Startup Investing

Zula rocking it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2013 — wins ‘Audience Choice’ award!

Zula rocking it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2013 — wins ‘Audience Choice’ award!

Sep 10, 2013 | , , , ,

TechCrunch Disrupt is an annual technology conference hosted by TechCrunch in San Francisco, New York City and Beijing and is one of the most anticipated and popular events of the year in the tech industry. It’s at this conference that many technology startups choose to launch their products and services competing on stage in front of leading venture capitalists, potential investors, media and other interested parties. OurCrowd’s portfolio company Zula, an innovative cloud-based mobile collaboration platform for teams, is participating in the conference this week and has lived up to its promise to become one of the most disruptive startups there! Last night the Zula team were the ‘Audience Choice Winners’ and got a chance to pitch live before the Disrupt judges. Co-founders Jeff Keni Pulver and Jacob Ner-David took to the TechCrunch Disrupt stage and wowed the audience, judges and online viewers with their innovative Zula app. Watch the video of their performance on stage: TechCrunch published an article featuring Zula with some of the selected Q&A with the Disrupt judges. Take a look: Zula’s Mobile-First Teamwork Tool Lets You Spend More Time Outside Of The Inbox Way to go Zula team, you guys...

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Translation Nation: Israel’s translation software and services investment landscape

Translation Nation: Israel’s translation software and services investment landscape

Sep 2, 2013 | , , ,

As the world is getting smaller as technological advances in communication and travel promote globalization – markets and people have become more accessible to one another. The chances of two people from different societies, cultures and countries meeting is pretty high, but the chances of them speaking the same language is not. As a leading startup ecosystem in the world, Israel is a hot destination for travelers in general and business travelers specifically. Moreover, Israel has a huge traveling culture. After completing their army service, Israelis traditionally take a year off to travel the world before starting school and work. Therefore, Israel has been a great source for language based apps, software and services. The Start-up Nation: a modern-day Tower of Babylon The number one most used translation service out there is Google Translate. Earlier this year, the international tech giant announced that it will provide a translation service for apps. Behind Google’s new service stand two Israeli companies, One Hour Translation and Tomedes. According to Reuters, One Hour Translation’s revenue is expected to double annually as businesses (the company already serves half of the Fortune 500) increasingly...

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Make turn at next exit: a roadmap for startup investing

Make turn at next exit: a roadmap for startup investing

Aug 27, 2013 | , ,

Angel investors as a whole have done exceptionally well lately.  A recent study by Prof. Robert Wiltbank that made noise in the angel scene claims that angel investors make 2.5x their investment in just 3.5 years when diversifying properly – which, if you think about it, is a ridiculous nearly 30% year over year return and more than double the returns of the S&P 500 over that same timeframe. How do angels make money? Angel investors make money when a startup they invested in exits, but what exactly qualifies as an exit? From an investor’s perspective, an exit is an event where the investor realizes gains or losses from original investment through a liquidation event, public offering, or a merger.  Sometimes exits are highly profitable events where investors receive a 20 or 30 times return on investment– in the VC/investing world these are called home-runs.  However, more often than not, returns from individual startup exits are more modest, or negative, and as such don’t receive press attention.  Finally, there are also those exits that startups are notoriously famous for producing and every investor should...

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[webinar] The 1st rule of startup investing: How investors lower risk and boost returns when investing in startups

[webinar] The 1st rule of startup investing: How investors lower risk and boost returns when investing in startups

Aug 21, 2013 | , , , , ,

OurCrowd Bootcamp is series of in-depth webinars is intended to give investors new to startup investing — as well as seasoned angel investors — a look into best practices.   Yesterday, we held the 2nd installment of the OurCrowd Bootcamp series on the importance of taking a portfolio approach to angel investing. Picking a startup to invest in is not easy and involves substantial risk.  In the webinar OurCrowd’s Bootcamp team addressed these issues and discussed how professional angel investors de-risk their investments in order to increase their chances of generating good returns. Additional topics covered in the webinar: What kind of returns you can expect with — and without — diversification  How to build a portfolio of startups Other methods professional investors use to de-risk investing in early stage companies Be on the lookout for more webinars in our bootcamp series (for investors in Israeli startups).  To stay updated on future events and the best news from the Startup Nation, sign up for our newsletter, email us, and follow us on social media. To contact David Stark, follow him on Twitter / Linkedin To contact Zack...

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The Midas Touch: Investing in the future of gesture-based technology

The Midas Touch: Investing in the future of gesture-based technology

Aug 8, 2013 | , ,

View from the Mountain The physical and digital worlds are converging. The process has occurred over time, caused by the advent of sensors that turn physical events into digital data. The next iteration of convergence is here, and is set to explode onto the market: gesture-based technologies, which interpret and react to human movement. Gesture-tech has taken time to gain mainstream momentum. In 2010, The New York Times summed its history up nicely—it is “one of the most significant changes to human-device interfaces since the mouse appeared next to computers in the early 1980s, but no significant products have gotten much traction.” The lull is now over. The Explosion Gesture-tech’s applications are only limited by imagination. It can be applied to sign language, so the deaf can transcribe their movements into text. It has been applied in rehabilitative medicine, to dictate diagnostic robots interaction with patients. The entertainment industry also stands to benefit. Increasingly complex and realistic video games have been able to leverage the technology to build increasingly human movement in the models and refine artificial intelligence. Gesture-tech can even interpret and respond...

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