Israeli crowd-funding platform OurCrowd has raised $5.5 million, after previously raising $6.5 million for 12 companies from accredited investors. The firm has raised $12 million altogether for its platform and companies.
OurCrowd is an equity Crowd-funding platform for investing in Israeli start-ups seeking early-stage investment. The firm brings these opportunities to its members, who choose which deals they participate in via OurCrowd-managed partnerships. OurCrowd jointly invests in the ventures, and manages investments in them.
OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved said, “With completion of our initial platform funding round and 12 new company deals, we have emerged as a leader in the increasingly competitive equity crowd-funding space. We are focused on linking global accredited investors with Israel’s dynamic and exciting 'Start-up Nation' scene, which is generating investment opportunities unlike any I have seen in the past.
Medved is a serial entrepreneur, who previously co-founded and ran Vringo Inc. (AMEX: VRNG-U ) and was a partner in Israel Seed Partners, which has $260 million under management.
OurCrowd's investments include Chicago-based organic e-commerce company AbesMarket.com ; Internet information company Sherpa, founded by Bob Rosenschein, who previously founded Answers.com; freight forwarding automation TradeOS, founded by Zvi Schreiber, who previously founded Tradeum.com, which was sold to Vertical Net for $450 million; social parking solution Parko; website anti-bot and scraping solutions developer Fireblade; and Consumer Physics Ltd., which is developing a pocket spectrometer for smartphones.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 6, 2013
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