UnderPinned gives freelancers a single, dedicated platform to learn how to build a successful business, find clients, manage their work, and help them get paid on time. The company aspires to build a connection with users that ensures everyone thrives through its accelerator programme, community, and content. UnderPinned asserts that its accelerator programme allows it to achieve day one unit profitability before converting users to subscribers. It claims to have made £12,772 in revenue with £8,000 spent on marketing in its first month of programme sales in January 2021. The company argues that COVID-19 has accelerated freelancing, moving away from traditional employment. UnderPinned has a community of over 20,000 subscribers and growing. It says itvwill use the investment to scale its team, marketing and product development as it focuses on expanding in the US and EU markets.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£629,086
TIME-TO-FIND is a reverse marketplace for luxury Swiss watches that helps customers locate the watch they want from the company's network of brand authorised stockists. The company's complimentary service allows customers to communicate with and compare authorised retailers without any commitment with a simple sign-up process. When the customer is ready to transact, they can choose TIME-TO-FIND's bespoke concierge service to hand-deliver their desired watch to their doorstep. Customers can also opt for the secure courier service from their chosen authorised stockist to their nominated delivery address. TIME-TO-FIND garnered £80,000 worth of sales at retail value in its pilot period from August to December 2019 with zero returns. TIME-TO-FIND will use the investment to create marketing and PR campaigns to boost sales, increase site visits to 500,000 within 2021-2022, improve its website's user experience, and hire key personnel.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£281,731
Groubook is a social bookings platform that allows a group of users to pre-book nights out on its platform, letting themselves avail of discounts and earn rewards. The company claims that its focus groups are millennials who go out twice a week and spend £6589 a year, and students who avail of discounts, coupons and rewards on expenses. The company stresses that it offers its partners a non-contract service with no upfront fees. The company further points out that it sold 178 tickets for a local Nottingham bar event during the COVID pandemic, earning its partners £890 in pre-booking revenue. Groubook has featured in press entities such as Real Business, BBC, Venue Insight, and Sage amongst others. It has also partnered with 330+ venues nationally, including Olivias, Las Iguanas, Bella Italia, Revolution, and Bedlam paintball, to name a few. The company states it will use 65% of the investment towards hiring personnel, 22.9% towards promoting marketing campaigns, 7% towards overseeing location expenses, and 5.1% towards managing administrative expenses.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£81,660
Baanx is a B2B2C mobile banking platform offering cutting-edge services in remittance, spending & blockchain. The company takes pride in its innovative customer acquisition process through partner communities. The BaanxCL already has a CL™ VISA Debit Card, Crypto-Payment Gateway, a Crypto-Exchange, Stablecoins, and other exciting features. The company is also partnering with new brands around the world which are not banking already but have large user communities to connect. The company is aiming to target 100,000 users by Q2 2020 with the assistance of Super Seed Investors. With the proceeds, Baanx will hire additional team members, spend funds on marketing, and launch services in South America and Asia.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£658,200
EMERGEiQ is a cloud-based platform targeted towards Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and large corporate organisations. The company plans on having an extensive suite of algorithms that simplifies Data Science (DS) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) at low cost, across all sectors. EMERGEiQ asserts that its analytics can help businesses improve operational productivity, cut costs, and eventually generate more revenue. It has worked with companies across a variety of sectors such as finance, medicine, stock market, and insurance. The company will use will 30% of the investment for R&D, 25% to purchase software and hardware to improve platform capabilities, 25% to market its new product line, 10% as working capital, and 10% as miscellaneous expenses.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£150,000
easyHire is a cloud-based technology platform that deals in event and construction equipment rentals. It possesses over 3 million pieces of inventory. easyHire is operating in the £23 billion equipment rental industry in Europe and aims to be the category leader in it. The company raised £1.5 million from leading investors and built a revenue-generating Software as a Service (SaaS) platform. It is backed by renowned entrepreneurs Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou and Fabio Cannavale, as well as, venture capital firm Pilabs. The company owns brand exclusivity for the easyToolhire and easyEventhire franchises across 30 territories. It continued to strengthen its business during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. easyHire will use the investment to open up new markets, invest in product development, and boost its marketing initiatives.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£520,161
Brewbroker is an online platform that makes buying, selling & sourcing anything in beer an easy process. Thanks to its Intelligent DealFlow software that uses algorithms to match demand with supply instantly, the company aims to eliminate fragmentation across the beer industry. With the number of UK breweries having reached 2,274 in 2018 from 1,352 in 2013, Brewbroker aims to enrol a major chunk of these establishments on its platform. Post launch of their beta application in July 2018, a quarter of the UK’s brewers became members. 750 entities signed up and completed 373 tenders on the platform. 2020 saw the company launching Version 2.0 of its platform. With the funds received, the company plans to scale marketing further and onboard more clients.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£154,870
Paysme is a fintech company that has the vision to become the entrusted supplier of digital financial services to SME communities, by gathering mobile payments, pensions, banking, insurance, e-commerce, marketing tools and accounting in the sector-focused application. Paysme has a marketing partnership with two major credit card corporates. Paysme's expert industry application includes Marketti for market traders, cab: app for taxis & Fanslive for sports clubs. The company has processed over 1.4 million mobile payment transactions and onboarded 200+ markets to its Marketti platform. Also, the company is in discussions with 3 major sports clubs (2 football and 1 rugby) in England, Ireland, and Scotland.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£102,850
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
JiveBird allows users to create and send a greetings package that consists of a personal voice message, music, eCard, a photo or selfie, and a gift to their loved ones or acquaintances. The company asserts that its package can be sent at the last minute or in advance. Jivebird claims that for the millions of people who send greetings and gifts every year, its portal provides a personal, cheaper, and convenient way to send greetings. Jivebird argues that it has no direct competitors. Its exit strategy is to sell the company when it achieves the growth metrics in the business plan, projected to be within five years of consumer launch.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
Withheld
