Funding
Silveray, an X-ray technology spin-out from the University of Surrey, has raised £2.2M in a seed funding round led by the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S). ACF Investors, R42 Group, UK Future Tech Investment (UKFTI), InnovateUK, Cambridge Angels, and SyndicateRoom’s Access fund were also involved in the funding round.
As interest rates increase and tech stock multiples come down, accessing growth capital is becoming more expensive for startup founders.
Optellum, an Oxford-based medtech company that provides a breakthrough AI platform to diagnose and treat early-stage lung cancer, has raised $14 million in a Series A funding round. The investment will enable the company to scale its base, operations and commercial launches in the UK and USA, accelerate its research and development, and expand its platform into personalized therapy decisions, integrating imaging with molecular data, robotics, and liquid biopsies.
Cello’s pioneering product, backed by byFounders, TinyVC, Possible Ventures, and Notion Capital enables SaaS businesses to make word-of-mouth their
most valuable growth channel.
Prewave, the AI platform that helps businesses predict, find, understand and categorise the risks affecting their suppliers, has raised €11m in Series A funding. The round was co-led by KOMPAS and Ventech, who renewed its support after the company’s Seed round, with participation from early-stage investors aws Gründerfonds, IST cube, seed + speed, Segnalita, Speedinvest and Working Capital Fund. The investment follows a strong year for Prewave with ten-fold revenue growth over the last ten months, a team that has tripled in size and an impressive roster of clients including ABinBev, AUDI, BMW, Porsche, PWC, Toyota and Zurich Insurance.
Alarm bells are ringing. We’re heading for another financial crisis. Geopolitical tensions and fluctuating markets have led to a soaring cost of living in Ireland, a threat of recession, and a slowdown in investment. Early-stage investors have pivoted from the bull run of 2020 and 2021 to a bearish approach to funding in 2022.
‘Debt’ is a loaded word in the world of business that has few positive connotations. It smacks of always playing catch-up, constantly being on the back foot and receiving calls from financial institutions that are polite but firm and extremely insistent that money is owed and that the calls won’t stop until it’s paid back along with any interest owed.
Latana, an AI-Powered brand tracking and consumer insights platform, has raised a €36M Series B equity and debt financing to scale its SaaS offering, which provides companies with consumer data and key insights to help track brand and campaign performance.
At any stage of business, choosing the right investor can be one of the hardest and complex decisions you can ever make. This individual will more than likely not just contribute financially but often operationally meaning choosing the wrong person could be detrimental to your business.
The UK’s Research and Development (R&D) tax relief scheme incentivises businesses to spend money on innovation. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can receive a payable cash credit up to 33% of their eligible R&D spending which presents a strong opportunity for startups to reduce the cost of overcoming scientific or technological problems.
If you want to scale your early-stage business, and to grow it quickly, then it is quite possible that you will need to raise investment by selling part of your business to new investors. This is done by the business issuing new shares which has the impact of leaving the original shareholders owning the same number of shares that they did, but a smaller percentage of the total.
It’s not for nothing that the tech ecosystem can resemble an extreme sport at times.
UK inflation has risen to 10.1% in July, the first time it’s hit double digits in 40 years, according to the ONS – up from 9.4% in June. Driven by rising costs in energy, food, and fuel, this has resulted in a drastic drop in funding and valuations across the startup arena, with a report from Tech Nation revealing that 50% of earlier-stage startups were struggling to scale beyond the seed and pre-seed stages.
The ‘war for talent’ is only intensifying, meaning every perk counts. If you weren’t offering your remote/hybrid team members an attractive home office package before, you should seriously consider doing so now.
It has been said that ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’. But in reality, when a recession is looming and the business environment gets even tougher than normal, many more businesses, especially early-stage businesses, will fail.
Aerospace Xelerated has announced that its call for applications is open.
If you’re thinking of starting a small business, it won’t do you good if you don’t know how to keep track of your money. Bookkeeping involves more than just maintaining receipts; it includes preparing financial statements and taxes. In this quick-start guide, we’ll introduce you to bookkeeping tips so you can get started in the right direction.
The front pages of the newspapers tell us that the economy is on a precipice. Interest rates are rising, inflation is at a 40-year high, and many report that venture capital is pulling back.
One in three UK small and medium enterprises (SMEs) say their survival is dependent on accessing finance by the end of the year, new research from NerdWallet has revealed.
AWS is launching a one-of-its-kind programme that gives more women founders the support they need to accelerate their businesses.
