Ex-disties in Aussie push of $32m crowdfunding platform

The co-founders of the company that became part of one of the largest IT resellers in Australia are part of a push to expand an Israeli crowdfunding operation in Australia.

David Shein and Nathan Cher co-founded Com Tech Communications, which was established in Australia in 1987 and later bought by Dimension Data.

Both are now part of a team leading an Australian push by OurCrowd, an "equity crowdfunding" site which selects startup investment opportunities for accredited investors to pick from. Investors must meet special criteria and invest a minimum of $10,000 per deal.

"This is not to be confused with the Kickstarter-type companies that are taking micro investments from people. This is for accredited investors that have the capability to make strategic investments of a certain size," Cher said.

Cher said the company has raised $32 million for 34 different companies in 53 countries around the world. In Australia, he said OurCrowd has over 300 accredited investors, of which 30 have currently put money into the OurCrowd portfolio.

The platform "reinvents commerce" between investor and startup entrepreneur, Cher said, providing entrepreneurs "fast funding and global opportunities at the very time that their full attention should be focussed on the development of their product and their young company".

As well as helping startups find angel investors, Ourcrowd aims to become an active participant in the companies that receive funding by supplying mentors and potentially taking board seats.

From reseller to deal-maker

Cher's role as a deal-maker and mentor follows years as a director and non-executive chairman in the technology and property industries.

After working as a systems architect and programmer at Wormald in 1987, he moved onto Com Tech, which started life in 1987 as what he describes as a value added distributor. The company eventually grew into a 1,400-person business at the time Dimension Data took full ownership in 2000.

"It was a terribly exciting time," Cher told CRN about those early years at Com Tech. "We were a young group of guys, who had a reasonable amount of success by keeping it simple, sticking to the basics and working hard, and we got lucky."

"We learnt as a team what to do and what not to do, to grow a company at great speed. To look after your people. To bring clients and customers along for the journey."

While Cher said he spent "an awful lot of time at work," those formative years have paid dividends.

Some of those relationships from the Com Tech days are still proving useful - one of the business mentors that will be involved with OurCrowd was once a former "close supplier" to Com Tech. Cher said he still keeps in touch with a lot of his friends at Dimension Data.

After leaving Com Tech, Cher founded Run Property Group as well as being the director of voice recognition customer service company Holly Connects, among other roles.

He said that after founding and investing in businesses for a number of decades, he understood the tension and stress of being an investor and a startup entrepreneur - something that attracted him to the idea of combining angel investing and crowdsourcing.

"You've got to have everything on your side to make a startup a success. You have to have the right strategy, you have to have the right people, the right finance and beyond that, the right luck."