Tag: Startup investing trends

The Future Mobile: Ringing in the next generation of smartphones

The Future Mobile: Ringing in the next generation of smartphones

Jan 19, 2016 | , ,

Before mobile phones were developed in the 1970s, dreams about handheld phones that worked anywhere and everywhere were brought to life in the world of entertainment: in the 1960s, the character Maxwell Smart often talked on his famous shoe-shaped phone in the television series GetSmart. Before that, a 1931 children’s book, Conrad’s Ride to the South, portrays a man who keeps a phone in his pocket to use while he is out and about around town. After a series of vehicle-based phone systems were developed in the 1950s, the first handheld mobile phone was introduced by Motorola in 1973; weighing more than two pounds with a battery life of only 30 minutes before needing to be recharged for a full ten hours. Not only are today’s phones a fraction of that size and able to be recharged in minutes, but are for much more than talking.  Today there are more mobile devices than people on the planet. And there is still massive potential for the mobile market, with devices on their way to replacing, at least partially, not only...

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Rev your engines: Expert panel explores what’s next in autonomous driving

Rev your engines: Expert panel explores what’s next in autonomous driving

Jan 19, 2016 | ,

At this year’s CES, driverless car technology was not just one of the hottest trends, it was THE hot trend.” – OurCrowd Investments Partner David Stark “Safety is the main reason that this will become the norm, not just a fancy feature for premium cars.” – Mobileye VP of Business Development Yonah Lloyd Science fiction writers and fans have been dreaming up self-driving cars for almost 100 years. In July, CNBC reported Google’s claim that autonomous cars will finally be available to consumers as early as 2020. It seems that nothing is putting the brakes on driverless cars, and the startup scene is helping drive the industry forward into safer territory with companies like Cruise, Delphi, Valeo, and Israel’s very own Mobileye, a technology company that develops vision-based advanced driver assistance systems providing warnings for collision prevention and mitigation. OurCrowd recently hosted a live conversation with Yonah Lloyd, VP of Business Development at Mobileye; Greg Moran, Co-Founder and CEO of Zoomcar; and Steven Millward, editor-in-chief of Tech in Asia, each bringing their unique viewpoint as we explore what’s next in autonomous driving. The conversation was...

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The Future Car: Driving the next generation of automobile technology

The Future Car: Driving the next generation of automobile technology

Jan 18, 2016 | , ,

Henry Ford’s Model T is not famous for being the first car; in fact, there were several automobiles built in the decades before his. But the Model T is famous for being the car that ushered in a new era, not just of transportation – but of life. In other words, Ford’s model, because it could be mass produced at an affordable cost to consumers, disrupted the world. In 1908, the Model T ushered in a new era of transportation dominated by personal automobile ownership, giving people freedom of movement much greater than that provided by wagons, trains and the earlier, more expensive versions of cars. The development had far-reaching social and economic implications, including the emergence of the middle class and the development of suburbs. Now, more than a century after Ford began building the Model T, the car industry is again seeing great disruption, with the likes of driverless cars and the sharing economy setting the stage for another revolution with accompanying social and economic changes. Until recently, most changes and developments in the automobile industry revolved...

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Internet of Things: The next big thing in Israeli tech [Infographic]

Internet of Things: The next big thing in Israeli tech [Infographic]

Jan 4, 2016 | , ,

Bigger? Better? Try ‘smarter’! If you haven’t heard the term by now, Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the growing trend of machine-to-machine connectivity, where Internet-enabled “dumb” devices have a network connection to collect and utilize actionable intelligence about everyday life. The growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) industry has been one of the biggest trends in tech in recent years and especially during 2015, where new innovation is disrupting traditional industries across the board.” – Forbes Over the past recent months, there has been a growing amount of impressive IoT activity coming out of Israel. To help visualize this new wave of Israeli innovation, a Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv early-stage venture capital firm — solely backed by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt — Innovation Endeavors, mapped the 2015 Israeli Internet of Things Landscape. SEE ALSO: Beyond tech: Why investors are bullish about internet startups According to their study, there are 330 Israeli IoT companies across five verticals and 23 sub-verticals, from the seed stages all the way to revenue growth. Out of the featured IoT startups operating in Israel, 11 are...

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Beyond tech: Why investors are bullish about internet startups

Beyond tech: Why investors are bullish about internet startups

Dec 1, 2015 | ,

In 2013, two American graduate school dropouts started a car-rental business in India with seven vehicles. Now, two years later, the company has a fleet of 1,800 cars. A seeming success by anyone’s standards, and for Western consumers, a seemingly traditional business: car rental. One more detail: the company, Zoomcar, is an internet startup, meaning users make reservations online or via a mobile application, then pick up the vehicles at numerous locations, or have them delivered to their doorsteps. Zoomcar illustrates how a growing number of startups do not rely on the kind of high-tech, often hard-to-understand technology requiring years of development. Increasingly, internet startups seek to disrupt markets rather than disrupt technology itself – and many are seeing wild success. According to a recent list from the Wall Street Journal, five of the top ten unicorns (tech startups valued at more than $1 billion) fit this category. And they can be great investments, offering opportunities to capitalize on the ever-changing (and sometimes for newcomers, intimidating) tech sector. The most well-known standouts in this sector include online accommodation marketplace...

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