Latest News Archives - Page 18 of 29

Some great news to start the week…another business funded!

We are thrilled that Co-Space have secured their funding. A huge congratulations to the founders Alistair Thomas and William Stokes, who not only delivered some fantastic pitches, but managed to secure their funding during an extremely uncertain time.

Co-Space creates engaging, practical co-working spaces in regional towns and cities in the UK.

Co-Space offers a range of flexible office spaces ranging from hot-desking and dedicated desks, spaces for 2+ up to 60+ person dedicated office units, in an inspiring and all-inclusive environment.

Co-Space’s objective is to: “Provide great spaces for people to get on working – and enjoy the space they do it in”

Angelgroups Martin Avison said, “It is hard to imagine a business whose offering could be more timely. Covid 19 has seen a sea change in the way people are working and considering their medium to long term office requirements. Today, everything is still uncertain and what people are looking for is flexibility as to how they work and manage their business and people. Co Space are providing this solution in a very cost-effective way. It is great to see two fantastic founders, supported by one of our angels provide such a considered solution when business needs it most. We wish them every success.”.

Alistair Thomas, Joint Founder Co-Space, “William and I are extremely grateful to the opportunity given to us by angelgroups to pitch to, and accept investment from genuine and high caliber angel investors. We were given thorough guidance and instructions throughout the process which was well organised and highly enjoyable. All in all, a great way to get in front of real investors”.

Our new Manchester Angel Group has officially launched!

Yesterday we ran our first event for the region, where we had 3 fantastic businesses pitching to a new group of Angels. There was some fantastic feedback for the businesses such as: “great opportunity with clever tech”, “strong concept in a dedicated sport” and “big thumbs up”.

A big thank you to our partners in the region for their help in pulling the group together, we are already looking forward to the next event.

Next week is the launch of our new Manchester Angel Group, which we are really looking forward to getting up and running.

We have 3 businesses who will be pitching at the first event, all very different but all with high growth potential and a fantastic founding team. The events will be held online for the time being, but with the view to have physical events again as and when the current COVID situation allows.

A big thank you to our partners in the region: Weightmans, BDO and Brown Shipley for their support in the creation of the group. We are thrilled to be working together.

As part of Leeds Digital Festival here are two great sessions that we’d recommend you attend. They are both hosted by one of our Angel Investors, Phil Fraser;

5 Step Business Strategy Plan – Interactive Session

Wed 23rd Sept 10.00am

A LIVE interactive strategy session enabling attendees to build a FULLY ACTIONABLE bespoke business strategy plan for their own business. Plus live Q&A session.

This LIVE Business strategy planning session with Phil Fraser will be fully interactive. By the end of the session you will have the structure of a FULLY ACTIONABLE bespoke strategy plan for your business.

WARNING this will not be a ‘sit back and listen’ session! Phil will walk you through his FFS (Fraser Five Step) business strategy planning tool, along with a full Q&A session at the end of the webinar.

You’ll leave the session with a fully actionable bespoke business strategy for your business, not just a few notes, cliched quotes or vague notions that you often get from similar webinars.

The session will cover everything from your targets and the way through to measurable deliverables, and everything between…… all in less than an hour.If you are serious about developing your business, this is a ‘must attend’ session.

CLICK HERE to see the recording of the webinar.

What’s it REALLY like to pitch on Dragons Den

Fri 25th Sept 13.00

Hear from FOUR digital entrepreneurs about their experience in The Den!

How do you get on to the show?
What’s it like when the lift opens and you are stood there…….?
What happens ‘behind the scenes’?
What’s it like to successfully get Dragon investment? And what’s it like to be rejected?
And what happens after the credits roll?

PLUS you’ll get the opportunity to ask the entrepreneurs your questions in a live Q&A at the end of the webinar. You’ll be fascinated by their true life tales!

CLICK HERE to see the recording of the webinar.

Our Leeds Digital Festival event is now live! We will be covering the do’s and don’ts of pitching for angel investment and we hope you can join us.

Leeds Digital Festival had some fantastic events a few months ago when they made the seamless shift to online events, so do go and check out the great events that are being ran.

The 2020 Virtual Festival welcomed 15,000 attendees across 134 events, from over 50 countries and 6 continents

Get involved in the largest tech event in the UK!

Recii is an automated candidate engagement platform utilising the latest Voice technology. The innovative voice driven solution along with their programmatic engagement funnel significantly improves candidate engagement rates and candidate experience. Recii automate the time consuming and repetitive tasks in the recruitment industry.

Elective Technology Ltd t/a “Recii” – a London based technology business developing proprietary voicebot technology to transform the Recruitment Industry.

Recii was founded by Gareth Christian-Lim, a successful entrepreneur and experienced software developer. It was developed to enable Recruitment firms to leverage the emerging technologies of AI, Voice recognition and programmatic engagement funnels, to significantly increase the profitability, capability, and productivity within recruitment firms, in-house recruitment and HR teams.

Angelgroups Martin Avison said, “We are delighted to have funded Recii. It is always great to support such businesses, especially companies with such global markets and where the core technology will easily transfer into other sectors. A great product with a fantastic team”

Recii Gareth Christian-Lim said, “In a noisy funding market, we are so glad we decided to go with Angel Groups. It was the right decision on so many levels, professionalism, support, coaching and ultimately funding. The added benefit were the types of investors within the group, they are fantastic and have already helped the business tremendously. Even through a pandemic and recession, Angel groups, supported and coached us to raise our investment. Highly recommend!”.

How resilient are businesses?! We have been inspired by how companies have pivoted during COVID either because they had to, or because they saw an opportunity to not only work better, but to deliver their products and services in a more efficient way.

We have met some incredible businesses over the past few months and we continue to be impressed by their resilience to not only survive, but to thrive.

This is just an appreciation post to say a huge ‘WELL DONE’ to the fantastic founders and their teams. We see you, we acknowledge you and we’re proud to work alongside you.

Manchester businesses are being offered an unprecedented opportunity, at a September event (and monthly thereafter), to pitch to a number of angel investors for funding to grow their companies.

Our angelgroups-Manchester initiative will provide an exclusive opportunity for high‐growth businesses to pitch to angel investors for funding, with those who successfully impress potentially securing angel investment and mentoring/support.

We’re delighted to be bringing this opportunity to Manchester, which has consistently been a city of pioneering ideas ‐ now it’s time angel investors heard some of them.

Here at angelgroups, we look for businesses from any sector and at any stage of their development. Our online platform provides an opportunity for businesses to showcase their aspirations, and we also run monthly pitching sessions for those looking for funding. That said, for most businesses seeking angel investment, it’s not just about the money, it’s about the experience the angel can offer.

Receiving introductions to angel investors can make a significant impact on a business and not just because of the investment. This really is a great opportunity for any North-West-based, high-growth business.

The ongoing pitching sessions will be run in conjunction with our local partners Weightmans, BDO and the private bank Brown Shipley. Those businesses interested are invited to apply online at www.angelgroups.co.uk

“We’re really excited to be one of angelgroup’s partners as they arrive in Manchester. The city’s flourishing business community is full of potential for investors, and we’d encourage ambitious businesses to seize this opportunity to realise their future growth plans” Sarah Walton, Corporate Finance Partner Weightmans.

“With our ongoing ambition to see businesses in the North West thrive, we are proud to be working with angelgroups to increase the opportunities and funding for entrepreneurial growing businesses in our region” Laura Stuffins, Director BDO Drive.

“Brown Shipley are proud to be partnering with Manchester angelgroups. The North West is flourishing and has many potential investors who would like the opportunity to work with and develop new entrepreneurial businesses.” Gavin Wiggans, Brown Shipley

We introduce high‐growth SMEs to the funding options available so as to enable them to meet their growth aspirations.

We are really pleased with how successful our move to online pitches has been, and are thrilled to say we have still been concluding deals during these uncertain times. Funding a hospitality business during lockdown has been one of our biggest achievements to date and it’s been fantastic following their journey since.

We are reminiscing on our past events and whilst we have enjoyed moving to an online version, we are really looking forward to getting back to having a coffee with everyone and congratulating businesses on their pitch in person!

Here’s a throwback picture of simpler times.

We are two pitching sessions down with one more to go in our biggest pitch week to date.

We have had 6 businesses pitching this week, all in different sectors and all at different stages in their growth journeys. We have had some fantastic comments from the Angels including: “Great concept, with considerable potential”, “very investible founder” and “great product”.

We are looking forward to this afternoon’s pitching session where we hope to gain even more investor interest for the businesses in anticipation for the due-diligence phase.

Leeds Digital Festival is returning this September!

We are thrilled to say we will be running an event as part of #LeedsDigi20 on ‘The Do’s and Don’ts of Angel Investment’ which we are really excited about.

Their last Digital Festival was fantastic, we were lucky enough to attend quite a few of the online events and they were great. We can’t wait to get involved with their September festival, which we have no doubt will be another fantastic round of events.

In the autumn of 2019, UKBAA collaborated with British Business Bank to carry out the most comprehensive survey of the UK’s angels.

The report following this survey was delayed in its planned publication due to the emerging crisis under COVID-19. In view of this, British Business Bank and UKBAA felt that it would be valuable to obtain some additional insights and information from the angel community about their investments so far in 2020 and the impact COVID-19 may have had. This information will then be incorporated into the final updated report on the UK angel market which will be published in the autumn.

The insights and views of the angel community are especially valuable at this time. It will enable the British Business Bank and UKBAA to identify what further relevant measures could be taken at national or local level to support the growth of the angel market as we move into economic recovery.

We would be most grateful if our Angel members would support this additional UK Angel Market Survey here:

https://www.pwcresearch.com/uc/angelphase2reg/?a=25082

If you took part in the previous survey, you will be sent a unique link to click on from PwC Research if you gave them permission to email you, it will automatically link your responses to the previous survey. If you have your unique link from PwC please complete the survey using that link. However, if you cannot find it, you can still complete the survey on the link above.

The survey should take around 10-15 minutes to complete. It is much shorter than the previous survey and all data will be treated as confidential and aggregated in the final report.

Thank you for your support.