Startup Investing

How do you profit by improving the world?

How do you profit by improving the world?

Oct 20, 2015 | ,

Last week, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania hosted its inaugural Wharton Israel Conference, bringing together expert panelists from multiple industries to discuss the conference mission: accelerating innovation for global social impact. The conference covered a wide variety of industries, from food and water to energy, security, health care, and communications. Among the featured companies and people leveraging innovation from Israel to improve the world were several of OurCrowd’s portfolio companies, including: CropX (Food & Water); BioCatch, BreifCam, and eVigilo (Security); ElMindA, HIL, ReWalk, PulmOne, SightDx, Surgical Theater, and Syqe (Health Care); and OurCrowd itself (Finance). Andrew Heyer, CEO and Managing Director of Mistral Equity Partners, and OurCrowd Founder & CEO, Jon Medved, spoke at the event about finance innovation, improving the world, and combining venture capital protections with the power and accessibility of crowdfunding to promote the best Israeli innovation. In the following video, Jon Medved addresses the state of the Startup Nation leading up to the Wharton Israel Conference: State of Startup Nation: OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved addresses Wharton Israel Conference OurCrowd & Wharton: Collaborating for impact...

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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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And The Winner Is… | Notable awards received by OurCrowd’s portfolio companies

And The Winner Is… | Notable awards received by OurCrowd’s portfolio companies

Aug 13, 2015 | ,

Over the last few months, OurCrowd’s portfolio companies have received several awards in various competitions recognizing their innovative achievements in their respective fields and in the broader startup ecosystem (such as the 9 companies who won The Red Herring Top 100 award this April). Here is a quick recap of some of our companies’ recent notable awards: ElMindA and Consumer Physics named by the WEF “Technology Pioneers 2015” Consumer Physics and ElMindA were two of the 49 companies from 10 countries selected by the World Economic Forum as the Technology Pioneers of 2015. The World Economic Forum’s annual Technology Pioneers program recognizes early-stage companies from around the world that are involved in the design, development and deployment of new technologies, and are poised to have a significant impact on business and society. Consumer Physics and ElMindA were selected from among hundreds of applicants by a selection committee of 68 academics, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and corporate executives. Nativeflow Named a 2015 “Cool Vendor” in Mobile Security and IoT Security by Gartner Nativeflow has been recognized for its innovative dynamic wrapping technology as a Cool Vendor in...

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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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