- Top investment opportunities
- Startup of the Week: BlueTree, 100% natural juice, less sugar
- Fantastic Voyage coming soon to an OR near you
- Join us in Tel Aviv for Digital Health Day on Dec. 5
- OurCrowd Jobs Index: Hiring slowdown in 2022?
- Meet Doorway, OurCrowd’s new Italian partner
- Zippin’s AI powered, autonomous checkout comes to JFK airport
- SaNOtize boosts production of anti-Covid nasal spray in US, Israel
- D-ID gives women victims a voice in anti-violence campaign
- CNBC: Airobotics and Zzap Malaria tackle Malaria in Africa
- CyberMDX: Healthcare facilities more vulnerable to attacks in 2022
- Introductions
- More than 3,600 high-tech jobs
Startup of the Week:
BlueTree: 100% natural juice, less sugar
BlueTree Technologies is an Israeli startup whose proprietary process selectively removes sugar from orange juice and other high-sugar drinks – without harming the taste. BlueTree is an early-stage company, recently graduated from OurCrowd’s Fresh Start incubator, which is supported by Tempo, Israel’s largest drink producer, and Tnuva, Israel’s largest dairy producer. The company has agreements with Priniv, which controls 20% of the Israeli juice market, and Prodalim, an international juice distributor. The agreement with Prodalim is expected to result in steady revenue for five years and has introduced BlueTree to major global customers including Coca-Cola and major Brazilian juice producers. Join OurCrowd as we invest in a $2.7M pre-A SAFE that will extend the company’s runway to the end of 2022, allowing it to develop a full commercial platform and its sales and marketing.
Fantastic Voyage coming soon to an OR near you
Not since Raquel Welch was shrunk and inserted into a patient’s bloodstream in the 1966 movie “Fantastic Voyage” have doctors come so close to targeting life-saving medication so precisely to reach the inaccessible recesses of the human body, Joy Pincus writes in The Times of Israel. Bionaut Labs, an Israeli startup and OurCrowd portfolio company, has developed a tiny micro-robot that is set to follow in the slipstream of Ms. Welch and her microscopic medics. The miniaturized capsule can safely go where no medicine delivery system has gone before: the innermost regions of the brain.
Join us in Tel Aviv for Digital Health Day on Dec. 5
I will be joining a host of OurCrowd medtech CEOs at the International Conference for Innovations in Cardiovascular Interventions which kicks off with Digital Health Day on December 5th in Tel Aviv. Top medical professionals will be presenting alongside some of the most advanced medtech startups in the world, including OurCrowd portfolio companies BrainQ Technologies, Diagnostic Robots, Future Family, MedAware, Memic, Scopio and Sweetch. Visit the conference website for more information on attending in person or participating remotely in the hybrid event.
OurCrowd Jobs Index: Hiring slowdown in 2022?
OurCrowd portfolio companies showed strong demand for new hires with a 244% year- on-year increase in the number of jobs advertised from Q3 2020 to Q3 2021, according to the latest OurCrowd High-Tech Jobs Index, published this week. In a survey, 65% of OurCrowd startups said they had hired more aggressively this past quarter, but the same proportion of 65% say they will scale back hiring to key positions only in 2022. Even as the pandemic wanes, remote working appears to be here to stay. “The tech industry is leading the way to what might lead to a permanent change in the employment landscape in Israel,” says Laly David, OurCrowd Partner and Head of Business Development, noting that more firms are letting staff members from the periphery work from home, saving them the long commute to the office and increasing overall productivity. This is our fourth quarterly high-tech jobs survey, which has become a key data point for Israel’s high-tech ecosystem and as usual received widespread coverage in local and global media including CBN News, CTech, Israel21C and Crowdfund Insider.
Meet Doorway, OurCrowd’s new Italian partner
Doorway, an Italian club deal platform authorized for online equity investing, has entered into a strategic partnership with OurCrowd to provide Doorway’s investor community with unique access to high-potential investments selected by OurCrowd in the Israeli and international markets, Born2Invest reports. Doorway’s leadership in Italy, combined with OurCrowd’s access to an exclusive global dealflow, will provide unprecedented opportunities for Italian investors.
Top Tech News
Zippin’s AI-powered, autonomous checkout comes to JFK airport
If you’re hurrying to catch a flight but still want to grab a snack before boarding, you might be in luck. Our portfolio company Zippin opened its AI-powered, autonomous checkout convenience store at New York’s JFK airport, the Spoon reports. Customers flash their credit card at the entrance, then pick items off the shelf which are automatically tallied and charged once they leave the store. This is Zippin’s first foray into airports. Its system is already being used in hotels, stadiums and grocery stores across the US.
SaNOtize boosts production of anti-Covid nasal spray in US, Israel
Our portfolio company SaNOtize wants more people to get their hands on Enovid, its anti-virus nasal spray which kills 99% of the virus that causes Covid-19. The company is ramping up production to meet skyrocketing demand around the world, NoCamels reports, starting monthly production of one million units in the US and scaling up manufacturing in Israel to 250,000 units each month. In August, SaNOtize signed an agreement with Glenmark Pharmaceuticals to produce the spray for India and Southeast Asia. It is also being manufactured in Israel where it was granted an emergency use authorization as a medical device earlier this year.
D-ID gives women victims a voice in anti-violence campaign
Our deep learning startup D-ID brings to life images of murdered women to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Reuters reports. It created the video for an Israeli public education campaign that uses the company’s AI-powered technology to animate photographs of five women victims to warn others how to protect themselves from abusive relationships.
CNBC: Airobotics and Zzap Malaria tackle Malaria in Africa
OurCrowd portfolio companies Airobotics and Zzap Malaria, a subsidiary of Sight Diagnostics, are teaming up to eradicate malaria in Africa, CNBC reports. They will be launching a joint project next year in São Tomé and Príncipe designed to locate and neutralize malaria-carrying mosquitos. Airobotics’ drones will provide geographical data from the air while Zapp’s software will detect and analyze stagnant water sites where the mosquitos breed. The World Health Organization says there are over 220 million cases of Malaria every year, causing more than 400,000 deaths, 67% of which are children under five.
FDA clears Insightec’s ultrasound system for prostate treatment
The FDA cleared an ultrasound-based system from our medtech pioneer Insightec for the treatment of prostate cancer, Mass Device reports. The Exablate Prostate device uses acoustic energy to melt away unwanted tissue in the prostate without the need for surgery. It is guided by MRI technology which provides high resolution of the patient’s anatomy for precise targeting. “Exablate Focused Ultrasound has been shown to provide effective control of locally-confined prostate cancer in select patients,” says Dr. Behfar Ehdaie, a urologic surgeon at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Last month, the FDA approved Insightec’s procedure to replace a type of brain surgery often performed on Parkinson’s disease patients.
CyberMDX: Healthcare facilities more vulnerable to attacks in 2022
Cybersecurity trailblazer CyberMDX says healthcare facilities, including hospitals and their IoT medical devices, will be more susceptible to hackers in 2022. The company released its predictions for the coming year stating that the Covid-19 pandemic required facilities to network their equipment, but cybersecurity concerns were overlooked, leaving them open to threats. It also foresees hospitals being forced to pay higher insurance premiums and facing more stringent compliance requirements in light of the growing number of attacks.
Introductions
Your portfolio gets stronger when the OurCrowd network gets involved. Visit our Introductions page to see which of our companies are looking for connections that you may be able to help with.
More than 3,700 High-Tech Jobs
Read the OurCrowd High-Tech Jobs Index Q3 2021 HERE.
https://portfoliojobs.ourcrowd.com/
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