Jon Medved Talks OurCrowd’s Progress: “Thirty Percent of Our Deals Are Outside Israel”

Offering up details about the Israel-based platform, OurCrowd, CEO and co-founder Jon Medved sat down with TechCrunch to discuss everything from expansion to “lead deals.”

While chatting about OurCrowd’s growth, Medved shared why the platform team is looking to open a San Francisco Bay area office:

“We’re looking to establish a presence in Silicon Valley. We’re actively looking for a managing director [in the Bay Area], someone with rich angel and venture capital experience.”

Noting the platform’s “lead deals,” Jon explained:

“We just launched a deal for $25 million that we’re leading. Most people, when they think of crowdfunding, they of deals that are small, but we’re far ahead of that; we’re doing millions of dollars on average, and in this particularly case, we’re investing more than $10 million.

Offering up an example of the deals, Medved stated:

“The already profitable company [called Mprest] basically makes software that powers the Iron Dome, which is the Israel-based system that shoots missiles out of the air before they land. In Israel, you have about 15 seconds if someone shoots at you from the Gaza Strip. This system responds within a second, creating instruction sets to intercept whatever has been fired – and it’s now taking its technology into the Internet of Things.”

He also revealed how much he typically co-invests alongside the investors:

“We curate both the investors and the deals, which go through a rigorous venture screen. Then we typically syndicate with other venture firms, including top firms like Accel Partners and Menlo Ventures.

 

“At this point, I think we’re the most active investor in Israel. We’ve funded 75 companies since our inception in early 2013, and this year, we’ll invest over $120 million.”

In regards to where most of the platform’s investors are located, Medved added:

“We have 10,000 investors from 110 countries, and more than half are in the U.S. In terms of deal flow, too, we’re also quite global. Thirty percent of our deals are outside Israel, including almost a dozen U.S. companies.”