OurCrowd, a venture investment platform with over 240,000 registered members from 195 countries and $2.6 billion in commitments, today announced that Jon Medved will transition from CEO to Chairman. Medved founded OurCrowd in 2013 with the vision of democratizing venture investing by giving accredited investors access to private markets.
OurCrowd’s success factors, as Medved outlined them in our conversation last Sunday, could serve as the themes and chapters of a guidebook to venture investors: Identifying significant trends and developments just as they take off, targeting promising sectors, making an impact, serving a global community, and investing in people.
It is the people dimension of the OurCrowd success story that Medved is going to expand in his new role as Chairman. “We have a lot to do in terms of unlocking our community building efforts,” says Medved. By this he means not just increasing the number of members but also enhancing “the quality of their engagement.” The registered members and investors (with as little as $10,000) in OurCrowd’s portfolio of 500 startups and 68 funds over 5 continents could serve, much more than they do today, as influencers. This would be particularly important, Medved believes, when the startups they invest in go public.
OurCrowd has succeeded in attracting 240,000 people to its platform because “we chose to focus on the need of individual investors to get access to private companies,” says Medved. “There was a structural problem in the market with more and more companies not being able, or choosing not to go public and staying private for longer and longer.”
In 2013, when Meded established OurCrowd, individual “accredited investors” could invest in startups for the first time. This was a development that OurCrowd made the most of in a timely manner. These individual investors could now access private markets that grew in importance, as startups stayed private for much longer than before. The trend has become “a tsunami,” says Medved, with today’s 1600 unicorns having total assets of more than $7 trillion.
The second trend OurCrowd made the most of in a timely manner was the emergence of Startup Nation, “the absolute miraculous nature of the Israeli ecosystem,” says Medved. He has participated in it as an entrepreneur and investor for 40 years, “but the last 10 years have been unreal.”
Even a global pandemic and a two-year war have not reduced much the fortunes of Israeli tech startups. Private funding totaled $11.9 billion in the first three quarters of 2025, a 13% increase compared to the same period last year, according to Startup Nation Central. M&A exits accounted for $41 billion, three times the levels of 2024, marking the highest M&A activity in Israel’s history. By late September 2025, the Tel-Aviv stock market index had surged by about 50% since the start of the war, significantly outpacing most global exchanges. “Israel has enormous technological capability and entrepreneurial spirit, and now an ecosystem, which is only second to Silicon Valley,” says Medved.
Another dimension to OurCrowd success was picking up the right sectors to invest in. “Not to say that we haven’t made mistakes in timing, we’ve had our share of failures for sure,” says Medved, but overall, OurCrowd had given individual investors “access to the tight themes,” such as cybersecurity, semiconductors, FinTech, and more recently, AI.
The “failures” had to do with the ups and downs, the hype and disenchantment, characteristics of tech investing. “Mobility” was big until it wasn’t, recently improving somewhat its perceived attractiveness. Another example is foodtech, where funding has contracted since its peak in 2021. OurCrowd enjoyed a successful exit with Beyond Meat (one of 73 exits so far), but rode the post-hype correction with other investments in the sector.
Foodtech, however, is a good example of yet another OurCrowd success factor: Impact investing. Integrating both purpose and profit, OurCrowd impact funding offered investors the promise of doing well by doing good.
Examples include launching a $200 million impact investment fund devoted to advancing global health equity; and investing in social, health, and planet impact startups such as UPnRIDE, developer of a mobility device that allows wheelchair users to travel while standing upright; Intuition Robotics, developer of robot companion to older adults; and CropX, a farm management platform consistently demonstrating up to 50% water savings, 20% agrochemicals savings, and more than 20% yield increases across 80 different crop types, leading to 9%-13% fewer greenhouse gas emissions. “In order to stimulate the crowd and get people involved, you have to really not just offer good investment, but you have to offer investment that does good,” says Medved.
Whether for profit or purpose, the planet has always been the target of Jerusalem-based OurCrowd. Another OurCrowd success factor “is the fact that we’ve been global from day one,” says Medved. Highlighted by Pitchbook as the most active venture investor in Israel every year since 2013, almost half of its portfolio today is global, with hundreds of companies that are based outside of Israel. These include notable startups such as Anthropic, SpaceX, and Databricks.
“We are offering people the ability to get into these deals with relatively small checks as long as they meet the accredited investor criteria of their domicile,” says Medved. These private market opportunities include, in addition to pre-vetted startups, exclusive venture funds, venture debt, private equity, and other hard-to-access alternative asset classes worldwide.
Last but not least, the fifth success factor is investing in people. “We have been a great trainer and promoter of people from within who have done remarkable things,” says Medved. “Many of them have gone on in their own careers to set up their own funds and their own companies.” A prime example of promoting from within is OurCrowd new Acting CEO & Chief Operating Officer. Cali Chill has been with OurCrowd for seven years, holding senior leadership positions across legal operations, funds and investment strategy. He most recently served as Chief Investment Officer and Chair of OurCrowd’s Investment Committee.
People are also what Medved would like to focus on over the next stage in the OurCrowd journey. “How do we grow OurCrowd 10X over the next decade?” asks Medved. Forging more partnerships, getting access to even greater numbers of quality deals and funds, and creating new products and services are all part of the long-term game plan. “But in particular,” says Medved, “it’s going to be about harnessing the OurCrowd community.” Medved believes that members of the community should be encouraged to be more involved in ensuring the “staying power” of the startups they invest in. Going through hot and cold cycles and staying private for longer, today’s startups need investors that stay with them for a long time. OurCrowd has done that by investing again and again, in multiple rounds, in the same startups. Medved would like individual investors to do the same and also “add value” by promoting these investments. “That’s what ultimately creates a virtuous circle of investment. You get the best deals if you can provide the most added value” to the startups in your portfolio.
“Unless you’re participating in the private market, you’re missing a big part of what’s exciting in investment today. And yet there are really still very, very few tools and very few platforms as easy and as reputable and as established and with a track record like OurCrowd,” concludes Medved.
Investors, analysts, and market observers that are familiar with Medved’s track record believe it’s a safe bet he and the OurCrowd team are going to continue revolutionize venture capital and ensure frictionless access to private markets and alternative investments.
In the words of Saul Singer and Dan Senor, authors of Start-Up Nation and The Genius of Israel:
“Jon Medved was one of the earliest and most visible embodiments of the Start-Up Nation. When we were researching our book, Jon was already a legend — an entrepreneur, investor, and storyteller who helped the world understand why Israel was becoming an innovation powerhouse. He built companies, mentored founders, and created confidence that Israeli entrepreneurs could compete globally. His vision, energy, and optimism made him a leading character for our book — and a symbol of the creative, resilient spirit that drives Israel’s economic miracle.”
