Category: Latest News

Earlier this week, Beauhurst released their latest report on Diverse Founders in Advanced Digital Technology, where they looked into founder diversity in the UK tech ecosystem.

Beauhurst highlights many areas of differences with regards to gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, and educational background. There are some eye-opening statistics.

The research they conducted in 2022 revealed that over 70% of total equity investment across all five digital tech areas was secured by all-male founder companies. In addition, they found that the median age of founders didn’t affect the equity investment. There was also an increase in investment into mixed nationality founding teams.

Beauhurst goes into detail within each diversity section, giving a larger insight of what is happening in the sector.

You can read the full report HERE.

Wow, what a great day we had in Leeds yesterday for our first in-person pitching session of the month! A huge thank you to the 4 businesses that pitched with us and our Angels that attended. We were delighted to see such a wide range of SME businesses, including CROSSIP who bought along some tasters of their award winning non-alcoholic spirits.

With great feedback from the Angels, its now on to the due diligence sessions where the investors will dive deeper into the business opportunities. If you are looking to join an angel group as an investor or a business looking for investment, take a look at here for more information.

Our next pitching session in Leeds is early November, where we will see more businesses pitching for funding.

A special thank you to BDO for hosting us.

A great day had by all.

We are delighted to be ending the week on a high with all 8 of the businesses who are pitching with us next week ready and raring to go!

We’ve had a busy week with pitch preparations and now we’re really excited to see the Founders deliver their fantastic pitches at next week’s pitch events.

In the meantime, we wish everyone a wonderful weekend and we look forward to updating you on next week’s events in due course!

If you are looking for funding before the end of the year, now is the perfect time to start the ball rolling.

In our experience, it typically takes 8 weeks from pitching to receiving the funds (if you have received enough interest from the event). This being the case, our next events are perfect for securing the funding before the end of the year and hitting the ground running in 2024!

If you would like to know more about our events just get in touch.

Yesterday’s ‘Ask the Investor’ event was fantastic!

A big thank you to our panel of investors who gave up their time to answer some of the great questions that were asked by the Founders in the audience. Some of these questions included:

– What is your motivation behind investing?
– Are you only looking to invest in the next big Unicorn, or do you also invest in businesses who don’t claim to achieve this growth trajectory?
– What do you look for in an investable proposition?
– Does a business need to have SEIS/EIS for you to consider them?
– What are your thoughts on AI?
– What are your views on valuing a business?
– Are you happy to see VC involvement?
– What involvement do you like to have in the business?
– What stage of the business’s development do you prefer to invest at i.e. pre-revenue etc?

The Investors delivered some really insightful answers that gave the Founders a better understanding of their investment do’s and don’ts! We’re looking forward to running more events like this in the future.

We are all set for this afternoon’s pitch event in Leeds!

Good luck to all of the founders who are waiting to showcase their business opportunity. As always they have all worked incredibly hard and we can’t wait to see them in action.

A big thank you to Ward Hadaway for hosting the event in their brilliant office space in Leeds, and thank goodness for aircon on this lovely sunny afternoon!

There is less than 2 weeks to go until our ‘Ask the Investor’ event.

If you’re reviewing your funding options, you likely have a lot of questions about angel investment. That is why we are running our FREE ‘Ask the Investor’ event where a panel of our angel investors will endeavor to answer as many of your questions as possible during the session.

This event is not to be missed. You can register HERE.

We were in Leeds yesterday, which was fantastic!

As a company who works remotely most of the time, it’s always nice to have a change of scenery and have a day working together.

Coffee, muffins and expanding the time were on the agenda. We find coming together in different locations great for creative thinking sessions too.

If you’re looking for funding, or exploring your funding options, then you likely have a lot of questions.

We are running a FREE ‘Ask the Investor’ event next month where you can ask a panel of our Angel Investors the questions that are important to you and your business growth.

We will be collecting some questions prior to the event, so please start sending these through. If you have any additional questions on the day then the floor will be open for these.

You can register for the event HERE.

We hope to see you there!

If you’re going to be inside on a day like yesterday, you want it to be for a great event, and yesterday’s pitch event in Leeds was certainly just that!

Well done to the businesses who pitched, we were delighted to have supported them.

There was some fantastic feedback provided by the investors, and lots of interest in the room. Some of the feedback comments included:

– “Looks very investable”

– “Very niche market with huge opportunity”

– “Very impressive founder”

We are looking forward to their due diligence sessions.

You can now register for our ‘Ask the Investor’ event!

Have you got questions that you would love to ask an investor? Join us for our fee Q&A event where you can ask a panel of our investors the burning questions you have on your mind.

This event is aimed at SME businesses who are exploring their funding options, or those who will be seeking angel investment in the future.

We hope you can join us. Here is the link to REGISTER.

Have you got questions that you would love to ask investors?

We’re planning on a running a free Q&A event where you can ask some of our investors the burning questions you have on your mind.

This event will likely be ran in early September (online) so there is still plenty of time for you to have a think about which questions are important to you and your business.

If you would like to register your interest in attending this event, just get in touch and we’ll make sure you’re one of the first to be invited!