Startup Investing

And the winner is… | OurCrowd’s portfolio companies receive numerous achievement awards

And the winner is… | OurCrowd’s portfolio companies receive numerous achievement awards

Nov 25, 2014 | , ,

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. Here is a quick recap of some of our companies’ notable awards: Freightos wins the grand award at InvestHK’s 2014 startmeupHK competition Freightos is one of the three grand award winners of the 2014 StartmeupHK Venture Forum. Organised by InvestHK, the StartmeupHK competition aims to raise awareness of Hong Kong’s potential as Asia’s leading hub of entrepreneurship and innovation. The global competition saw 550 entries filed from 47 economies. Check out Freightos’ CEO Zvi Schreiber present his StartmeupHK 2014 finalist pitch below: Nativeflow wins Best Mobility Solution at Healthcare IT Summit 2014 Nativeflow is the winner of “Best Mobility Solution”, awarded at the Healthcare IT Summit in Los Angeles, California. The Healthcare IT Summit is a distinguished summit that brings together CIOs, CTOs and IT executives from leading healthcare insurer and provider organizations. Nativeflow CEO Tal Gilat stated in the company’s press release: “The Healthcare IT Summit provides the perfect backdrop for cutting edge IT professionals to learn about how...

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This Week In Crowdfunding: The 4 Myths Of Equity Crowdfunding (And Why They’re Wrong)

This Week In Crowdfunding: The 4 Myths Of Equity Crowdfunding (And Why They’re Wrong)

Nov 23, 2014 | , ,

This Week in Crowdfunding is a newly launched podcast series hosted by OurCrowd’s Zack Miller and David Stark, where they cover the best in Crowdfunding with a frank — and educational — discussion about the issues surrounding Crowdfunding. Every week, they interview successful entrepreneurs, deconstruct campaigns, and hear from the smartest people around on this transformative, massive financing trend. Sign up to listen to the podcast on iTunes * Sticher * SoundCloud!  ——————————————— Equity crowdfunding is probably the newest form of crowdfunding, Kickstarter and Indiegogo’s little brother. But the momentum is there — OurCrowd estimated that upwards of $700M would be invested via equity crowdfunding during 2014. While thousands of investors have taken to equity crowdfunding platforms, there is a lot of runway for new investors to embrace crowd investing. In this week’s episode of TWiC, hosts Zack Miller and David Stark explore (and bust) 4 myths of equity crowdfunding. Listen to the FULL...

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The Story of Medved: An exclusive interview with the Startup Nation’s leading venture capitalist

The Story of Medved: An exclusive interview with the Startup Nation’s leading venture capitalist

Nov 20, 2014 | , , ,

How a secular American student at Berkeley became an Orthodox Jewish Israeli businessman in Jerusalem: The story of Jon Medved, named as “the American citizen who has the greatest influence on the Israeli economy” ─ though he defines himself as exclusively Israeli. Source: This blog post includes translated excerpts of the original article by Ayelet Vardi  which was featured in Israel’s leading daily newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth:  The Story of Medved (Hebrew) “My grandfather came to the US from the Ukraine in 1910,” recalls Jon Medved, CEO and Founder of the VC-equity crowdfunding investment company OurCrowd, in an interview at his Jerusalem office. His speech is a natural mix of English and Hebrew, with some Spanish colloquialisms thrown in. Dressed in an orange and red Hawaiian shirt ─ and with a style that conveys complete calm and confidence ─ Medved breaks every known stereotype about Orthodox Jewish American men who live in Jerusalem. “He was a barrel maker. I know that sounds like the work of an ordinary laborer, but the work of a barrel maker is not simple at all. You needed...

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Dripping with innovation: 5 Israeli water tech companies changing the world

Dripping with innovation: 5 Israeli water tech companies changing the world

Nov 19, 2014 | , ,

Plato said, “necessity is the mother of invention.” That saying couldn’t be more true in the case of the Startup Nation. A desert country with an utter lack of natural water resources, Israel has literally made the desert bloom. In the decades since its founding, Israel has become a worldwide leader in turning water scarcity into water abundance. The tiny country has been making waves in water technology since its inception, and its innovations of drip irrigation, desalination, wastewater treatment, and water reuse, among others, have been globally recognized and awarded. These days, the country’s water know-how is in high demand. Over the past year, Israeli water gurus have been sought out to provide expertise on numerous humanitarian and financial projects across different sectors worldwide — bailing California out of its worst drought in history, bringing self-cleaning water filters to Africa, cleaning up holy rivers in India—to name a few. In light of global warming and continued decrease of water resources, now more than ever countries in both the developed and developing world are seeking the help of Israeli water tech...

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This Week In Crowdfunding: Reddit gets into crowdfunding (and so do Gates and Zuckerberg)

This Week In Crowdfunding: Reddit gets into crowdfunding (and so do Gates and Zuckerberg)

Nov 16, 2014 | , ,

This Week in Crowdfunding is a newly launched podcast series hosted by OurCrowd’s Zack Miller and David Stark, where they cover the best in Crowdfunding with a frank — and educational — discussion about the issues surrounding Crowdfunding. Every week, they interview successful entrepreneurs, deconstruct campaigns, and hear from the smartest people around on this transformative, massive financing trend. Sign up to listen to the podcast on iTunes * Sticher * SoundCloud!  ——————————————— On this week’s TWiC, hosts Zack Miller and David Stark look at Reddit’s recent moves into crowdfunding and about the recent Indiegogo campaign, Hour of Code. Backed by tech entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, this crowdfunding project aims to train 10,000 teachers to teach 10 million students about computer science. Watson on Crowdfunding wows us with another amazing fact about crowdfunding. Listen to the FULL episode Resources mentioned in the podcast Reddit launches Redditmade An Hour of Code for every...

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