The latest quarterly figures from Dow Jones VentureSource shows a healthy jump in venture investing in the second quarter. The bulk of the money went toward business and financial-services companies, as well as IT startups.

If you want to look to the future in crowd financing, you might want to look to Israel. From Jerusalem, an innovative crowd-funding platform has been built up over the past 16 months led by serial entrepreneur Jon Medved. Feeding off the strong base of Israeli tech innovation, OurCrowd has raised $30.5 million to expand its reach internationally into promising markets such as China and Australia, grow its team, and build its investor network.

Silicon Valley investors poured more money into health care startups and hot consumer apps such as Uber and Airbnb during the second quarter of this year, making the spring months the biggest in dollar volume for venture capital spending than any quarter since 2001, according to a Dow Jones report

Just like every other industry, there are the middle-of-the-pack venture capitalists, and then there are those at the top of their game. Not all VCs are the same, and the difference between a B-lister and a rockstar lies in the delivery of the oft-promised “value add.”

The rise of crowdfunding in the last three to five years as a source of capital has been remarkable. Tech startups and potential investors have had greater access to one another than ever before, and beyond the startup world, a broad array of projects have been able to successfully seek capital via crowdfunding. But contrary to some speculation about the two overlapping in their uses, crowdfunding and VC seed funding can each be raised for distinctly different situations.

Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have been credited with launching a sort of innovation renaissance in recent years. Small businesses, entrepreneurs and artists have flocked to the sites to get the seed capital they need to build their dream projects. And there have been some stunning successes. But for every crowdfunding success story, there are a dozen dubious tales.