Israel’s hybrid VC-crowdfunding platform OurCrowd announced today that it closed financing for Jeff Pulver’s latest startup, Zula, pushing its total raised for early stage companies above $12 million. This $12 million is in addition to the $5.5 million in funding OurCrowd raised for its own platform in February this year. Zula is OurCrowd’s 18th completed funding round.
OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved says “Passing this funding milestone makes OurCrowd this year’s fastest-growing vehicle for angels and accredited investors to find and back early stage companies online. From our roots in Israel we have actually taken the global lead in funds raised.”
Zula co-founder Jeff Pulver said, “I am excited about the value that OurCrowd brings to early stage investors who invest in startup companies. Not only did we raise our seed round online in less than a week, but we had people from all over the world invest in Zula thanks to this platform.” Zula provides an innovative cloud-based mobile collaboration platform for teams. It is lead by Jacob Ner-David, who co-founded DeltaThree, and Pulver, who is a well-known early investor in Twitter and FourSquare.
“While initially focusing on the Israeli early stage ecosystem, OurCrowd has now brought together investors and companies from around the world,” explained Medved. “The fact that this year we have raised more money for our companies than our Silicon Valley competitors is a vote of confidence that the Start-up Nation is indeed a global innovation leader.”
OurCrowd identifies companies seeking early stage investment and brings the best of these opportunities online, where only accredited investors may participate in specific venture capital funding rounds. This extensive and active global network of investors and mentors has allowed OurCrowd to also provide critical support to its startups. In order to increase involvement in the platform, OurCrowd has recently completed a series of face to face meetings around the world with thousands participating in meetings held in Israel, South Africa, UK, Norway, and multiple US cities such as Boston, Chicago, Palo Alto in Silicon Valley, Seattle, San Diego and Los Angeles.