Why We Launched OurCrowd Connect

Introducing our data-driven business development platform for portfolio companies

About a year and a half ago, we began brainstorming how we could scale our value-add services to reach our portfolio companies across the globe. Offering business development, talent, community, and a handful of other perks, to 135+ portfolio companies across various timezones, stages, and sectors can be a bit challenging.

To avoid biting off more than we can chew, we first decided to scale our business development efforts. Why? Because as a primarily Series A/B investor, highly targeted introductions to the right people at the right time have significant potential to meaningfully affect a business during this stage.

At OurCrowd, we strongly believe in the power of networks. After all, our VC business model is driven by our core networks of portfolio companies, investors, multinational corporations, service providers, and industry experts. So, how do you take the various stakeholders and collectively leverage the “power of the crowd” to benefit your growing portfolio?

Introducing OurCrowd Connect

Two weeks ago, we unveiled OurCrowd Connect at the 2018 OurCrowd Global Investor Summit. In short, OurCrowd Connect is our data-driven business development platform for portfolio companies to request warm introductions to strategic contacts in OurCrowd’s vast network. Previously, when a portfolio company asked us for an introduction, we typically searched on a case-by-case basis through LinkedIn, Salesforce, Outlook, and other tools to determine if we were able to help or not. It was a mess that produced quality results, but was not at the scale needed to serve 135+ portfolio companies.

Today with OurCrowd Connect, portfolio companies can seamlessly filter our network by keyword, sector, location, or size of the target they seek, add requests to a wishlist, and fill out a quick form about why they are interested in the connection. After that, we receive the request, ask the relevant contact if they’re interested, and only facilitate the introduction once mutually agreed upon. This process that previously took days and many stops along the way to fulfill is now seamless, accessible, and scalable to our ever growing portfolio.

As we continue to push the boundaries of VC “value add”, we’re reimagining how we deliver quality introductions at scale. We’re redefining what it means to give first time founders the rolodex of a seasoned entrepreneur. And we’re rediscovering how to scale value add services to an exceptionally large portfolio.

In the past few months that our companies have had access to OurCrowd Connect, we’ve facilitated over 500 introductions between our portfolio companies, multinational corporations, VCs, and service providers. We’re looking forward to witnessing these introductions go beyond initial conversations and result in partnerships, sales, investments, and more. The potential is truly unlimited with OurCrowd Connect.

If you’re an innovation-focused employee at a large corporation, service provider, investor, industry expert, or startup junkie, we invite you to play a role in the startup ecosystem by joining the crowd here.

If you’re a founder of a startup and are fundraising (Seed, A, B), or will be in the foreseeable future, I’d love to hear from you. Shoot me an email here.

Most importantly, this is a major effort by a talented team of dedicated professionals focused on helping our founders scale their businesses. Kudos to my teammates Eldad Postan, Ariela Lazan, Laly David, Yehoshua Zlotogorski, and Rebeca Querub on this exciting milestone!

Hi! I’m Jordan, and I work in VC in Israel. There’s a lot happening in the VC/startup scene and I figured I’d post my observations here. All opinions above are my own. Feel free to follow on Twitter: @jordanodinsky.