Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • “Finovate Debuts: Bluescape Helps Banks Create Products from Napkin Sketches”
  • “Tradeshift Earns Undisclosed Investment from Santander”

Around the web

  • Fenergo rises 25 places in global Chartis Research’s RiskTech100 rankings.
  • Blackhawk Network partners with Apple to offer ApplePay rewards.
  • The Australian reports: OurCrowd goes on start-up funds-drive.
  • SafetyPay and VTEX sign a global agreement for electronic commerce.
  • Expensify selected as preferred expense-management solution by the AICPA and CPA.com.
  • Professional Planner quotes SuiteBox CEO Ian Dunbar in discussion on technology and millennials.
  • Top Egyptian retail FI, housing and development bank goes live with Temenos core banking solution.
  • Avanzia Bank and TSYS renew card-processing partnership.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. Follow our alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Envestnet | Yodlee to Support Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Business.
  • True Link Financial Lands $3.6 Million Investment.

Around the web

  • Backbase to power commercial banking platform for Metro Bank.
  • Crowdfund Insider features OurCrowd’s Jon Medved.
  • CNBC interviews Thinknum co-founder Justin Zhen.
  • Coverhound announces new partnership with pay-per-mile auto insurance innovator, Metromile.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

OurCrowd Pulls in $72 Million

OurCrowd Pulls in $72 Million

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OurCrowd, an equity crowdfunding platform that boasts a network of 15,000 investors to fund U.S. and Israeli startups, raised $72 million. Financial institutions, family offices, and private investors from five continents participated in the Series C round, though most of the investors remain unnamed.

Singapore bank UOB Group, however, has come out as a strategic investor to help OurCrowd expand globally beyond the U.S. and Israel. Janet Young, managing director of group channels and digitalization at UOB Group, said, “We look forward to working closely with OurCrowd to further develop their platform to support the startup ecosystem both in Singapore and the broader Asian market. Our investment into this Series C funding for OurCrowd reinforces our commitment to support startups and small businesses.”

According to OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved, the company will use half of the funds to fuel global expansion and build out the product. The other half will be used to match investments made on the platform. This, as Medved explained, will “make sure that each and every company which raises funding on our platform receives participating investment from the General Partner on the same terms as the crowd.” He added the new capital will help achieve their goal of investing $1 billion annually by 2020.

OurCrowd’s funding now totals just north of $100 million. The Jerusalem-based company has facilitated $300 million in funding for the 100 companies in its portfolio. Notable client successes include nine exits, including seven sales and two IPOs.

OurCrowd’s Chief Product Officer Shai Ben-Tovim and VP of Engineering Oshrat Kfir launched the company’s mobile app at FinovateSpring 2016. The app helps investors discover new opportunities and empowers them with information to make better investment decisions.

In June the company partnered with Bayer, Dupont, and FinistereAG to launch an agriculture-focused investment fund, Radicle. That same month, OurCrowd earned a spot on the RedHerring 2016 Europe Top 100 list.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Lleida.net Calls New Patent a Turning Point.

Around the web

  • EVRY launches cloud services with global capacity and secure data storage in Norway.
  • IBM to provide new real-time payments systems for The Clearing House.
  • Prosper Marketplace reports its 2016 portfolio is on pace for its highest estimated return since 2013.
  • Fiserv rings opening bell on Nasdaq to celebrate 30 years on the exchange.
  • Chubb and Nationwide launch several core products on the Insuritas SmartCART platform.
  • Lendio partners with Supplier Success to offer working capital to its clients.
  • Oracle names SuiteBox among platform innovation winners.
  • TIO Networks makes Canada’s 2016 PROFIT 500 list with five-year revenue growth of 125%.
  • Guardian Analytics partners with The Pathfinder Group to streamline real-time wire-fraud prevention for wire-transfer system customers.
  • BBC article names Featurespace one of the notable tech companies headquartered in the city.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

OurCrowd Wins Red Herring Awards; Announces Partnerships with Bayer, DuPont

OurCrowd Wins Red Herring Awards; Announces Partnerships with Bayer, DuPont

OurCrowd_homepage_June2016

It’s been a busy June for Jerusalem-based, crowd-investing platform OurCrowd. The company picked up a Red Herring awardannounced partnerships with Bayer, Dupont, and FinistereAG; and earned positive press from The Times UK and Wired.

“Start-up companies don’t just need cash, they need help,” OurCrowd founder Jon Medved this week told James Hurley of The Times UK. Calling his crowd-investing platform a combination of “old-fashioned venture capital and new-age crowdfunding,” Medved emphasized the amount of due diligence performed in selecting portfolio companies, and said only 2% of the companies seeking a spot on the platform make it.

OurCrowd’s platform enables accredited investors to provide capital to early-stage startups. With as little as $10,000, investors can participate in platform-sponsored funding rounds to purchase equity in the companies. When the funding goal is reached and the round ended, a representative from OurCrowd joins the startup’s board to help advise the company and look after the interests of investors. It is this level of engagement that convinces Medved that private company investment is often a better route for tech startups than going public. “If you really want to have output from your investment,” Medved told Wired UK earlier this month, “you’ve got to be in private company investment.”

OurCrowd_stage_FS2016

CPO Shai Ben-Tovim and VP of Engineering Oshrat Kfir demonstrated the OurCrowd app at FinovateSpring 2016 in San Jose, California.

OurCrowd was one of 19 Israeli companies earning a spot in the RedHerring 2016 Europe Top 100. Not only did OurCrowd hit the Top 100, but also two companies in OurCrowd’s portfolio—CropX and Zebra Medical Vision—made the cut. “There is no doubt about it,” the OurCrowd blog read today, “Israel has become a world leader in startup success.”

OurCrowd’s collaboration with Bayer, DuPont, and FinstereAG has led to the launch of a new accelerator fund, Radicle, that is designed to help foster innovation in early stage agricultural technology startups. The $15 million fund focuses on agricultural technologies that contribute to productivity, sustainability, and quality such as genomics, seed tech, and disruptive or novel farm systems. OurCrowd General Partner David Stark suggested that his firm had a unique understanding of the challenges and opportunities of technology innovations in agriculture.

“Forced to overcome the challenge of making the desert bloom, Israel has a long history of agricultural innovation and today is home to a multitude of world-class AgTech startups,” Stark said. OurCrowd portfolio company and Red Herring Europe Top-100 award-winner CropX specializes in adaptive irrigation technologies.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Jerusalem, Israel, OurCrowd demoed its app at FinovateSpring 2016. Via its platform, OurCrowd and investors have put more than $220 million in capital into 100 portfolio companies, with six exits in the past three years.

 

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • Passport Raises $8 Million in Series B.
  • OurCrowd Wins Red Herring Awards; Announces Partnerships with Bayer, DuPont.

Around the web

  • NCR releases updated version of its transactions processing solution, Authentic.
  • Major update to Xero’s online invoicing technology to help businesses avoid phishing scams.
  • TimeTrade brings its Banking by Appointment functionality to FIS’ mobile banking app.
  • Clover selects DAVO’s Sales Tax App as first app featured on its new blog.
  • ForwardLane and AlphaPoint selected to participate in Accenture’s Fintech Innovation Lab.
  • ENGIE to leverage Kony’s enterprise-mobility platform.
  • SafetyPay increases its volume of transactions paid in cash by 86% compared to last year.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • A Score for Socure: The Digital ID Company Lands Funds from Santander.
  • Digital Payments Guardian from Prairie Cloudware Goes Live at Multibillion Dollar Regional Bank.
  • Tradeshift Unveils Go,the First B2B Virtual Assistant for Managing Business Expenses and Travel.
  • With Ripple, Seven Banks Test Out the Blockchain.

Around the web

  • TSYS and Equinox team up to launch semi-integrated EMV payment solution for Value-Added Resellers.
  • Forbes column on “millennial money mistakes” features Kapitall.
  • iQuantifi founder and CEO Tom White writes about goal-based selling for BankDirector.com.
  • Accusoft wins spot in 2016 SD Times 100 for its innovations in software development.
  • Prairie Cloudware’s Digital Payments Guardian mobile wallet goes live with multi-billion dollar regional bank.
  • Fintech profile interviews Cloud Lending CEO Snehal Fulzele.
  • Fiserv launches Notifi to deliver actionable alerts.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

Finovate Alums Help Represent Fintech Innovation in Israel

Finovate Alums Help Represent Fintech Innovation in Israel

Israel_FlagPYMNTS.com published an interesting, metric-based post on the tech scene in Israel. The post emphasized that while the country has a well deserved reputation as a “cybersecurity hotspot,” it is also true that “Israel’s tech ambitions and prowess extend much further.”

The salient statistic for me: 430—the number of fintech startups headquartered in Israel—is highly impressive, considering only 90 fintech startups existed in 2009.

With that in mind, here’s a look at some recent Israel-based Finovate alums who are helping make the country one of the world’s key locations for fintech innovation.

Our 14 Israel-based Finovate alums have raised more than $164 million in funding. Two alums—NICE Systems and Top Image Systems—are publicly traded on the Nasdaq, and two more—Capitali.se and TipRanks—have won Best of Show awards.

TheFloor_Israelfintechhub

There’s no doubt the fintech in Israel is on the move. The country’s first fintech hub, The Floor, was launched in 2015, and as of March 2016 is now located at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Writing about why fintech innovation is thriving in Israel, VentureBeat’s Avi Zeevi of Carmel Ventures highlighted a few key features:

  • Mastery of relevant technologies such as real-time analytics, cybersecurity, and risk management
  • Legacy of success creating a “startup ecosystem (with) massive amounts of knowledge”
  • The country has learned from other key global financial centers
  • Global financial institutions have a presence and have been investing in Israel
  • Israeli FIs “have always been open to innovation”

“All of this had led to a dramatic rise in investments in Israel fintech companies,” Zeevi wrote. “By addressing the needs of both developed and emerging markets, Israeli fintech will only continue to grow.”

Are you an Israel-based Finovate or FinDEVr alum that we overlooked? Send us an email at research@finovate.com and we’ll update our roster.

 

 

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • “Money Transfer Company Azimo Pulls in $15 Million in Strategic Funds from Rakuten”
  • “From Billpay to Blockchain: The Themes of FinovateSpring”
  • “Finovate Debuts: myInvenio Turns Data Analysis into Process Intelligence”

On FinDEVr.com

  • “GreenKey Technologies Names Richard Garnier as Chief Revenue Officer”

Around the web

  • Klarna moves beyond ecommerce to service brick-and-mortar retail shops.
  • CSI GlobalVCard partners with Cambridge Global Payments for x-border payment solution.
  • Pershing selects Invesco-owned Jemstep, SigFig as roboadviser partners.
  • OurCrowd interviews BioCatch CEO Eyal Goldwerger. Check out OurCrowd at FinovateSpring next week.
  • OnDeck, Kabbage, and CAN Capital team up to form the “Innovative Lending Platform Association.”
  • Misys wins Best Portfolio Management Software Provider in HFM European Services Awards for 2016.
  • Thomson Reuters unveils new version of its ONESOURCE tax solution for companies doing business in Brazil.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.

FinovateSpring Sneak Peek: OurCrowd

FinovateSpring Sneak Peek: OurCrowd

OurCrowdHomepage

FS2016-wdateA look at the companies demoing live to 1,500+ fintech professionals on May 10 & 11. Register today.

OurCrowd breaks barriers to startup investing by providing global, VC-level dealflow, due diligence and terms to accredited investors around the world.

Features:

  • Review investment opportunities in private deal rooms
  • Invite trusted contacts into investment discussion and review
  • Discover insight and expertise from the wider community

Why it’s great
The OurCrowd app introduces an interactive investment discovery and review process to help investors make better choices and more informed decisions.

OurCrowdPresenter

Presenter: Shai Ben Tovim, Chief Product Officer

Shai leads the OurCrowd team in developing the strategy, platform and user experience that generate value and support scale in startup crowd-investing.
LinkedIn


Check out the rest of today’s Sneak Peeks:

Finovate Alumni News

On Finovate.com

  • “Live Trading Launches on SwipeStox for iOS & Android”
  • “Finovate Debuts: SBDA Group Turns Raw Banking Data into Targeted Marketing”

Around the web

  • D3 Banking subscribes to market intelligence solution, FI Navigator.
  • California-based Yolo FCU chooses Insuritas to open and run its turnkey insurance agency.
  • Oregon’s Rivermark Community CU to deploy online and mobile banking solutions from Digital Insight.
  • PayNearMe facilitates users to pay for their taxes in cash.
  • Lending Club partners with Funding Circle and Prosper to launch Marketplace Lending Association.

This post will be updated throughout the day as news and developments emerge. You can also follow all the alumni news headlines on the Finovate Twitter account.