After the Hayne Royal Commission many advisers decided to steer away from large dealer groups in favour of becoming self-licensed. In the last six months, however, that trend has taken an abrupt turn.
While known for being the flagbearer for financial product providers, the Financial Services Council is now making serious inroads into the financial advice sector.
Early-stage VC fund OurCrowd rated by Evergreen
Evergreen Ratings has given the OurCrowd 50 Fund a “Commended” rating, highlighting the fund’s strong team of venture capital specialists. Evergreen Ratings is a subsidiary of Evergreen Consultants, and is a leading research house specialising in the analysis of higher-risk specialist wholesale funds.
Heading up the OurCrowd team is successful venture capitalist Jonathan Medved, who founded the platform in 2013. The OurCrowd Platform is an investment platform of mainly early-stage tech start-ups that desperately need capital to assist through the growth stage. The beauty of the platform is that it provides its investors with a unique opportunity to gain access to early-stage start-ups that have been vetted and hand-picked by the investment team.
According to the Evergreen Ratings research report, “Since its launch in 2013 OurCrowd has provided access for wholesale investors to access the equity in early-stage start-ups for over 300 investment opportunities, which have to date materialised into 56 exits. OurCrowd has also vetted over 16,000 companies. In addition, the capital invested has originated from investors in more than 90 countries.”
OurCrowd 50 is targeted toward investors who have a higher risk appetite and are looking to make above-normal returns through unlisted growth companies. The report says most companies so far have been located in Israel and North America, the two largest ecosystems for tech start-ups. Israel may be look like a relatively small country but ranks as having the most venture capital money invested per capita.
Originally the platform was developed to provide investors with a crowdfunding-styled service to invest in individual unlisted high-growth private companies. Founder Medved realised the platform was being used to crowdfund from non-institutional investors. He quickly realised there was an information gap between those entities raising funds from crowdfunding and those that raised funding from VCs.
According to the report, “OurCrowd has grown significantly since inception and is now sourcing deals around the globe. While still allowing sophisticated investors access, it now counts institutions and large family offices as investors. OurCrowd vets and selects companies invests its own capital and invites over 180,000 of its registered investors from 180+ countries to invest alongside OurCrowd-sourced opportunities.”
