Crowdfunding has gone beyond the early adopter stage, meaning most people have now heard of it. A recent survey by TribeFirst suggests that we are getting close to the stage where more people in the UK have supported a crowdfunding campaign than haven’t. The survey, completed by 250 people, showed that 43.8% of the respondents had backed either a charity, rewards or equity crowdfunding campaign.

Amberside Capital and CH1 Investment Partners have joined forces to launch an innovative crowd bond platform, offering early-bird ISA investors 6.75% a year over four years.

The Amberside Asset Lending Platform (ALP) will invest in high-yielding private debt in infrastructure projects, examples of which include solar parks, grid support facilities and hydroponics projects.

Triodos Bank, a global leader in sustainable banking, has raised over £7 million for five organisations delivering positive social and environmental impact on its crowdfunding platform in the three months since it launched.  Triodos Crowdfunding, which opened to investors in January, enables people to invest directly in equity or bonds issued by established charities or businesses which have been extensively screened by Triodos for the viability of their business model and the credibility of the management team.

iContract, the online platform connecting contractors with recruiters, closed its latest round of investment last week - after successfully raising over £800,000. With a pre-money valuation of £3,000,000, the campaign attracted direct investment from long-term strategic investors, as well as 200+ small-sized investors from its own community via the crowdfund platform Seedrs.

OurCrowd, a leading global equity crowdfunding platform had two portfolio exits announced over the last two days: Invertex acquired by Nike; and JUMP’s agreement to be acquired by Uber. This brings the total of OurCrowd portfolio companies achieving exits to 20 in five years.

Executive recruitment firm Intramezzo has launched its new equity crowdfunding platform, Stakeholderz. Designed to help early stage UK technology companies secure investment, the platform is supported by Microsoft for Startups, the software giant’s business accelerator in London.

Award-winning restaurant Stem + Glory has smashed its crowdfunding target so quickly, that it is closing its campaign two weeks early – a move that is almost unheard of in crowdfunding campaigns.

British tennis champion Andy Murray has backed two early-stage businesses as part of his strategic relationship with 

Crowdcube, the world’s first and largest equity crowdfunding platform, has launched a campaign to secure more equity funding deals for startups and growth businesses outside London, in partnership with six leading supporters of regional SMEs. The target is to double equity funding deals in the regions within five years, from the current total of 736 from all providers to 1500

LendingCrowd has secured an external funding round of £2 million following a strong 2017 for the peer-to-peer (P2P) lender, with the proceeds earmarked for ramping up its sales and marketing activities.

New research by SyndicateRoom has revealed that investment risk appetite is on the rise as lacklustre returns fail to match the goals held by nearly half of investors.

Honcho relocates to County Durham following investment and creates three jobs to complete software development and product launch.