VascVersa, an award winning, early-stage regenerative medicine spin out from Queen’s University in Belfast, has completed its second seed funding round, raising over £500,000.  The investment was participated in by Co-Fund NI (managed by Clarendon Fund Managers), QUBIS, the commercialisation arm of Queen’s University Belfast, the Innovation Investment Fund and angel investors from the Halo & Business Angel Network (HBAN).

Joshua Wohle is a EdTech/Learning enthusiast, advisor, investor. He was previously CPTO & co-Founder of SuperAwesome, the largest kidtech company in the world and is currently CEO and co-founder of Mindstone.

Joshua is also a Venture Partner and LP of Emerge Education, an education sector focused European seed fund. Here he shares his experiences of being an angel investor.

The National Security and Investment Act 2021 (The NSI Act) came into force on 4 January 2022. The act strengthens the UK Government’s power to scrutinise transactions on grounds of national security. Parts of the act will apply retrospectively between 12 November 2020 and the 4 January 2022.

New data from Tech Nation reveals that nearly a quarter of UK tech companies are making it to Series C or an exit in 2022, but warns that these large liquidity events must not detract from the need to support the majority (50%) of tech companies who are in earlier stages of growth, especially those R&D intensive firms who tend to have longer product development cycles and time to market.

A specialist business support organisation is celebrating after leveraging more than £25m in investment for North East companies in the last three years.  Through the Newcastle Angel Hub, the Innovation SuperNetwork has supported 58 North East businesses with investor readiness activities and helped them leverage £25m in equity investment since launching in July 2019.

Spotting the next ‘big thing’ in the UK’s $1.6 trillion commercial property market is no mean feat. Rising to the challenge, BuiltAI, the AI platform for the commercial real estate market, has closed a £2m seed round for its ground-breaking geospatial analytics platform. The deeptech company is developing AI inference technology that delivers radical transparency to the commercial real estate market in order to inform better, quicker investment decisions by players in the market. 

Clean Food Group - a pioneering UK-based food-tech business developing cultivated food, has announced that it is one step closer to producing a viable yeast-based alternative to palm oil.

Gatenox, the UK-based provider of corporate client verified credentials, has raised a seven-figure amount from C3 VC Fund, a venture capital firm based in Frankfurt, Germany that invests in exceptional technology companies worldwide. Additional funding was provided by A100x Ventures and several prominent angel investors, including Matthew Niemerg and Antoni Zolciak, co-founders of Aleph Zero.  Gatenox is the Anti-money Laundering and Sanctions solution for corporate onboarding that starts with the customer. 

The British Business Bank has published a list of 65 additional companies in which the Future Fund holds an equity stake, taking the total to 400 as at 30 June 2022, meaning a third of companies have now converted to equity.

The Bank of England has put interest rates up from 1.25% to 1.75%, the biggest increase in rates for years. 

As the fourth round of the British Design Fund comes to a close at the end of July it has welcomed two experienced investors to its Investment Committee. Meeting regularly to select the very best British purpose-led product design and manufacturing start-ups, the Committee welcomes the breadth of experience and knowledge that the two new members bring.

In this final part of our series, we asked our five investors about the most important lessons they have learnt along their crowdfunding journey, what they see happening in the future and what advice they would pass on to others thinking about starting out on their own adventures in the world of equity crowdfunding.