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OurCrowd Jerusalem Global Summit Opens With $10 Thousand Minimum Investments
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Meet OurCrowd Head Of Investor Community Zack Miller
Meet OurCrowd Head of Investments Elan Zivotofsky
When Jon Medved, founder and current CEO of OurCrowd, was asked how he measured the success of the Summit he said, “I’m sort of feeling a combination of shock and feeling like a Bar Mitzvah boy. I’m sort of in my own simcha (celebration).”
He made the Bar Mitzvah analogy because Medved feels like he has come of age today and sees the conference as a sort of ceremony confirming the success of OurCrowd.
They originally planned on only 2-300 attendees and ended up with almost 1, 000 including about 200 walk ins. Many of the people in attendance were from OurCrowd companies and as Medved pointed out, “the companies are the success here. OurCrowd was just an enabler for them to succeed.”
“The convention was a huge success beyond out wildest dreams, ” he said. “We had 30 venture funds here as well as hundreds of active investors.”
One of the attendees was the manager of a private family run investment fund from Europe who declined to be named. He was in Israel for the week on a trip sponsored by the Israeli government.
He said, “Its interesting to see the companies here and to take the pulse on the market.”
About OurCrowd he said that, “the concept is good. It cuts a lot of the work down for investors who don’t know how to do the due diligence involved in investments for themselves or understand the technologies. OurCrowd filters out the good from the bad for them.”
“The big drawback, ” he said, “is that the individual investors give up complete control to OurCrowd. They do not get any say in how the companies are run.”
Mr. Medved responded to that by pointing out that this is also true for anyone who gives their money over to a hedge fund or who just buys stock. At the same time the average person does not have nearly enough money to try and get in on the ground floor of a startup like their firms.
But OurCrowd investors, he explained, get all the information that they need before they choose which company to invest in. “This gives the total control back to the investors, ” Medved boasted.
Originally from Los Angeles, Jon Medved has over 30 years of experience in the Israeli finance sector. The Washington Post called him, ”One of Israel’s leading high tech venture capitalists”.
