B-North is a UK-based business lending company. It has combined cloud-native technology with face-to-face relationship banking. The company asserts that SMEs account for over 60% of private-sector employment in the UK, have driven job growth over the past ten years, and are central to driving economic recovery. It intends to disrupt the £150 billion UK Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) lending market. B-North has raised a seed capital of over £6.8 million including a six-figure investment from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority to establish its core team, as well as, build lending and deposit-taking platforms. The company is now seeking further investment through a bridge round to extend the cash runway from the end of Q4 2020 into Q1-Q2 2021 to achieve the necessary regulatory capital to become a bank and commence lending.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£2,149,256
The School of Rock is ready to rollEven rock stars need training, although to listen to some of them you would never know. Neil Stribblehill recently quit his day job in order to put his heart and soul into Njs Audio. The company is looking for £20,000 investment to help make a reality out of Neil’s vision to make Music Lounge into a hub for musicians.Housed in a Northamptonshire Barn development, the music lounge will become the beating heart of music outside of London – offering an amazing venue for music events, as well as training spaces, top quality instruments and kit and even repair facilities.With an extensive network of musicians already awaiting invitations to the two-floor barn conversion, which will be made for chilling, retail, training and specialist hire venue, Neil is keen to get this show on the road. Neil has a First Class degree in Music Practice and Production BA (Hons) to his name – a testament to his adoration of all things music.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£4,200
TransferGuru is an online money transfer platform that allows users to send money to friends or family all across the world. TransferGuru offer an exchange rate comparison service that allows the user to see all of the providers in their chosen country.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£46,746
Wealthify is an online investment platform that lets you choose the parameters in which you want to invest such as; how much you want to invest, how long for and the risk level of the investment.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£1,117,523
The first regulated crowdfunding business in the UK offering investment opportunities in environmental, ethical and social companies. Since 2011, Abundance has funded 34 investments totalling more than £75m, whilst delivering gross returns of 4-15% per year across renewable energy, social housing and sustainability projects. This equates to total interest returns of £12.1m. More than 5,250 investors on the platform have contributed funds almost 5 times on average over various campaigns.
Abundance also offers an IFISA product and as at April 2018, they have 8% of the IFISA market, which equates to over 2,900 ISA customers. The business’s investor's numbers have grown 52% since January 2017 and in the past year their customer portfolio has seen a 30% increase. In the last 3 years, marketing expenditure efficiency has also improved by 76%.
Abundance's services are free-to-use for investors. This means there are no fees for investing or withdrawing funds in opportunities or ISA products. Revenue is generated from borrowers who are seeking to raise finance for their projects. This is in the form of a set-up fee and a regular admin fee per year.
The business is crowdfunding to expand on the types of projects they currently offer, as a means to attract a wider range of investors. In addition, Abundance aims to market the campaigns on the platform through numerous channels and upgrade the technology they currently use to enhance the user experience.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£1,621,138
Farillio is a legal tech company who provide legal solutions and answers for SME’s in an online platform. The platform will provide knowledge jargon free, using how-to video sound bites, checklists, infographics and short easy to read guides.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£162,528
Nova launches growth focus, tech-enabled startups, putting passionate founders at the heart of everything they do. It creates a more rewarding experience for startups with its co-founding model. The company conceives and scales digital businesses thereby solving the real-world problems, open new markets and disrupt existing ones. 46% of Nova co-founded businesses are still trading. There are 140+ staff over Manchester, Liverpool, London, and Islamabad. There is a 3% portfolio valuation growth YOY, thereby creating more than £72m valuation of the portfolio. The company made a turnover of £7.2m in 2018/19. Nova is raising funds to leverage the company's growing network of Founders, Funds, and Talent in the UK.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£744,880
Sonichem responds to climate and environmental demands by developing sustainable chemicals, excluding those derived from fossils or crops used for food. They utilize sawmill waste, transforming the typically discarded woodchips and sawdust into sugars, cellulose, and lignin, essential bio-based chemicals, through their patented and scalable eco-friendly process. Achieving an impressive ratio, they turn £1 of sawdust into nearly £8 worth of these sustainable chemicals. Positioned within the rapidly growing $17 billion bio-based chemicals market, their innovation addresses the rising need for sustainable alternatives in plastics, cosmetics, and various industries, positioning Sonichem at the forefront of the eco-friendly revolution.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£1,232,585
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
Total Be wants to bring an internationally recognised model of car insurance to the UK. It provides insurance for the car, not just for an individual driver. Additionally, it does not take crime data into account that is not specific to vehicles. Thus, this insurance is estimated to provide up to 25% cheaper cover in comparison to UK insurance. Moreover, a UK Government Petition for this insurance model has gained over 60,000+ signatures, which further validates the demand of this model. Total Be believes that it will be able to disrupt the UK market with this car insurance model.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£150,760
