making a difference in the world, but how many people have the means to do so? The rising trend of Impact Investing makes that worthy aspiration a very promising reality. By investing in companies offering products and services geared towards global impact, this niche sector combines social responsibility with financial returns. It’s Good to Invest in Good A Financial Times survey of 143 big investors indicates overall satisfaction with both financial and social returns on impact investments. Promisingly, these investors expressed intent to raise their investments by 16%. Another measurement of success is the Impact Investing Benchmark, a joint venture between Cambridge Associates and the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). The IIB is a “comprehensive analysis of the financial performance of market rate private equity and venture capital impact investing funds,” which has proven instrumental in indicating the benefits of this field. An analysis of 68 Impact Investment funds between 1998–2010 indicated a 6.9% return to investors, with small funds returning 9.5% and Africa-focused funds returning 9.7%. This benchmark has even outperformed comparative conventional PI funds....

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Democratizing Innovation: The movement of problem solvers, misfit thinkers, & crazy dreamers

Democratizing Innovation: The movement of problem solvers, misfit thinkers, & crazy dreamers

Jul 12, 2015 | , ,

This guest post was written by Christian Cotichini, co-founder and CEO of HeroX, the world’s problem solver community. Christian has over 20 years of experience leading startup and high growth technology companies; he is an active angel investor and mentors startup entrepreneurs. Here we are, about two years into the HeroX experiment: what happens when we unleash the power of incentive challenges to everyone, anywhere, in the whole world? So far, I couldn’t be happier. I co-founded HeroX together with Peter Diamandis and Emily Fowler from the XPRIZE Foundation. Peter, of course, needs little introduction. Inspired by the original Orteig Prize, which took Charles Lindbergh across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, Peter created the Ansari XPRIZE, a $10 million prize awarded to the first private reusable spacecraft to reach an altitude of 100 km, twice within two weeks. The prize was won in October 2004 by Scaled Composites, and the technology was licensed to create Virgin Galactic. Within the next few years, the general public will be able to get their astronaut wings. From this revolutionary beginning, the XPRIZE...

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The First “Law” of Venture Capital

The First “Law” of Venture Capital

Jun 25, 2015 | , , ,

In technology, change tends to be revolutionary not evolutionary. So you need to force yourself to place big bets on the future. -Larry Page Power Law Curve There is a tendency among less experienced early stage investors to think that the distribution of venture returns is linear — portfolio companies have an equal opportunity of failing, plateauing or growing. In reality, however, venture returns are incredibly skewed within a fund’s portfolio (as well as across venture funds). As Peter Thiel and others have discussed at length, the actual distribution follows a power law, with a few winners accounting for more returns than all others combined. Understanding the power law curve is essential to being a good venture investor, a difficult task given that most of us are accustomed to thinking linearly in our daily lives. Thiel attributes this curve to the compounding power of exponential growth that is typical of successful venture investments: Successful businesses tend to have an exponential arc to them. Maybe they grow at 50% a year and it compounds for a number of years. It...

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Who’s investing? Meet 457 Angel Investing Groups Worldwide

Who’s investing? Meet 457 Angel Investing Groups Worldwide

Jun 10, 2015 | , , ,

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....

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OurCrowd First: Bringing seed-stage investment to the OurCrowd investor community

OurCrowd First: Bringing seed-stage investment to the OurCrowd investor community

Jun 9, 2015 | , , , ,

OurCrowd is proud to announce the launch of its first fund, OurCrowd First, a specialized $10M global early stage fund focusing on seed and Pre-A startups. With the fund, OurCrowd will leverage its established infrastructure to bring equity crowdfunding to approximately 20+ seed-stage companies providing our investors even earlier access to promising opportunities. OurCrowd First is further democratizing the world of seed stage investment funds, since most other funds require million dollar minimum investments. “We are proud to be launching our entry into the funds market with the OurCrowd First seed fund. Our investors have asked for more access to earlier stage deals, which have been hard to do until now on OurCrowd, given the rapid growth of our platform and our average deal sizes of millions of dollars. OurCrowd First will cover the earliest stages of the startup funding journey providing up to $500,000 for a select group of companies.” —  Jon Medved, OurCrowd founder and CEO OurCrowd First will be managed by General Partners Eduardo Shoval and Yori Nelken, who both come with highly successful track records in early-stage...

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