Partnering with OurCrowd to provide NZ investors with global venture capital opportunities
- Written by Snowball Effect
- Published on
We're proud to have recently partnered with the world's leading technology and venture capital investment platform, OurCrowd.
The partnership enabled New Zealand wholesale investors with a simple way to invest in the OurCrowd 50 Series IV Fund, an index fund that invests into high growth companies across a range of markets, sectors and stages. Investing through Snowball Effect eliminated the usual compliance headaches associated with investing in an offshore fund.
OurCrowd was established in Israel in 2013 and has grown to be the most active venture investor in Israel - no mean feat in a country that is renowned for its tech start-ups and VC investors. OurCrowd has raised more than 2.1 billion USD, reviewed tens of thousands of companies, invested in about 240 of them and has 70,000 global investors.
Each month OurCrowd's team reviews about 150-200 global opportunities, and after in-depth due diligence will select 2-3 companies to invest in. As well as providing a platform for venture and institutional investors, OurCrowd also invests its own capital alongside investors at the same terms that they negotiate with the company.
Each OC50 index fund is made up of a diversified portfolio of 50 businesses across a range of stages, locations and industries including agritech, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, healthcare, and food tech.
Post the capital raise, OurCrowd continues to provide businesses with mentorship, board member expertise, invests in follow-on rounds and leverages its network through strategic partnerships and introductions.
Previous OurCrowd funds have invested in businesses that have been acquired by global multinationals such as Nike, Uber, Samsung, Oracle and Intel. Many of these companies have gone on to list on global exchanges such as NASDAQ.
OurCrowd's OC50 Series I fund has been fully deployed and returned nearly 23% of investor capital during 2019. Series I also resulted in six exits that generated a 2.3x return on invested capital for investors. This included JUMP, which was acquired by Uber for $200 million, and Beyond Meat which resulted in a 3.5x gross return.
Following on from Series I's success, Series II, Series III and Series IV funds were launched. Investing through Snowball Effect gave New Zealand wholesale investors a simple, hassle-free way of investing in the OurCrowd OC50 Series IV fund. All investments through Snowball Effect into the fund are held within Snowball Nominees and are able to be viewed on Orchestra's equity management platform.
More than $1.2m was invested by Kiwi wholesale investors through Snowball Effect in the recent OC50 Series IV fund. We hope to bring New Zealand investors more OurCrowd offers in the future, providing them with global venture capital opportunities.
