QFinds is a purpose-built hiring tool that enables employers to easily and efficiently pre-screen candidates, conduct interviews and generate employment contracts. The company asserts that it is a UK government vetted 'Kickstart Scheme' representative and can get small businesses grants to hire interns having already processed over 100 job applications. QFinds claims that its app has been downloaded 2 million+ times garnering 24,000 reviews averaging 4.8/5 stars. QFinds also points out that bad hirings cost the UK up to £6.7 billion in turnover, productivity, and training. It seeks to change this and disrupt the £39 billion recruitment market. The company has partnered with notable entities like University College London, Kings College London and Brunel University London, intending to use them as strategic partners to increase job seekers signing up to and using its app. QFinds will use the investment to grow its business across different verticals.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£222,866
A travel club and booking service offering a wide range of villas, boutique hotels and getaway experiences. Mr & Mrs Smith has over 1.5m members who have collectively made bookings valued at more than £60m in the last 12 months. The company generates income from commissions, which has resulted in revenues of £13m in 12 months up to 30 June 2018. They are now seeking to expand their travel collection and acquire US membership.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£5,926,375
Pluto helps travellers by providing them with information regarding their destination trip, tips from fellow travellers, and the option of travelling with others via its app. The company has over 7,000 travellers on its portal. It has sold over £140,000 worth of travel insurance, ranked in the top 3 UK travel insurers on Trustpilot, and won 'Best Travel Insurance Provider' at the Insurance Choice Awards 2020. Pluto has also garnered a 4.9/5 rating on the App Store. The company has featured in press entities such as TechCrunch, BBC, Monocle, Which, Mashable, and InsuranceTimes. It has integrated and partnered with Booking.com. Pluto will use the investment in product development, grow its market share via product and paid channels, and launch its premium subscription product to boost revenue.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£229,640
An easy and simple app for university students to find properties and pay rent all from the comfort of their own sofa. Bubble Student already has information for over 200,000 rooms, which users can book viewing schedules for, as well as a group chat feature to easily discuss the property with their friends.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£430,320
Rebel Energy (RE) is an energy supplier on a mission to address inequality and provide everyone with easy access to clean and affordable energy, to eventually eliminate fuel poverty. RE claims that fuel poverty led to 16,500+ cold-related deaths in the UK in 2018. RE argues that as the UK home electricity market enters a phase of growth in a post-COVID world, it will be focused on offering reliable customer service and develop strategies that help people who are struggling with their electricity bills. The company has applied for a B Corporation accreditation. RE asserts that its customer support systems are automated and can handle multiple queries simultaneously. It plans to offer a weekly direct debit payment option. RE will use the investment to grow its business across different verticals.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£503,810
Kingwood-on-Thames Ltd is a company run by experienced businessman James Slater who is part of a truly enterprising family whose interests include amphibious tours in central London and the manufacture of amphibious machines. He’s spearheading the acquisition of River Thames Boat Hire Ltd – a riverboat charter company with an annual turnover of £100,000.
After extensive research, James has identified several areas of the Thames Boat Hire business which can be improved on. Having singled out each of the weaknesses, Kingwood-on-Thames will remodel the business to strengthen it from the bottom up, creating new partnerships, enhancing facilities and delivering additional marketing to initially increase the number of annual charters from 50 to 250 over four years. This represents a conservative 35% of the boats potential usage (the company has outlined 728 charters per annum as part of its forecasts).
It is expected this will take sales from £100,000 to £1.25m in 4 years.
A £300,000 equity deal for 25% of the company is available to investors. James himself will be investing £100,000 of the total amount alongside Funding Tree investors. You can join James as he endeavors to turn a steady, under-appreciated charter company into a more profitable, sought-after business.
Plans in brief:
- James will hire a dedicated, passionate manager to handle the business and take it from zero marketing to multiple marketing techniques and also drive the creation of new partnerships to increase brand awareness.
- A new website featuring efficient contact and booking systems is currently in development by Somerset Website Services. It will be launched in the next few weeks under the Kingwood-on-Thames Ltd (KTL) banner.
- New online advertising and increased social media activity and email marketing campaigns.
- The remodeling of the business to incorporate high value clients as well as standard clients.
This charter business has a unique selling point in its vessel’s historical significance. The Kingswood vessel was one of the 861 ‘little ships’ used for the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo between 27 May and 4 June 1940. (www.adls.org.uk). The boat is in excellent condition having completed a maintenance check and survey in spring 2014 by Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA).
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£31,100
WorkClub converts under-used real estate into productive co-working areas and provides an affordable membership for remote workers across London. The company has 500+ members, 800+ guests and 25 WorkClub’s spaces in London. WorkClub has also secured many venues across the UK with Young's, Hippo Inns and more. Furthermore, it is listed as a ‘Top 10 startup to watch’ by TechRound, has 4.8* rating on TrustPilot and, acquired 30 businesses to offer discounted WorkClub memberships to members including ZipCar, PureGym. The company will use the funds to develop WorkClub’s technology and to expand its offering into other key UK cities.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£342,820
Nextfin is an FCA approved aggregation and rating portal for equity and debt crowdfunding investments.
AIM is shrinking, legacy stock markets are too expensive to maintain and do not serve the requirements of SMEs, banks are closing branches, lending less and are paying little or no interest to investors. As a result of this, there is a huge growth in equity crowdfunding and P2P lending which has seen the launch of hundreds of alternative lenders & platforms that has created a new c.£3bn marketplace, expanding at 66% p.a. There is no single portal or trusted ratings index for investors to compare on a like for like basis and no secondary market to facilitate exits.
* NextFin is the new trading name of Business Agent Ltd
The solution
NextFin aggregates equity and debt crowdfunding investments to create the alternative finance marketplace. This makes it easy for investors and lenders to find and compare opportunities by presenting all investment offerings in one place. With the addition of a free of charge ratings service investors will be able to view ratings of every equity crowdfunding pitch, every P2P site, and every equity crowdfunding site. NextFin’s technology will constantly track these companies and investments providing the investor real-time intelligence on which to base investment decisions. The platforms and entrepreneurs will be self-promoting and marketing their ratings driving thousands of visitors a month to the NextFin site, in the same way, businesses refer their potential clients to Trip Advisor and Trustpilot. There is an estimated 10 million website/platform visitors per month across the whole of the alternative finance market. NextFin is targeting to direct 5% of this highly profiled traffic to its platform from which it will earn between £5-£8 per click from advertisers and partners. In addition, an in-house brokerage service also earns between 1%-6% commissions on loan placements. A future revenue stream (not featured in the financials) will be developed once visitor traffic reaches critical mass. This will see Nextfin being able to realise the full value of its captured ratings data and visitor traffic by launching a secondary market, which is estimated to be a £5bn marketplace.
NextFin is raising £500k at a pre-money valuation of £2M to: • Develop P2P and Equity site ratings• Expand the management, infrastructure and marketing resource• Increase visitor traffic to 6m a year via rating referrals
Owing to the size of the market and rapid growth of the industry, enterprise valuations in alternative finance are based on visitor traffic, market share and registered users. Recently published valuations of companies with visitor traffic of over 6m per year are in excess of £70m. NextFin is the market-leading aggregator and has first-mover advantage. It has the potential to exceed these valuations because it is the whole of the market aggregator and is currently the only ratings service provider as it grows to achieve 500,000 visitors p.m.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£274,057
MarketsFlow is a London and Boston based, highly innovative and performance driven Investment Manager platform. It is authorised regulated by the FCA, FRN 792373 and SEC. The company supports its clients to achieve financial goals by helping their money grow. In 2019, MarketsFlow became the winner of the Best Programmatic Trading Technology at WSL and Fund in New York for the third year in a row. MarketsFlow offers Managed Portfolios (GIA), IRAs and ISAs. The company is expecting that its Growth and High Growth portfolio is accessible. In the coming months, the company is about to launch its new mobile application to complement its Growth using M&A deals.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£636,330
KogoPAY is a start-up fintech mobile payment company which offers quick, simple and economic regional & global money transfer with the help of an application. The company has a UK FCA licence, and it is on the last step for EU EMI licence. KogoPay has 1000 customers signed up and has been chosen to join the Mayor of London Business & Partners Accelerator. The company is planning to use the funds to complete rollout over Europe and Asia and to invest in advanced performance and customer service using Artificial Intelligence.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£198,620
