Jerusalem, IL and San Diego, CA. – January 22, 2014 – OurCrowd, Israel’s leading equity-based crowdfunding platform for accredited investors, today announced a project uncovering the 100 top thought leaders in crowdfunding today.  The project, based on an Evolve!, Inc. analysis of the impact of more than 800 members of the crowdfunding community, pinpoints thought leaders whose leadership, actions, blog posts, articles, tweets and commentary provide a framework for understanding new rules, structures and players in innovation finance.  The team identified a ranked list of the top 30 and unranked list of 100 top crowdfunding thought leaders who best represent the crowdfunding industry.The Crowdfunding100 was inspired by the venture community’s imperative to reinvent itself in light of the crowdfunding industry’s explosive growth.  Crowdsourcing research and advisory firm Massolution expects the emerging crowdfunding industry to surpass $5.1 billion in 2013, growing 86 percent over the previous year.  Fred Wilson, founder and managing partner at Union Square Ventures, predicts the industry will grow to $300 billion annually, eclipsing current venture investment models.“We are grateful for the entrepreneurs, investors, regulators, politicians, platform providers, industry analysts, legal professionals and press leading the conversation within the crowdfunding community,” said OurCrowd CEO and serial entrepreneur Jon Medved.  “From listening to and engaging with these thought leaders, our understanding of the rapidly changing landscape continues to grow and inform our unique approach to innovation finance.”

Evolve used a broad range of influencer discovery and engagement tools to identify thought leaders.  The list was refined using a proprietary formula designed to quantify their actions, leadership and online influence taking into account a variety of factors such as social footprint, popularity among industry insiders, engagement frequency, citations by influential writers in venture finance and related factors.  Evolve! then assigned weights to each factor to identify the top influencers.

The top ten crowdfunding thought leaders, including Twitter usernames and blog URLs are:

1. PERRY CHEN (@perrychen, website), co-founder, chairman and former CEO of Kickstarter.   Chen has backed more than 250 projects through the Kickstarter platform.
2. NAVAL RAVIKANT (@naval, website), founder and co-maintainer of AngelList, angel investor and co-author of Venture Hacks.
3. SLAVA RUBIN (@gogoslava, website), CEO and co-founder of Indiegogo.  Rubin recently attended the White House signing of JOBS Act as the representative of the crowdfunding industry.
4. BEN HOROWITZ (@bhorowitz, website) co-founder and general partner of $2.5 billion venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The firm has made multiple Web 2.0 investments including Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter, with a recent investment in social funding platform Crowdtilt.
5. FRED WILSON (@fredwilson, website), founder and managing partner of early stage venture capital firm Union Square Ventures.  In 2012, Wilson predicted crowdfunding will one day release US $300 billion in crowdfunds annually, making the current VC model obsolete.
6. TIM DRAPER (@TimDraper, website), founder and managing director of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. On behalf of DFJ, his previous successes include Tesla, Skype, Hotmail and Baidu.
7. STEVE CASE (@SteveCase, website), Chairman and CEO of Revolution LLC and co-founder of America Online.  Case was selected by President Barack Obama to serve as Chairman of the Startup America Partnership and named to the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
8. MARK WARNER (@MarkWarner, website), US Senator for the Commonwealth of Virginia now serving on the Senate’s Banking, Budget, Commerce and Rules committees. Senator Warner worked on a key program in the JOBS Act legislation, designed to simplify securities regulation and enable investors to fund small businesses through crowdfunding, and was instrumental in getting the legislation passed by Congress and signed into law.
9. DANIEL GORFINE (@DGorfine), director of Financial Markets Policy and Legal Counsel at the Milken Institute.  Gorfine is also an adjunct faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School.
10. RENAULD LEPLANCHE, co-founder and CEO of peer-to-peer lending company Lending Club.

The complete list of 100 top crowdfunding thought leaders can be found on the OurCrowd blog.

About OurCrowd 
OurCrowd is an equity crowdfunding platform for accredited investors only who wish to invest in Israeli and global technology companies. Managed by a team of well-known investment professionals and led by serial entrepreneur Jon Medved, OurCrowd selects opportunities, invests its own capital and brings these startups to its accredited membership. Members choose those deals they invest in via OurCrowd-managed partnerships. OurCrowd investors must meet stringent accreditation criteria and invest a minimum of $10,000 per deal. OurCrowd provides post investment support to its portfolio companies, assigning industry experts as mentors, taking board seats, and mobilizing its global investor community to take an active role in innovation and growth.  In 2013, the company raised more than $30 million for its thirty portfolio companies, including eleven financings in excess of $1 million.For more information or to sign up as an investor, visit OurCrowd’s website.

Press Contact:

Jenna Dobkin
Evolve! Inc.
Mobile:  415 652 2185
Skype: jenna.dobkin1
Jenna@evolvesinc.com