By Janis Siegel, Jewish Sound Correspondent
It takes one to know one, goes the popular saying.
This year, it took CEO Jon Medved’s Jerusalem-based global venture capital equity crowdfunding platform and startup, OurCrowd, to launch its first startup IPO on the NASDAQ, ReWalk Robotics, and the first company of its kind ever to do it, according to Medved.
OurCrowd allows any accredited investor with as little as $10,000 to invest in companies like ReWalk or any of the 52 companies it currently supports. To date, it has raised $75 million.
“This offering marks the first time an equity crowdfunding platform has accompanied a company over the full cycle, from venture funding through to an IPO on a major U.S. exchange,” said Medved, who lives in Jerusalem, in the OurCrowd announcement. “Moreover, it is truly gratifying to invest in successful companies that dramatically change people’s lives for the better.”
Israel’s ReWalk has developed motorized legs run by a patented tilt-sensor system and an onboard computer that functions as a walking aid for paraplegics and people with spinal cord injuries.
ReWalk was “incubated” at the Technion Institute of Technology and was one of the innovations viewed by President Obama during his trip to Israel last year.
But if you missed the opportunity to hit it big this time — don’t worry. There are hundreds more startups discovered by OurCrowd, which analyzes more than 200 per month and invests its own money into the “chosen ones.”
“The big story here is the democratization of finance,” OurCrowd vice president of the Americas Audrey Jacobs told the Jewish Sound during a visit to the Northwest in mid-October. “What equity crowdfunding is doing is aggregating capital and allowing individual investors who’ve never had access before to early-stage tech companies to have access.”
Three hundred of the largest global multinational corporations have now set up research and development centers in Israel, Jacobs said.
Even Apple recently opened its first duty-free retail location in Israel at Ben-Gurion airport, according to the Algemeiner.com news site.
OurCrowd allows accredited investors to invest up to $1 million and take what could be the financial ride of a lifetime. Out of the array of startups it evaluates, OurCrowd selects roughly 2 percent of them and generally adds $1 million of its own money along with some of the largest corporate investors in the world.
“We have 6,000 accredited investors who are registered in our platform from 54 countries,” said Jacobs. “I was able to hire a team in New York, open an office in Chicago, and hire a team for Latin America.”
OurCrowd partners are constantly trolling the technology landscape around the world and from every sector in Israel, said Jacobs, but they are particularly focused on the universities and the military there for new and innovative technologies with commercial potential.
According to its own figures, 50 percent of OurCrowd’s capital comes from the U.S., 10 percent from Israel, and the other 40 percent from investors throughout the globe.
“Australia is very strong,” said Jacobs. “South Africa, Eastern and Western Europe, we’re growing significantly in South America, and we’re doing a lot of co-investing with Asian investors.”
Jacobs was in Seattle looking to expand OurCrowd’s reach into what she called a “very important startup ecosystem.”
With the help of Medved’s deep and wide connections in the Northwest, particularly from his brother, nationally syndicated radio talk show host Michael Medved, several technologies here could be poised for success.
Jacobs wouldn’t name any specific companies, but it’s clear that OurCrowd is ready to find and fund any and all tech entrepreneurs who are far enough along to attract capital.
“One of the reasons I’m here in Seattle is to see how we can help bring some of this global capital to Seattle,” she said. “We definitely want to have a strong foothold in the Seattle community to look for startups to bring to our investors and to invite more investors to become active with OurCrowd.”
The company is also interested in the Portland area.
When asked about whether she’s encountered any anti-Israel rhetoric from entrepreneurs or investors as she travels for OurCrowd, Jacobs was unequivocally positive.
“I have never, ever encountered any anti-Israel sentiment when we’re bringing Israeli entrepreneurs throughout the U.S.,” said Jacobs. ““I can speak to an entire crowd and not one person is Jewish and people come up to me and say, “I really support Israel, What can I do besides investing in the company?” I’ve actually found the opposite. People want to know what Israel is doing. They want to invest.”