Startup Investing

Winning the Gold for Innovation: The OurCrowd Olympics Connection

Winning the Gold for Innovation: The OurCrowd Olympics Connection

Aug 18, 2016 | ,

The Olympic Games have always been a time for the world to come together and admire the potential of the human species as a whole, especially the athletes’ physical and mental capabilities, like talent, skill, and strategy. But there’s a lot more to admire about the international sporting event, namely the proliferation of amazing technological advances that help the athletes on an individual level and facilitate the event itself taking place. High-level security technology, medical innovations, and imaging technology, for example, are being put to service in sports and sporting events to prevent and treat injury, improve training and performance, enhance the experience for fans, and more. As the 2016 Rio Olympics are rapidly coming to a close, we survey four outstanding companies from our portfolio, highlighting their current and potential contributions to the sports technology sub-sectors and events inside and outside the arenas – the OurCrowd-Olympics connection. BriefCam As the developers of a revolutionary video synopsis technology, BriefCam has a direct connection to the summer Olympics as it is helping Rio monitor its bank of surveillance cameras and is assisting authorities in keeping track of what’s happening at street...

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Every Drop Counts: Saving Lives with Innovative Blood Diagnostic Technologies

Every Drop Counts: Saving Lives with Innovative Blood Diagnostic Technologies

Aug 10, 2016 | ,

Can blood be tested more quickly, conveniently, and inexpensively, in order to save lives? It’s a question of what tools and methods are used to accurately detect blood anomalies and differentiate between all types of blood cells, in order to identify blood-based diseases. Blood tests are done for many reasons – for example, to help diagnose disease or, conversely, to rule out the possibility of a disease even when symptoms suggest its presence. Whether caring for an individual patient or responding to a worldwide epidemic, rapidly establishing the cause of disease is fundamental to quality care. Established Methods of Diagnosis: Microscopy, RDTs, and PCR Classic microscopy is considered to be the gold standard – the most effective approach to the diagnosis of infectious disease, particularly malaria. The history of microscopy goes back to the late 1660s, when Antony van Leeuwenhoek began to grind his own lenses and make simple microscopes. Modern microscopy started in 1931, when a pair of German scientists invented the electron microscope, which directs a beam of speeded-up electrons at a cell sample. As the electrons...

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Fund Investments on OurCrowd from an IRA Account

Fund Investments on OurCrowd from an IRA Account

Aug 4, 2016 |

We are pleased to let you know about a new opportunity allowing OurCrowd investors to fund investments through IRA custodial accounts. What is an IRA? An Individual Retirement Account (IRA) gives people based in the United States a way to build tax-deferred savings for retirement. An IRA is an account, not an investment. You can put just about whatever investments you want into your IRA — stocks, CDs, mutual funds, cash and bonds — anything except options and other derivatives. There are two types of IRA, both accepted by OurCrowd – Traditional IRA and Roth IRA. In a traditional IRA contributions are tax-deductible, with all transactions and earnings within the IRA having no tax impact, and withdrawals at retirement are taxed as income (except for those portions of the withdrawal corresponding to contributions that were not deducted). Depending upon the nature of the contribution, a traditional IRA may be referred to as a “deductible IRA” or a “non-deductible IRA.” It was introduced with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and made popular with the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981. In a Roth IRA, contributions are made with...

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The Need for Speed: Next-Gen Wi-Fi Startup Technologies

The Need for Speed: Next-Gen Wi-Fi Startup Technologies

Aug 2, 2016 |

With more and more consumers choosing video streaming services as their main source of content, “cord cutting” or disconnecting from traditional pay TV providers has become prevalent. Because of this, providers have experienced a significant reduction in subscribers, particularly the millennial contingent who use tech devices predominantly for media consumption; over 87% using two to three tech devices at least once every day. As many of these devices are portable and connect over Wi-Fi, service providers have had to make a strategic shift from being pure pay TV providers to becoming broadband providers since Wi-Fi is the main touch-point for broadband services. Wi-Fi Overload Due to the many Wi-Fi touch-points such as laptops, mobile phones, tablets and security cameras, and the rapid growth of IoT, Wi-Fi has become strained beyond its capacity. Now, the most pressing need for providers is to ensure that Wi-Fi can deliver the full range of broadband and pay TV services within the home, like internet and data, home and hotspot services, over-the-top content, smart home apps, cellular offloading, and more. Many have attempted to address...

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When the Chips are Up: Israel’s Burgeoning Semiconductor Industry Sees Exits Worth Billions

When the Chips are Up: Israel’s Burgeoning Semiconductor Industry Sees Exits Worth Billions

Jul 21, 2016 | ,

Israel’s history in the semiconductor industry started back in 1974, when Dov Frohman, one of Intel’s first employees and inventor of EPROM – the erasable, programmable, read-only memory chip that eventually led to the creation of flash memory – left Silicon Valley to return to Israel. Frohman had been asked to establish a small chip design center in Haifa, which, at the time, was Intel’s first center outside of the U.S. Fast-forward to 2016, Intel is now the largest employer in Israel’s high-tech sector, having invested over $10 billion in the country and with exports totaling $4.1 billion. Building on such achievements, the Israeli semiconductor industry has now grown to employ over 20,000 people in dozens of companies. Almost all of the world’s leading semiconductor firms have significant R&D centers in Israel, alongside which a large number of local semiconductor companies have grown. The Israeli semiconductor industry is now one of the most advanced internationally, with the second or third highest concentration of design houses in the world. Quick Snapshot – A Look at Major Israeli Innovations From design...

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