The British Business Bank has just released their Small Business Finance Markets Report 2022. Some of the key findings of which are:
– There has been a surge in smaller business equity investment
– The geographic imbalances in access to finance persists
– Smaller businesses continue to prioritise growth over environmental concerns
– Ethnic Minority-led businesses are more willing to use but less likely to obtain finance
– Gross bank lending to smaller businesses has returned to pre-pandemic levels
The report offers a fascinating insight into the analysis of how finance was used in 2021.
One month today we will be hosting our first physical event in Newcastle!
We’re delighted to finally be bringing this opportunity to the North East. The pandemic may have curtailed our timetable, but not our ambitions to support high growth businesses in the region.
This has consistently been a region of pioneering ideas. Receiving introductions to angels can make a significant impact on a business and not just because of the investment. This really is a great opportunity for any North-East-based, high-growth business or angel investor.
A huge thank you to our partners for their support in bringing this event together. We look forward to hosting our first event in the region.
It’s been nearly 2 years since we had to cancel our launch event in Newcastle at the start of the pandemic. Since then, we have been running the events online. We are thrilled to announce that next month we will be running our first in-person event for the region!
This physical pitching session offers an opportunity for investors to consider high growth business opportunities in a relaxed and informative environment and in a way that allows the investors to share their own invaluable knowledge and experience, whilst making their own investment decisions.
We’re delighted to be working with our partners to bring this opportunity to the North East.
We think it’s crucial than when a business has spent weeks preparing their pitch for our investors that they receive their honest feedback (regardless of an investor’s interest in that opportunity). If someone is saying no, it’s important to know why.
We have seen some glowing feedback over the years, for both the business and the team, but we have also seen some hard hitting feedback. What we look for in these comments is a trend. If 50% of the investors suggest there might be a problem scaling the business, then maybe there is, or maybe this was miscommunicated in the pitch itself.
It has been our experience that founders welcome feedback. It is an opportunity to learn from people who genuinely want businesses to exceed and can provide some helpful guidance.
We are so pleased to have closed the round for Check an Invoice. A truly outstanding management team with the most impressive grasp on the detail that we have ever seen. Combining this with a considered solution for a largely universal problem, we are confident that this company will go on to achieve a significant exit.
The Check an invoice group provides touchless document processing in two verticals – medical transcribing and document processing. Their products offer customers a touchless processing experience. This greatly reduces their operating costs and eliminates many manual processes. They offer their products as a service which results in several advantages of other competing products.
Firdaus Mogul, Co-Founder and CEO commented on the investment, “working with Martin and his team is an experience every Founder should go through . His knowledge for what his investors are looking for help you pitch your company with the right balance of detail and clarity . He is personally involved and genuinely cares for your success. Martin’s group of investors are true professionals, and we have the pleasure of not only raising funds through them but having one of them become a key board member. I have worked with many angel groups, without a doubt , Martin is the best.“.
We wish Check and Invoice the very best in what we are sure will be an exciting future.
We are bringing back a lot more physical events this year! After running only two in person events since the start of the pandemic we are really eager to get investors and founders back in the room together.
We aim to provide a blended solution for our investors moving forward where we will rotate between physical and online events in all of our regions, so we’ll always have accessible pitch events for all our members.
When we ask the founders which events they would prefer to pitch at they are always really keen to get in the room with the investors. After all, there really is nothing like the atmosphere of a live pitch event and the energy in the room.
We will be reintroducing in person events gradually in Q1 of this year, but aiming to be full steam ahead with these as soon as possible.
We are delighted to have worked with Good to Glo in supporting them with active angel involvement and investment. We’re not surprised this generated the interest that it did because combining a real-life problem with a regulatory requirement and a superb founder are great indicators of success.
Good to Glo’s mission is to refine the journey of the beauty consumer by using technology to allow each person to have their beauty records at their fingertips. They have digitised an integral legal process used every day in the industry. Good to Glo will aid its consumer with scientific knowledge around the products they buy giving them a unique personalised skincare experience.
Ruth Sullivan, CEO Good to Glo, commented on the investment, “I found the whole experience incredibly eye opening, and I really valued the investment journey with angelgroups. I was able to gain access to people who have enabled me to drive my business forward, not just in terms of monetary investment but shared skills and experience that is vital to any entrepreneur starting out.”
We very much look forward to seeing the roll out of this solution and the ongoing success of the business and wish Ruth and the team every success.
As part of one of our educational events last year for businesses looking for funding we covered the support an angel investor can provide. This is why angel investment is often referred to as ‘Smart Money’ because you benefit from the investors breadth of knowledge and experience as well as the funding. This gives you the opportunity to learn first hand from individuals who have quite literally ‘been there and done it’ and are now looking to give back and support the next generation of founders.
Occuity pitched with us earlier this year and we were delighted to support them in their raise. This was a hugely popular investment opportunity amongst our angel network. They were excited by the innovation, product and most importantly the team. We were thrilled to have so many of our members invest in this opportunity.
In Occuity’s end of year review they highlighted their investment round as follows:
“Welcoming a large number of new Angel investors as shareholders – It was great to see that our business, technology and mission (to improve the lives of millions of people across the globe) clearly resonated with investors.”
We wish them every success in 2022 and look forward to following their story as they grow and scale in the years to come.
We’re beginning to wind down for Christmas so we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!
We’ve had a really great year and have been fortunate enough to support lots of fantastic founders in their funding journeys. We have also welcomed new angels from across the country (and the world!) to our groups and are looking forward to working closely with them and our current investors in 2022.
From everyone here at angelgroups, we wish you all a safe and Happy Christmas.
Online events… we’ve certainly ran a lot of them this year again. We have ran a total of 45 online pitch events, 2 physical pitch events and 4 SME educational events (also online!).
It doesn’t stop there either. We also hold all of our due diligence events online, which has actually turned out to be a fantastic asset for us. Our angel members are based all over the country, and abroad, so online events mean that everyone is able to take part. Even if they can’t, we then have a recording we can share amongst the interested parties so they catch up at a time and date that suits them. We’ve even had members compare these recordings to watching Netflix!
We’re hoping the figure for online vs physical will be closer together at the end of 2022, but either way we are so grateful for being able to continue to do what we enjoy doing most – bringing founders and investors together.
Yesterday we ran our Christmas Pitch Event in Leeds and what a fantastic afternoon it was. We had four businesses pitching, all at very different stages of their growth journeys but all with one commonality – great founders.
We also heard from our guest speak and prolific angel investor who discussed his portfolio strategy and shared his wealth of experience and his ‘enjoy it or don’t do it’ approach.
A big thank you to everyone who made it into Leeds and to our partners in supporting us as always. It truly was a fantastic day.
