Yesterday’s pitch event in Newcastle was such a great event. The businesses delivered some fantastic pitches this week and we are excited to begin the due diligence process in the coming weeks.
Some of yesterday’s investor feedback included:
– “Exciting scalable business”
– “Great space to be in”
We even had an investor declare “I will invest”, which is so exciting!
We would like to thank our partners in the region for supporting the event as always, Ryecroft Glenton, Barclays and Ward Hadaway.
Female angel investors have helped drive more than £2bn of investment in companies across the UK in the past decade, a new study reveals today.
The Women Angel Insights report from the UK Business Angels Association and Beauhurst reveals that more than 5,000 women are making angel investments across the UK, helping to create over 10,000 jobs over the past 10 years.
The report (sponsored by NatWest Group) reveals that women remain a minority in angel investment, which continues to be disappointing to see. The data shows that women are much more likely to invest in female-founded companies (which are currently underfunded compared to their male counterparts), so the shortage of women angels is having an impact on female founders as well. Women angels have a huge impact on entrepreneurship in the UK.
We were pleased to see that as a result of the review the UKBAA, as part of its work with the Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship via the Women Angel Investment Task Force, will be announcing plans to extend its Women Backing Women campaign of events. These events seek to inform, inspire, educate and empower women to become angel investors. As a result, this should drive investment into female founder led businesses.
We look forward to welcoming more women angel investors into our groups in the years to come and supporting more female led businesses.
This is a common conversation we have with business founders who are actively seeking investment. We always outline the typical timing from pitch to funds in the bank with all businesses that we work with to manage expectations. As much as we would like this to be a speedy process, the reality can be very different.
If you are looking to excel your growth in Q1 of 2023 we suggest you begin your funding journey as soon as possible.
If you are looking for funding, we would be delighted to discuss working with you on your current investment round. Please register your business HERE.
It’s never too early to plan for success.
A huge well done to the businesses who pitched with us at this week’s events. Yesterday’s event in Manchester was held at BDO’s offices and it was fantastic to get our local investors in the room to listen to this week’s founders.
There has been lots of interest for the businesses and some great feedback including:
– “The opportunity is great and has some strong IP”
– “Impressive founder addressing a global issue”
– “Interesting concept with a real need in the market”
We’re looking forward to supporting the founders through the next stages and into due diligence.
A big thank you to our partners in the region for their support. We’re looking forward to yet another great event in Manchester soon.
We can’t believe we’re in September already.. where have the last 8 months gone?!
We’ve been busy working on some exciting plans for 2023, which on top of running 4 pitch events a month is keeping us incredibly busy. We are also planning some additional events this side of the new year which we’re keeping under wraps for now, but more on that soon.
We’re also at that point in the year where we are starting to pull together our Christmas event (which really is too soon to be mentioning it!) which is usually our biggest event of the year.
This year has been fantastic so far as we’ve been able to start running our in-person events again and meet people face to face, so we’re excited for the next few months and what they have in store.
In September we will be hosting our next in-person event in Newcastle and are already working with some of the founders who will be pitching at the event.
We have four businesses pitch at each of our events, and they’re all in different sectors and at different stages of their growth journeys. This makes our events extremely varied and means that our members are exposed to a wider variety of investment opportunities.
If you would like to attend one of our upcoming events (in-person or online), then register your interest HERE.
A big thank you to our partners in Newcastle for their continued support, we’re looking forward to seeing everyone in a few weeks.
The UK Business Angels Association has released their latest report called The Climate for Angel Investing.
The report covers:
– The Angel Demographics
– Angel Investment Activity
– Supporting Founders
– The Usage of EIS & SEIS
– The Importance of EIS & SEIS
– The Impact of the Withdrawal of EIS
– The Outlook for Angel Investment in the Year Ahead
– About the UKBAA
When a business leaves the room following their pitch we have a roundtable discussion amongst the investors. Following one of yesterday’s pitching businesses one of our investors said “Wow!”.
We had four fantastic businesses pitching yesterday at our Manchester in-person event and the feedback from the investors was great. The comments included:
“That was the best pitch I have seen in a long, long time”
“This could be game changing”
“The possibility is amazing and very promising”
Thank you to our partners for supporting the event, we’re looking forward to the next event and working with the next group of fantastic founders.
We’re over in Newcastle for this afternoon’s in-person pitch event at Ward Hadaway’s offices on the quayside.
Good luck to the businesses pitching! They all pitched with us at yesterday’s online pitch event and all received investor interest, which is fantastic. We’re looking forward to seeing them pitch in person this afternoon and hopefully getting even more investor interest from our local angels in Newcastle.
We are delighted to share the news that we have funded a much needed business that can make a real difference to food sustainability. It was also a pleasure to be able to introduce an investor that is now taking on an active role within the business.
Soil Ecology are a mission driven company. They exist because they saw a viable solution to climate change and a means to make all food organic and affordable to all families.
They are a manufacturer of a mix of naturally occurring diverse soil microbes which when correctly applied to the soil and to the crop have the potential to completely replace synthetic fertilisers and crop protection chemicals.
Daniel Tyrkiel, Director said, “As a first-time founder, I’ve found Martin Avison’s support invaluable. The investors we have been introduced to have the vision to take us to the next stage of our development. The team at angelgroups is well organised and professional. We could not have done it without their support!”
We wish the team at Soil Ecology every success!
We are delighted to have funded yet another female founder!
TUBR are focused on innovating machine learning technology to make predictions with sparse data sets. Their customers use their Machine Learning as a Service prediction dataset to manage their assets, reduce waste and improve customer experience.
Dash Tabor, Co-Founder/CEO said, “angelgroups is fantastic. I’ve pitched to a number of Angel syndicates and I wish they all operated the way Martin Avison operates this group. The investors are smart, passionate, intelligent and above all want to bring valuable skills to the companies they invest in. The investment that goes into ensuring me, as a Founder, gets funding starts from day 1. The team works with you to get the pitch to a perfect point to meet the audience expectations and then after the pitch they drive engagement with the investors to keep them excited and engage all the way through DD and close. I can not speak highly enough about angelgroups! I’m pleased to be taking away the investment we needed along with a great support team for the business.”
This is a huge market and TUBR have huge potential. We wish Dash and her team every success.
The Investing in Women Code Annual Report 2022 has just been released and we were really pleased to see some of the findings, which included:
– ‘In 2021, 34% of venture capital deals made by code signatories were in companies with at least one female founder, compared to an industry average of 24%’
– ‘In 2021, the average amount of Angel (early-stage) investment being sought by all-female teams (£791k) was very similar to all-male teams (£823k). This is a significant and encouraging change from 2020, when all-female teams requested less than 50% of the amounts requested by male-only teams’
We are proud to be one of the code signatories, and are delighted to support the research for Investing in Women.
