Category: Latest News

We were delighted to have worked with ChromaTwist on their latest funding round and are thrilled to hear about their exciting progress!

It was a pleasure working with Jon Preece, FRSC and his team to secure their funding. This is a ground-breaking technology that will really impact on the sector, delivering real benefits to the supply chain and the end consumer.

ChromaTwist is a University of Birmingham spinout and this round of funding will allow the company to continue product development with industry partners and enable rapid development of products for market entry as soon as 2023.

We wish them every success in the future and are expecting great things!

You can find out about Chromatwist HERE and read the full press release HERE.

“I was tired of seeing founders getting to the end of their journey and them not have the biggest glass of wine at the party.”

Our Founder Martin Avison recently sat down for a chat with the Co-Founders of Blu Sky Chartered Accountants on their #twopintsoflagerandaspreadsheet Podcast.

On this podcast Martin discusses his background, why he started angelgroups, and the future of Angel Investment (as well as sharing a ‘cracking story’!).

If you have the time and would like to listen to Martin’s story with the Blusky team, you can listen to it HERE.

Who you are and what you do. This might seem like a simple slide on your pitch deck, but if it’s not communicated effectively this slide can lose your audience. If this happens, then the rest of your pitch is unlikely to make a lot of sense, so this slide is the most important.

Here are a few tips on communicating your message:

– Avoid the use of industry slang and abbreviations. Keep it simple.

– Be clear as to what type of business you are (a tech business, a manufacturer, an R&D based business looking to license etc.)

– Don’t be too ‘techie’, there’s plenty of time to showcase how clever your product is in due diligence.

You hire each slide to do a job, make sure each slide communicates the message you need it to.

Great news to start the week – another fantastic business has secured funding!

This investment typifies what a good angel investment is all about. It’s about finding an angel that not only understands the sector but that can add real value, other than just money. Coupling this with a really great founder and a truly awesome product we believe that Doqit is one to watch for the future.

Imagine how easy life would be if you had all your documents, information, dates, reminders at your fingertips; anytime, anywhere. Introducing Doqit – Dropbox with a brain… a B2B2C SaaS platform that’s like having a PA in your pocket to manage your life administration.

Doqit helps reduce the time, cost and stress life admin brings by giving people a single place to easily manage their life admin. A platform that aligns with where both users and businesses are at in their digital journey,

CatherineAnn Reid, CEO said, “We are thrilled to have secured an industry expert as investor and Board Advisor thanks to the introduction from angelgroups. Investment to date has triggered the next phase of Doqit, and we are excited to share that Doqit V1 will launch January 2023″

We are delighted to be supporting CatherineAnn on her current round.

Competition, we all have it.

Your competitor analysis slide on your pitch deck is really important.

We all have competitors, even if not directly. We are often competing for the customers pound in their pocket. During your pitch please don’t say that you don’t have competition, but instead define why their solution is different and why you have an advantage.

Having a good understanding of your competitors is crucial, as it will allow you to ‘stay ahead of the game’ and it’s also a great learning tool. Often competition creates an opportunity for collaboration, and the fact that there are other solutions out there solidifies the market opportunity.

Another week another round of pitch events!

We’re kicking off the week with our Leeds pitch event, which is being held at Schroders Personal Wealth this afternoon.

We have 4 fantastic founders pitching with us this week. Once they have finished networking with our local Leeds investors, it’s back home to get ready for tomorrow’s online pitch event which is bright and early.
Double the events means double the potential interest before moving into due diligence.

Good luck everyone!

What is the underlying magic in your business?

What is it about your business that sets you apart from your competition? Do you have IP, or are doing something really clever? We refer to this as the ‘underlying magic’ and it’s really important to include this ‘magic’ in your pitch.

Investors want to know what is special about your business, so you want to make sure that this comes across loud and clear in your pitch.

Every business has underlying magic, be proud to share it!

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.

You can read the full report HERE.

“When do you need the funding by?”

“…Yesterday”

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.