Author: OurCrowd

3 Due Diligence Lessons the Small Investor Can Learn from the “Big Guys”

This guest post was written by Rafi Musher, founder and CEO of global strategy consulting firm Stax Inc. and its business-incubator affiliate Stax Development Corporation (DevCorp). He is also founder of Israel and Co., a non-profit that brings current and future business leaders to Israel to get a firsthand, working knowledge of Israeli innovation. When backing a startup, early-stage or fast-growth company, you certainly want to get smart about the capabilities of the management team and general trends in the industry. Once you have that nailed, it’s time to talk tachles, or practical details in Modern Hebrew. At Stax, due diligence is our bread and butter. In 20 years of helping corporations and private equity firms—including more than a dozen of the top 25 LBO firms in the world—make significant investment decisions, we’ve seen that the most important element for commercial due diligence is getting to the the customer. Lesson #1: Is The Company Solving A Real Problem? What is the need this product or service is trying to address? If you’re looking at a technology company, which is...

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The 3 Most Common Crowdfunding Concerns (Part 2): “It’s Too Complicated & I Don’t Have Enough Time!”

Today, OurCrowd is featuring Part 2 of a special 3-part series from Matt and Wayne, the founders of Crowdability Crowdability provides individual investors with independent research and education on equity crowdfunding. With their free service, they aim to simplify the process of discovering and evaluating crowdfunding opportunities. In this series that they’ve created especially for OurCrowd, Crowdability will address investors’ 3 most common concerns about Equity Crowdfunding. ——————————————————————— In Part 1 of this Series, we addressed a concern about whether equity crowdfunding makes sense for ordinary people who aren’t intending to invest millions. Today we’ll address another common concern – namely, that early-stage investing is too difficult, or takes too much time. These are valid questions.  Early-stage investing certainly isn’t easy… For one thing, since the companies raising funds are private, they’re not obligated to disclose details of their operations or financial results.  Gathering this critical information can be challenging and time-consuming, and interpreting it can be even harder. That said, there are many ways to make the process faster and easier… Let’s look at three of them now....

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The 3 Most Common Crowdfunding Concerns (Part 1): “I Don’t Have Millions to Invest”

Today, OurCrowd is featuring Part 1 of a special 3-part series from Matt and Wayne, the founders of www.Crowdability.com.  Crowdability provides individual investors with independent research and education on equity crowdfunding. With their free service, they aim to simplify the process of discovering and evaluating crowdfunding opportunities. In this series that they’ve created especially for OurCrowd, Crowdability will address investors’ 3 most common concerns about Equity Crowdfunding.  ——————————————————————— “Dear Matt and Wayne: Does investing in equity crowdfunding deals make sense for me? I’m not a professional investor, and I’m not planning to invest millions into start-ups.” Several times a week, our subscribers ask us variations of this same question.  Since it’s such a common concern, we thought we’d dig into it today. Let’s start with the simple answer: Yes, it does make sense – even if you’re not a “professional” investor, and regardless of how much you intend to invest. You see, equity crowdfunding was specifically designed to help small companies raise small rounds of financing, ideally in small amounts from many investors. The fact is, you can dip your toe in the water for less...

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At the heart of the Startup Nation: Technology booming in Israeli R&D labs

From the time of its establishment in 1948, Israel has been at the forefront of agricultural research & development. Since then, the Startup Nation has evolved from an agrarian powerhouse to a hotbed for high-tech companies’ R&D headquarters. Under the pressure of its far larger and often hostile neighbors, Israel and its government began to realize that in order to survive it would need to direct much of its resources toward developing technologies. Just four years later, University R&D hit the Technion Institute, and has since been one of the leading contributors of patents and developments in agriculture, science, medicine, and of course, technology. In 1968, the government elected to establish a national office for a Chief Scientist, often referred to today as Matimop. This department plays an important role in creating the funds for, as well as advising certain R&D projects that have shown their potential. Matimop provides grants to further R&D projects in the areas of communication, electronics, software, and other developments. Israeli R&D Today Since the establishment of this office and the appointment of a chief...

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It all ‘ads’ up to innovation: Investing in the future of Israeli digital marketing

This guest post was written by Levi Shapiro, the Managing Partner at the JIMMI Fund, a corporate venture investment fund, and concurrently Partner at TMT Strategic Advisors. He is also the organizer of Marketing & Ad:Tech Israel, Israel’s largest conference for digital advertising. .  Last year, the VC industry partied like it was 1999.  New data from research firm Pitchbook makes it official: valuations are at an all-time high. Some of the frenzy is driven by Wall Street. The bull market will celebrate its 5th anniversary in March (NASDAQ grew 38.3% last year, more than any other major index), and the IPO market is booming. 222 firms held initial public offerings last year, raising $55 Billion, the most since 406 companies went public for $97 million in 2000. Now the cost of entry to the Party is rising.  Across all investment stages, median pre-money valuations last year rose dramatically.  Seed-stage deals now require $5.1 million; Series A rounds reached $9.4 million; Series C rounds soared 23% to $62.6 million;  Series D and later rounds are now a lofty $105.2 million. The bubble came to Israel...

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