Equity Crowdfunding

OurCrowd First: Bringing seed-stage investment to the OurCrowd investor community

OurCrowd First: Bringing seed-stage investment to the OurCrowd investor community

Jun 9, 2015 | , , , ,

OurCrowd is proud to announce the launch of its first fund, OurCrowd First, a specialized $10M global early stage fund focusing on seed and Pre-A startups. With the fund, OurCrowd will leverage its established infrastructure to bring equity crowdfunding to approximately 20+ seed-stage companies providing our investors even earlier access to promising opportunities. OurCrowd First is further democratizing the world of seed stage investment funds, since most other funds require million dollar minimum investments. “We are proud to be launching our entry into the funds market with the OurCrowd First seed fund. Our investors have asked for more access to earlier stage deals, which have been hard to do until now on OurCrowd, given the rapid growth of our platform and our average deal sizes of millions of dollars. OurCrowd First will cover the earliest stages of the startup funding journey providing up to $500,000 for a select group of companies.” —  Jon Medved, OurCrowd founder and CEO OurCrowd First will be managed by General Partners Eduardo Shoval and Yori Nelken, who both come with highly successful track records in early-stage...

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This week on OurCrowd’s QuickFire webinar: Mark One, Influitive, and ElMindA

This week on OurCrowd’s QuickFire webinar: Mark One, Influitive, and ElMindA

Jun 4, 2015 | , ,

Check it out: May was one of OurCrowd’s most active months to date for investment opportunities. As part of OurCrowd’s new QuickFire webinar series, we presented three of our latest investment opportunities — Mark One (lifestyle tech), Influitive (advocate marketing), and ElMindA (brain mapping) — in order to allow investors to get to know the companies, hear updates, and meet their platforms. View the webinar recording below or online here. QuickFire Webinar: A Chance to Meet 3 Companies in 1 Hour (6/3/15) The next QuickFire webinar will be held later this month, for information and updates on the time and date email us at webinar@ourcrowd.com. To find out more about these investment opportunities and others on our investment platform, click here. ——— [xyz-ihs...

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GE Ventures and OurCrowd: Breaking new ground in innovation finance

GE Ventures and OurCrowd: Breaking new ground in innovation finance

Jun 3, 2015 | , ,

In the spirit of crowdbuilding, last month OurCrowd hosted a special visit by GE Senior executives from the U.S. at our Jerusalem offices. The event joined the GE team with our portfolio’s entrepreneurs to discuss ways to collaborate company growth. Partners since November 2013, GE is looking to contribute investment dollars as well as experience and expertise to OurCrowd investments. The partnership allows GE Ventures to co-invest alongside OurCrowd in companies that are focused on GE’s core industries of healthcare, software, energy and advanced manufacturing. Throughout the day, participants took part in various round table discussions, including: Key Decisions in Commercialization Strategy by Brett May – Head of Ventures and Business Development, GE Software How to Pitch Investors by David Mayhew, GE Ventures – Chief Risk Officer Impactful Branding & Communications for Startups by Andy Goldberg – GE Corporate Global Creative Director Importance of Strategic Partnerships by Karen Kerr – Senior Managing Director, Advanced Manufacturing Financial Planning & Reporting: Smart Cash Management by Dennis Cinelli – GE Ventures Chief Financial Officer Impactful Branding & Communications for Startups by Andy Goldberg –...

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Impact Investing 101: How to generate social and environmental impact alongside financial return

Impact Investing 101: How to generate social and environmental impact alongside financial return

May 17, 2015 | , ,

What is impact investing, anyway? It is becoming increasingly apparent that private enterprise can play an important role in solving critical social and environmental challenges. Investors realize that these companies can have a meaningful impact on the world while delivering financial returns at the same time, enabling investors to “do good while doing well.” This has given rise to a large, growing movement known as impact investing. Impact investments are investments made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return. Impact investments provide capital to support companies aiming to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges. Typical sector targets for impact investment are: sustainable agriculture and development, affordable housing, affordable and accessible healthcare, education, microfinance and financial inclusion, and clean technology. My interest in impact investing stems from a variety of personal and professional experiences over the past couple of years. The initial spark was lit when I heard Sir Ronald Cohen speak about the subject around two years ago at an event in Israel (he believes social impact investing will be the...

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“Tear down this wall!” How crowdfunding is changing the world

“Tear down this wall!” How crowdfunding is changing the world

May 5, 2015 | , ,

One of the greatest benefits of the internet age has been the breaking down of barriers. Internet based real-time communication has broken down barriers of distance, social networks have eliminated the constraints of first degree relationships, online marketplaces have removed the layers of middlemen between vendors and consumers, cloud computing has lowered the cost hurdle of developing and deploying software, the blockchain promises to circumvent centralized intermediaries and the inherent global reach of the internet (2.8+ billion users) has made barriers to content distribution a thing of the past. Crowdfunding is one of the latest internet trends that follows in this spirit. Capital has historically been one of the most difficult things to access for large percentages of the population. Most individuals are repeatedly unsuccessful in their attempts to secure a loan to cover personal expenses, raise money to expand a small business, or bring in external funding to help get an innovative idea off the ground, running into walls at every turn. These walls come in many forms (geographic or demographic disadvantage, lack of influential relationships, cost, etc.),...

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