The Start-Up Series Archives - Small Business UK

The importance of embracing experiments as a founder

Matthew Cushen — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 11:58:52 +0000

By Matthew Cushen on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

Chatting to the CEO of a global retail business late last year about them rediscovering their innovation mojo found us talking about failure. She thought they needed help to “remove the fear of failure”.

I said the opposite – in the retail sector, more than any other, everyone should be very afraid of failure. Paranoia would be appropriate. We agreed she had fallen into a lazy view with a clichéd phrase. What they actually needed was to create permission to experiment; to understand how to create cheap, fast experiments and how to maximise the learning that results from them.

Experimenting is an advantage entrepreneurs have over the big corporates. Being un-encumbered by having money, time, brand equity, resources, or expertise should mean experiments to test a proposition are cheap and quick, risk free and with learning that’s easily understood by everyone involved.

Experimenting is also more important to entrepreneurs than big corporates.

Failure in a large business can mean a stalling career, but rarely the sack. It can mean reduced business performance but usually in percentage points, not total business failure (despite my winding up the CEO described above). It can mean wasted resource, but from a rich pool.

For a founder of a young business it can mean losing their life savings or putting their home at risk and putting personal relationships to the test.

So early experiments to test out your target markets’ view of a proposition are essential to validate the decision being made to set up a business. Ideally before a meaningful dent is being made in your lifestyle and before being beholden to incoming investors. We see too many entrepreneurs that have an idea and blind faith that someone will care about it. Sinking their capital into a bottomless pit of building a solution for which they have not proved a market need.

Beyond exploring propositions, experimenting and learning are also a useful lens through which to view the founder’s journey. Let me tell you a personal story…

In my late twenties, I was fortunate to have a big job in a big company, along with some savings from a couple of property deals. Before deciding corporate life was not my bag.

I couldn’t ignore an idea that had been eating away at me to set up a chain of branded flower shops (this was the early 2000’s – retail was still an interesting sector!). Two years later I’d given up two years’ salary, tens of thousands of savings, flogged my guts out, built one shop, a website and a corporate business. Just to get to a conclusion that there were many reasons why the UK didn’t have a multi-site brand chain of flower shops. And the potential returns (less than in my business plan) where not commensurate with the risks (more than in my business plan). So making the hard decision to stop pursuing this dream and to sell what I had built.

I was lucky – selling elegantly enough to make sure everyone was paid up, and putting a few quid back in the bank. And very lucky to have made two other investments at the same time, which paid out quickly and at very high returns.

But as soon as I made the decision, I felt like a failure. Hearing the whispers ‘I told you so’, ‘it was never going to work’, ‘why would you?’. I’d even written a column in the industry bible, ‘Retail Week’, so the story was as public as it could be in my industry.

Over the next few years hindsight provided clarity. It was the most useful two years I’ve had in my career. Much more so than any corporate management development programme and I understood more about myself and my capabilities than ever before.

I should’ve taken a less corporate, more experimental approach to understanding the flower market – that would have saved time and cash. But I have never regretted the experience, which opened many opportunities. I become an innovation consultant helping large business all around the world. And simultaneously a venture capitalist with a (unfortunately rare) empathy and understanding for what really makes a successful founder and the hurdles to overcome.

You might see others, but I see four take-outs from this tale:

1. Control the downside

Really understand how much you and the loved ones around you are willing to risk.

2. Run quick and cheap experiments on your proposition

Test your assumptions on the market, on the need you are looking to satisfy and on price as much as you can before you or others commit significant capital. (By the way – the book I wish had been published before I started a business is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. A bit biased to technology propositions but the principles are applicable for any new business.)

3. Embrace the learning mentality for you as an entrepreneur

Regardless of whether your business idea ‘fails’ (most do) or succeeds, make sure you examine and articulate the learnings that you have taken. These are the priceless return on the effort you have made and the risk you have taken.

4. The sky does not fall in

The UK is not as celebratory of entrepreneurial ‘failure’ as, say, the US. The media world over fixates on the exceptional stories of success. But beyond that there is fascination, interest and certainly no shame in the entrepreneurial journey regardless of whether is ends in riches or a plan B.

The post The importance of embracing experiments as a founder appeared first on Small Business UK.

Spending your seed capital on marketing? You need a plan

Matthew Cushen — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 09:00:00 +0000

By Matthew Cushen on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

We invest in businesses with the potential to build a ‘loved brand’. It doesn’t matter whether B2B or consumer, the ingredients for building a loved brand are similar: some kind of innovation that solves a need; a market within which there is room for the innovation to establish itself; getting the target audience to try the solution; then the consumer getting into a habit of continued use.

Most start-up businesses fixate on the innovation element – what is their product, service or experience. A good pitch will also bring to life the insight that got them there, to really help the investor to see the need and product/market fit. Some will do a good job of articulating the proposition and give confidence in the ability to engage the target consumer.

Where we are consistently disappointed is how seldom we see a joined-up marketing plan. A founder will often say that a large proportion of the hoped for investment will be spent on ‘marketing’ but without a plan that describes how. By the end of our distillation process, this is what Worth Capital hopes to have seen to give us confidence in a marketing plan.

1. Brand proposition

In essence, the story behind the brand you are hoping to establish – about your product or service, maybe about you and certainly about why people should care. A clear brand proposition will contain some form of:

· the purpose of the brand: for example, IKEA’s purpose it to ‘create a better everyday life for the many people’. A start-up’s brand is likely to (and should) be a little more focused to start with. Innocent Drinks’ is to ‘make natural, delicious and healthy drinks that help people live well and die old’. The purpose should define what you do – we exist to….? If you find that difficult, try defining what you don’t do, sometimes that marks businesses out from the competition. A purpose doesn’t need to be a perfectly crafted strap line, it is not likely to be seen by the public, but it should reflect what your business stands for.

· your target customer: who you think should notice and care about what you are offering – and why. The more focused this is the better. If you have several focused customer groups there should be a sense of priorities, possibly distinguishing between their value and the order in which you’ll go after them – these are not always the same.

For consumer businesses there is often a temptation to make customer segments all about demographics, e.g. ‘young Mums aged 25 to 34’. In our experience, and more so as traditional stereotypes break down, attitudes and behaviours are often more useful, e.g. ‘young at heart liberal minded women’. These lead you more directly to how and where you would target communications. It might help to create a pen portrait of your audience and mapping a day in their lives to tap into their mindset, attitudes and behaviours. It may also help you identify when are the best times to communicate with them throughout their day.

The target customer should link back to the product or service – how has it been designed to serve this market, or what purchase behaviours are there to illustrate the target consumer.

· what makes your business better than the competition: some will say your ‘Unique Selling Points (USPs)’ but, whatever you call them, what is it that makes you stand out from the crowd? Just having your wish list is not enough, you need to demonstrate what it is in your product, service or business model that will give consumers (and investors) the reason to believe you.

· what’s behind the name: if this is not perfectly obvious (usually a good place to be with a name) then what is the insight and logic behind your choice of name, including its relevance now and in the future?

· your tone of voice: the way you want to show up in front of your potential customers, the kind of language you would use, the style within which you’d want to communicate and the logic and insight behind them. If nothing has been created yet, this could be a mood board to illustrate the tone of voice. Whatever it is, this is a good time to make sure there is something that makes the brand feel real and tangible.

2. Communication plan

If the brand proposition should get everyone excited, the communication plan is about getting word out. This is always more difficult than anyone expects. Keep in mind that very (very) rarely does

anyone act on the first time they see a brand, it usually takes multiple and repeated interventions to influence consumer behaviour.

A decent communications plan will have lots of different activities and for each one:

· a description of the activities: e.g. conferences or LinkedIn advertising for a B2B business, Instagram advertising for a consumer eCommerce business. Think hard about whether the activity is going to make a difference, is it going to create a change in a consumer’s thinking or behaviour, is it going to help you stand out from the crowd?

· target audience: a description and a vague sense of the numbers – e.g. 15,000 first year students; 20,000 small businesses in Scotland.

· the expected impact: e.g. 3% click through, 200 footfall per day, 1% purchase.

· high level actions needed to make it happen – e.g. photography, copy, data analytics.

· any dependencies: i.e. couldn’t do before ‘such and such’ has happened.

· a first cheap and quick experiment to validate the potential: i.e. before significant effort and cost. This is most often overlooked, even by the biggest companies. What quick and dirty experiment can you run to validate that the investment is worth it, before spanking a whole lot of your marketing budget on a hope and a prayer?

· the cost: both in Sterling, but also in effort. With limited funds the choices you make to do something usually means a choice not to do something else.

· the return on investment: from the cost and the impact, e.g. this might be the cost per user acquired, or the cost of a average purchase.

Taking a step back and looking at this plan, and keeping it live through plenty of learning of what is working and not working, will lead to a clear sense of priorities and potential timings. So the plan becomes a schedule of activities that shows a considered level of communication across different customer groups. This can then be maintained as a rolling plan against which the success or failure of experiments and campaigns can be planned and monitored.

3. Consistency with the financial projections

Lastly we look for the investment needed in the communications plan to be in some way related to the projected marketing spend in the financial forecasts. So ideally there will be a spreadsheet element to the marketing plan that adds up the projected spend and expected impact over the course of the next, say, 12 months. Of course if the content of the communication plan would cost much more than the marketing spend forecasted then something is amiss. But more usually the content of the plan is much less than the projected spend on marketing, which suggests someone is making it up as they go along.

Then one point to note across all three components. No-one will expect a plan to be slavishly followed. The first plan is a starting point. It should be a solid foundation, but from which each component can be amended and finessed as more is learnt about the business, the brand, the customers and which communications channels are working well or not.

Related: Marketing a new business

The post Spending your seed capital on marketing? You need a plan appeared first on Small Business UK.

Former Start-Up Series winner discusses his next growth stage – Matthew Oldham, Unizest

Nick Ismail — Thu, 14 Oct 2021 09:27:39 +0000

By Nick Ismail on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

Following winning The Start-Up Series competition, Matthew Oldham from Unizest discusses how the business has shifted since winning the competition, the biggest growth challenges the business experienced, how to focus on the next funding round and provides his advice for entrepreneurs on the beginning of the start-up funding journeys.

Can you remind us what your company does and how the business has grown since you won the Start-Up Series and first received investment?

Unizest is an app-based current account designed for people coming to the UK to work or study. Without residential history it is very difficult to get a UK bank account. We work with recruitment and educational agencies to solve that problem for their candidates.

When we won the Start-Up Series we had a smart idea on a page! We are now a business with a product, partners and customers. We are live on both Apple Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android) as a downloadable app. Since going live with the iOS app in July, we have had over 1000 downloads. The investment has really helped us accelerate that development.

Our proposition is B2B2C: our partners – mainly recruitment agencies – promote Unizest through their channels to their customers. We have had to develop those partnerships through old fashioned sales work and by getting ourselves known in a sector that we did not know, through PR and social media. We have now got over 30 partners onboarded and actively promoting Unizest.

What has been your biggest challenge during the early stages of your venture and how has the support from Worth Capital helped the business grow?

One of the first sessions we had with Worth Capital was to work on our priorities. We had so many ideas of things we could do we had lost focus on what we should do. Matthew was able to challenge us really hard on what the most important things were to spend our time and money on. We had to be brutal as we only have limited resources.

I imagine that is fairly common in early-stage businesses – we were running ahead of ourselves and needed to anchor ourselves to some core deliverables. Having a trusted external voice leading us through that was incredibly useful.

All the sessions we have had as a team with Worth have been enjoyable and challenging in equal measure. On some occasions we have been questioned hard and prompted to act. On other occasions we have just been encouraged – sometimes you don’t see your own success milestones because you are too close to them.

You’re now in a position where your business requires more funding. Tell us about how you’ve prepared for this funding round and how you are going to approach it.

The “special sauce” in our business model is the promise of acquiring costumers for low or no costs by utilising partner channels: solving a problem for the partner as well as the end customer. That is great on paper, but can we evidence that?

That has been our primary focus in preparing for more funding – proving the model. To do this we have spent as much, if not more time developing the acquisition partnerships as we have building the product. Any investor looking to invest in us this time around will be asking whether the business model works. We have made sure we have plenty of evidence to show that it does.

Our long-term objective is to develop a loved brand. That takes years, but we have worked hard on developing a presence through target PR and social media. Since May we have had over 150,000 page views of articles and related posts and we have well over 15,000 social media followers. In doing this we have aimed to evidence in the short term what we will achieve over time.

We believe that Unizest is a considered solution to a scaled problem. We have a good “story so far” in evidencing our business model and showing strong momentum for future growth. Our approach will be to tell that story clearly and concisely with a view to finding a partner who shares our ambition.

What have you learned since your first funding round and what advice would you give to other founders embarking on their start-up funding journeys?

I wouldn’t want to give advice as I feel I am still driving with “L” plates. I could maybe give myself some advice for our next growth phase based on the experiences since our first funding round:

1. Things take longer than you planned – don’t be too reliant on other people’s promises

2. Money goes quicker than you think! – be sensible and realistic

3. Speak less and listen more: we have great advisors – ask for help!

4. #Startuplife can be all consuming – make sure you have time out for yourself and your [family/wife/partner/dog]

5. Don’t be scared to ask “what does that mean?” when faced with new investment terminology – they won’t think you are stupid

6. Chose every employee with care – just because they are prepared to work for your crazy start-up doesn’t mean they will help!

7. It is sometimes hard to realise when you have achieved something – celebrate small steps with gusto!

8. Be careful making hasty decisions about things that could save money or time – they could backfire

9. Get your Data story sorted early – how you are going to collect it and how you are going to use it

10. Make sure you enjoy it – this is the most fun you will have in your career!

The post Former Start-Up Series winner discusses his next growth stage – Matthew Oldham, Unizest appeared first on Small Business UK.

What’s your favourite innovation – a VC’s advice to founders

Matthew Cushen — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 09:08:04 +0000

By Matthew Cushen on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

Being an innovation consultant helping large businesses to invent new stuff (one half of my life), the occupational hazard is the go-to small talk question – “what’s your favourite innovation?”

I always turn it around on the questioner. About 50% of the time the answer is the iPhone, another 45% of the time it is some other consumer product. The innovations that we touch, see and use in our everyday lives. Often characterised by design innovation.

But those aren’t the ones that turn me on. Instead of the iPhone (beautifully designed and functioning yes, but still just an evolution in mobile phones) for me it is the App Store that was Steve Jobs’ real genius, the unlock to endless functionality, recurring income for Apple and the real reason why for many people it would be a hard choice to give up their phone or their right arm.

If you are wondering, my most admired innovation starts with the ‘Starvationer’ (an 18th century boat with 10 wooden containers transporting coal) but really comes to fruition in the late 1960s in a moment of international co-operation that saw the birth of the modern shipping container and the boats, trains, trucks and cranes that handle them.

Modern intermodal containers and the global trade they facilitate and make efficient (i.e. cheaper) have changed our world – creating wealth in developing countries, access to an unimaginable variety of product the world over, whole industries, workforces and geographies changed. In 2019 there were 800 million TEU shipments (TEU being the ‘twenty-foot equivalent unit’ that the industry uses to describe a standard container size). Take a moment to visualise that (it staggers me to think that is one for only every 9 ½ people in the world). If you must use the overused word ‘disruptive’, the shipping container is truly a disruptive technology.

Incidentally, this is also something we take for granted at our peril. As the Economist reported a couple of weeks ago, the average cost of shipping a standard large container (a 40-foot-equivalent unit, or FEU) has surpassed $10,000, four times higher than a year ago. Yet another new supply chain friction that will take a while to work its way through.

The app store and the shipping container are both operating model innovations. Creating access, efficiency &/or value behind the scenes.

In the other half of my life I’m an investor and help start-ups to gain a foothold and start to grow. My advice for founders is to spend as much some thinking about the innovation of your business model and commercial model, as you do on innovating those things that the consumer sees.

For example, one of our portfolio companies — Bedfolk. A beautiful proposition with a strong brand story coming together and stunning product (sleep in their linen bedding and realise it’s the everyday luxury you didn’t know you needed). Two super smart, curious founders who execute tenaciously and are impatient to find the next improvement to their business. So I love seeing their 5 star reviews, looking at the sales numbers, the constant stream of incremental improvements to their copy, tone of voice, marketing and website and seeing them gain confidence to make bolder hiring choices and bolder investments. But the thing that gave me the goosebumps was when they spent a weekend with a hammer and saw.

Imagery is an important part of their marketing playbook – driving strong conversion and returns from Facebook and Instagram. But photography is expensive and cramming it into a make or break one or two day shoot is stressful and inflexible. So when Jo & Nick recently moved into their new fulfilment centre in Cheltenham they built a mezzanine level photography studio – complete with a mobile second wall to create different room styles. This gives them stronger and more frequent content at a much lower cost.

Like the app store and the shipping container, a backstage innovation that delivers competitive advantage. What could yours be?

The post What’s your favourite innovation – a VC’s advice to founders appeared first on Small Business UK.

Former Start-Up Series winner discusses his next funding round – Ed Bird, Bird Eyewear

Nick Ismail — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 09:00:00 +0000

By Nick Ismail on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

Following winning The Start-Up Series competition, Ed Bird from Bird Eyewear discusses how the business has shifted since winning the competition, the biggest growth challenges the business experienced, how to focus on the next funding round and provides his advice for entrepreneurs on the beginning of the start-up funding journeys.

Can you remind us what your company does and how the business has shifted since you won the Start-Up Series and first received investment?

We make beautiful sustainable eyewear – creating exceptional designs and focusing obsessively on quality. For us it’s about reframing what really matters; people and planet. Firstly, seeking out the best sustainable materials for our frames, including certified woods, bio-based acetate, renewable cork and recycled aluminium.

We also ensure that every pair of Birds gives back through our Share Your Sun partnership with SolarAid. Helping to distribute solar light to families in Zambia and Malawi, replacing the use of fossil fuel burning lamps.

Since winning the Start-Up Series we’ve developed and improved almost every part of the brand, from changing our domain name and social media handles, to changing web-platform, product iterations, brand styling and more. Some of these shifts have been larger than others, but each one has had a positive impact. It’s all added up to give us a really strong 2021 year with thousands of happy customers.

What has been your biggest challenge during the early stages of your venture and how has the support from Worth Capital helped the business grow?

Team capacity has been a big challenge, along with some product supply shortages (although linked to strong sales, so we’ll take the good with the bad!).

We also had some online challenges in the early days, and with more consumers turning to online shopping, we’ve focused on this and implemented our virtual try-on and home try-on services which have been a great success.

As an early stage team we’re often sharing a lot of the day-to-day work so when things got busy it could be overwhelming knowing what to prioritise. Thankfully, we’ve had some great support from Worth Capital and guidance which came at the right time to

boost our strategy. We’ve now tripled our team size and have a really solid foundation for growth.

You’re now in a position where your business requires more funding. Tell us about how you’ve prepared for this funding round and how you are going to approach it.

Yes, we’ve built a lot from a little and are now looking to build on our early success. The eyewear market is changing along with consumer buying habits and what people expect from brands. These days it’s as much about the company and brand story as it is about the products.

We’ve positioned ourselves at the forefront of this change, both as a company and the products we make. For example, in 2020, we became the first B Corp certified eyewear brand in the UK. This means we’ve been verified to meet the highest standards of social and environmental impact; something that resonates with consumers.

We’ve built this sustainability model into everything that we do. Thanks to our recent work on our supply chain and our carbon reduction through SolarAid, we are now a carbon negative company with fully mapped and detailed carbon emissions. For us, this is just the start of an on-going drive to improve our products and create better eyewear for a better world.

We’ve done a lot of market testing, and have a solid playbook to move forward with, which includes profitable economics and building on and leveraging technology for an ever-better consumer experience, plus plenty more innovative products in the pipeline.

We’re speaking with investors already and have our investor deck and financials ready to view. Our goal is to raise circa £300K to propel us into an even stronger market position and a category defining brand.

What have you learned since your first funding round and what advice would you give to other founders embarking on their start-up funding journeys?

We’ve come a long way since our first funding round, our business has changed in lots of ways, but always for the better thanks to the support we’ve had.

Advice and guidance is crucial, and we’d definitely recommend surrounding yourself with a strong advisory team. Develop a thoughtful strategy which you can grow into (or outgrow if needed). You need to be flexible as you grow so being open to new ideas and innovative changes will always aid your progress.

The post Former Start-Up Series winner discusses his next funding round – Ed Bird, Bird Eyewear appeared first on Small Business UK.

The Start-Up Series competition is back — a chance to secure up to £250,000 in equity funding

Nick Ismail — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 10:05:00 +0000

By Nick Ismail on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

The Start-Up-Series competition is back after a month’s holiday!

The Start-Up Series is the UK’s largest seed funding and mentoring competition. Launched in 2016 by Worth Capital, the competition searches for the brightest entrepreneurs with the smartest ideas and invests real cash into promising start-up businesses. So far, the competition has invested more than £4.2m into over 20 young UK businesses.

The competition will run from the 1st to the 14th of each month.

The Start-Up Series competition

Each month one or two winners will be selected to receive package consisting of:

• Up to £250,000 of SEIS/EIS equity funding (subject to due-diligence, terms & conditions).

• A minimum of 2 years invaluable hands-on help from experienced mentors.

• Media coverage on smallbusiness.co.uk and other channels to promote your business.

We are on the hunt for B2B or B2C business across all sectors. As long as your business is eligible for SEIS or EIS HMRC advance assurance, then we’ll consider your application.

We’ll be impressed by innovative products or services, in high growth or underserved markets, with the  potential to build a loved brand. If you can demonstrate these, you’re in with a fighting chance.

So far, the competition has invested over £4.2m into 20 young UK businesses.

The Start-Up Series is particularly proud of the diverse spread of businesses that this funding has reached. Typically, only 9% of early stage funding goes to businesses with a female founder* and only 35% is invested into businesses outside of the London & South East ‘bubble’**.

However, the Start-Up Series has bucked these numbers, with 40% of our winners having a female founder and 60% of the funding heading outside London. Whilst the are no benchmarks published on how much of the UK’s funding goes to businesses with a BAME founder, we expect the Start-Up Series, at 19%, is better represented.

“As two immigrant female founders we feel the subconscious bias in the world of the white male oxford graduate the moment we walk through the doors of some investors,” said Randa Bennett, co-founder at VeeLoop – a previous winner of the Series.

“Even though Worth Capital don’t promote themselves as investors in female founders, our pre-application research quickly showed they invested in more female founders than many female only VC’s! We really liked that about them and pushed us to apply.”

How it works: Below, we’ll introduce you to Worth Capital and its team, explain the eligibility and terms of the competition, how to enter and highlight the frequently asked questions.

1. Worth Capital

Worth Capital was formed by entrepreneurs with experience in starting, growing and selling small businesses.

Along with securing investment, Worth Capital helps new entrepreneurs accelerate their growth. Founders, Paul Soanes and Matthew Cushen are experienced entrepreneurs, innovators, and marketers and, along with investing themselves, have a track record of rolling their sleeves up to help.

Worth Capital’s partner, Amersham Investment Management, is the fund manager for the Start-Up Series Fund, which invests in the winning businesses. The fund is eligible for Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) investments and is fully compliant with the rules that financial services firms have to abide by.

The Worth Capital team

Among other ventures,  Paul Soanes  started experiential agency iD in 1994 with just £2,000. It has since billed £100m-plus, with the likes of Unilever and Britvic on its client list.

Promotional space media owner Brandspace – another of his agencies – operated from 1,000-plus venues such as airports and railway stations and was sold to Octopus Ventures in 2008.

Matthew Cushen  is a successful investor, his first investment delivered 8 x his initial stake in four years. He’s a retailer by trade, having worked with Virgin Retail and the John Lewis Partnership. He subsequently became an innovation consultant, and still advises major global businesses, including IKEA, AB InBev and Waitrose. Each month, Matthew shares his thoughts on raising funding – and other valuable advice for entrepreneurs growing their businesses – in his blog posts.

Hayley Etherington  spent eight years at a leading marketing agency, working for global brands such as Nespresso, L’Oreal and Philip Morris, as well as helping start-ups to gain traction in cluttered markets. Her wealth of experience brings a diverse set of skills, also adding great value to the various start-ups Worth Capital invests in.

“Paul’s wealth of experience as an entrepreneur creates for an accomplished sounding board to refine our ideas and concepts into laser focus plans which enables us as a business to move quicker and zero in on our key objectives,” said Daniel Verblis, founder of The Moving Home Warehouse, a previous winner of the competition.

“His many years of experience and knowledge means that he gets the business almost before we do. We can tap into this wisdom when required which has been invaluable to us beyond what most start-ups would otherwise have access to which gives us the competitive edge.”

2. Eligibility & terms

The Start-Up Series is for very early stage and growth businesses, even including pre or early stage revenue.

The investment into the winners comes from an EIS & SEIS Fund, therefore the businesses who are considering entering need to satisfy the following criteria set by HMRC:

• You must be a UK resident and run a UK-based business.

• You must be over 18 years old at the time of entry.

• Certain financial services and property businesses are unlikely to qualify.

The investment is made from The Start-Up Series Fund which is FCA-regulated. Typically, the Fund will invest £150,000 of funding allowed for SEIS qualifying businesses, and then make follow-on investments from the fund as the business grows. For more mature EIS qualifying businesses, the Fund may invest up to £250,000. This could be as the sole investor leading an investment round, or alongside other institutional investors.

Winners of the competition will be giving away equity in their business in exchange for investment from the Fund, so it’s important that you and any other shareholders in the business are comfortable with this. In addition to the Fund equity, Worth Capital will take up to a 7% share option in your business. All terms of the investment deal will depend on the maturity of your business and will be negotiated with you individually if you reach the later stages of the competition.

You do not have to pay to enter the competition, but certain investment fees will apply if you win the competition. These fees can be paid for from the investment.

Full terms and conditions can be found on the monthly competition entry page when the competition opens each month.

“The Start-Up Series felt like a good fit for us. We liked that the platform was accessible and open to many types of businesses and it was clear that there was wide range of companies in the portfolio. This indicated to us there was a good level of experience and support across industries, just what you need for building a brand on and offline,” added Ed Bird, co-founder at Bird Sunglasses, another previous winner of the competition.

Businesses that apply to The Start-Up Series competition could receive up to £250,000 in equity funding and a minimum of two years invaluable mentorship.[/caption]

3. How to enter

The competition will be open from the 1st — 14th of every month for online applications and we’ve made it deliberately easy to enter.

• All applicants:

We initially ask for just a few details, and a two-minute video and/or a two-page document telling us about your business. We purposely don’t ask for too much information to begin with – we want to see how quickly and easily you can get us excited about investing in you and your start-up.

• Selected qualifiers:

If we like what we see, you’ll progress to the next round where, as a Qualifier, you’ll be asked to complete a more detailed online application. That’s when we’ll really dig into the detail and ask questions on your team, financials history/projections, market and more. Our judges will regroup and review all Qualifiers before deciding who we like the sound of. The competition then moves off-line, and we’ll arrange interviews with those who have made the shortlist. We give each qualifier feedback after this stage.

• The few finalists:

The final stage of the competition gets more intense. We’ll invite the founding teams of the finalists to meet with us for half a day for a ‘deep dive’ (this may take place virtually depending on the restraints caused by Covid-19). This is where we’ll get to know one another, understand more about your market and proposition, stress-test your business plans, identify where Worth Capital can help and discuss the terms of the investment.

If we conclude we’d be able to help and would like to invest we make a commercial recommendation to the Fund Manager. They will review our recommendation & carry out further due diligence. Once this has all been passed, the investment can be made.

A further competition winner, Andy Roberts, founder and CEO at Weekly10, commented: “Our deep dive with Paul and Matthew was a highlight of the competition for us. During the four-hour meeting not only did Paul and Matthew get a good understanding of the business, we received detailed feedback and insight based on their extensive business experience.

“Co-founder Alistair and I came away with some great ideas on how we could refine both the product and our business model, which regardless of whether we won the competition would give the business a real boost.”

4. Frequently asked questions

How soon after entering do winners receive the investment?

We make investments from the Start-Up Series Fund into the winners in tranches which usually consists of 3-4 businesses at any one time. This allows investors to receive a diversified mini-portfolio of investments. We aim to close a tranche at least 3 or 4 times a year, however this depends on the cash coming into the Fund from investors.

Are your terms negotiable?

Yes and no. Terms such business valuations and the Worth Capital option depend on the maturity of the business and the level of funding required, all of which will be discussed with applicants during the later stages of the competition. However terms such as the investment fees are set at an industry standard and are unlikely to be negotiated.

Why does Worth Capital take up to a 7% option in the winners?

This is the incentive for Worth Capital to be involved, and it is structured to keep Worth Capital’s interests aligned with their investors and the businesses that are funded. Everyone benefits from using Worth Capital’s experience to grow the businesses towards a valuable exit. Note, this option is negotiated, it will be higher for the earliest stage businesses and can be lower for more valuable maturing businesses.

I just want the cash investment, do I still have to pay for mentoring?

Yes. We make a promise to our investors to keep close to all investee companies for the first couple of years of their growth. We keep an eye on how the investment is being spent and roll-up our sleeves when help is needed. Therefore, the terms of the investment mean that someone from the Worth Capital team takes a Board seat in each investee company. The terms of this directorship may be negotiated with much later-stage, EIS businesses (for example if there is already an experienced non-executive director involved). The value of having Worth Capital involved, should be clear by the end of the competition process, if it’s not then they wouldn’t look to invest.

How do I know if I am SEIS or EIS eligible?

Even if you have not yet been granted SEIS or EIS Advanced Assurance from HMRC you can still apply to the competition, but it’s up to you to ensure you meet the criteria before you enter. We are unable to give advice on this for each applicant, therefore we recommend that you check the likelihood of getting Advanced Assurance with either your accountant, a handling agent or HMRC themselves.

Will I receive feedback on my application?

Due to the volume of applications we receive each month, we are unable to provide feedback to each applicant at the entry stage. However, if you’re selected as a Qualifier and go on to submit a Qualifier application, which sees you put in more effort, you’ll be provided with feedback as to how we viewed your business idea and its attractiveness to investors.

________________________________________________________________

* Source: The Deal, Beauhurst, February 2020

** Source: HMRC Enterprise Investment Scheme, Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme and Social Investment Tax Relief, May 2020.

The post The Start-Up Series competition is back — a chance to secure up to £250,000 in equity funding appeared first on Small Business UK.

New small business strategic challenge or the same one in disguise?

Matthew Cushen — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 10:02:20 +0000

By Matthew Cushen on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

It’s a long while since I was defined by a sector. These days I invest in businesses across all sectors. The only commonality being a compelling new insight, room in a market for a new proposition to grow (because the market is highly fragmented and/or high growth) and the potential to build a loved brand – which is as likely to be B2B as consumer.

But a long time ago I was defined as a retailer. Inevitable given a childhood growing up in a Post Office in sleepy Devon and skiving off school to man the shop when Mum & Dad had a rare holiday. From there I helped set up the first overseas Virgin Megastore (yes Virgin used to sell records – and cassette tapes!). Then looked after a big chunk of Woolworths, redesigned the John Lewis supply chain and helped set up a huge retail business in India – in one year we built 800 supermarkets and 50 hypermarkets. So reminiscing finds two retailers that no longer exist, one in the department store space that is having an existential crisis and one that is growing hugely. (Amazon invested in that Indian business this year – at a valuation of US$56 billion.)

You don’t need another article pointing out the shift from physical to online retail. But I am going to use it as an analogy for thinking about how technology is changing all businesses, and ever more rapidly, whilst leaving the heart of the business challenge the same.

My affinity with retail boiled down to being close to the customer and it being a simple game – buy some stuff and then sell it for more than you bought it for. The three principle drivers of operating profit were gross margin, rent & staff wages.

Rent was the price to pay to put your brand in front of consumers. The higher & more affluent the footfall, the higher the rent. And it is this element of the equation where the wheels have come off – with rents falling out of kilter with the footfall.

Online retail, eCommerce or direct to consumer, replaces rent with digital marketing as the price to pay to put a brand in front of consumers. With an advantage of being much more directly measurable and attributable to revenue – so resulting in a specific and measurable customer acquisition cost (CAC).

It fascinates me that I often find a blinkered obsession with CAC amongst eCommerce investors – much more than rent was considered by physical retailers. Sure CAC is a hugely important indicator of profit potential. If the brand cannot find a route to get CAC below the profit contribution it makes from a customer then it will never be profitable. But therein lies the challenge – there is much more to the profitability equation than just CAC. There is contribution which is a factor of gross margin, fulfilment costs and the blended margin. There is the average transaction value – which can be driven by different products and better selling & conversion within a transaction. There is the number of times a customer buys – which can be a factor of propensity to repeat purchase the category and loyalty to the individual brand.

The last year of lockdowns has given physical retail even more headwinds, with minimal and often no footfall, whilst giving a significant tailwind to online retail. The last few months has been interesting, as physical stores opened up and co-incidentally the digital marketing environment has become more difficult. A couple of months ago the change to Apple’s operating system created some privacy & data opt-in obstacles and more generally the cost of Facebook and Instagram adverts have increased across most sectors. CAC has been rising for most online retailers. Resulting in the need for balanced thinking. Just because CAC has risen in the short term doesn’t mean the business should be panicking. It is however a useful catalyst for examining all digital marketing channels (including broadening from the house of Zuckerberg). Then all the other levers that can be pulled – e.g. new product development to drive repeat rate, direct mail to drive frequency. And who knows, maybe some pure digital brands might consider some physical retail – rents have recently started to become much more attractive and for many that CAC might make sense.

So, to the wider point here. Business context changes rapidly – often due to technology, but sometimes also resulting from other big behavioural changes with your customers. Frequently this creates a new way of doing things and new measures of success. Whilst responding to those changes, it is worth remembering that your fundamental underlying strategic challenges are unlikely to have changed. Whilst others might obsess about the new, you may get advantage from stepping back and reconsidering some of the traditional ways of creating value & profit.

The post New small business strategic challenge or the same one in disguise? appeared first on Small Business UK.

Winning the Start-Up Series – Mathew Norbury, FC Labs

Tim Adler — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 14:04:04 +0000

By Tim Adler on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

When it comes to building and construction, safety is paramount. The slightest misstep or lapse of concentration can cause injury or even death. Just imagine the damage a crane operator can cause if they have a momentary lapse or close their eyes for just one second.

That’s the problem that Mathew Norbury and his team at FC Laboratories have been working on. FC Labs has been developing wearable brain imaging technology which can be worn on its own, with other headgear or implanted in a hardhat. This wearable technology tells the user if their attention is dropping or if they need to take a break.

And this kind of wearable brain imaging technology has lots of other applications as well, from NHS hospital staff being told that it’s time for them to rest through to currency traders in the City being alerted that their split-second judgement is below par.

FC Labs founder and CEO Mathew Norbury talks about why he felt it worthwhile entering the Start-Up Series competition even though his wearable technology was only at an early proof of concept stage, key milestones over the coming year, and why having mentorship is so important.

Tell us about your background as a tech entrepreneur

My original background was in marketing, which I pretty much fell into coming out of university, going on to develop a 20 odd year career and eventually running my own agency.

About five years ago, I decided I wanted to stretch my legs beyond the agency world and I got into various consultancy roles, some pro bono with charities and not-for-profits, others mentoring with start-ups in a number of sectors, including tech. That’s really where my exposure to the tech start-up world began. One of those start-ups was looking at EEG technology (measuring electrical activity in the brain), exposing me to the broad world of wearable brain imaging which FC Labs now specialises in (though using very different technology, which we believe is more appropriate for reliable, practical, cost-effective real-world applications than EEG).

‘Tech founders have become the new rock stars’

What is wearable brain imaging?

Wearable brain imaging is a broad term for a number of different technologies. There are various ways to essentially look at what’s going on inside your head. You’re really looking at a brain activity or activation of certain areas of the brain in different ways. You can measure certain waves and frequencies of electrical activity in the brain and infer things like levels of focus or mental fatigue.

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy, which is what FC Labs works with, looks at blood flow and blood oxygenation and deoxygenation levels. Essentially what we measure is how hard an area of the brain has been asked to work. So, if you are being asked to focus intently on something, for example, then lots of oxygenated blood will be sent to that particular brain area.

There are not many devices measuring brain activity that are genuinely wearable. Those that do exist are bulky, with separate battery packs for example and could be described as portable rather than wearable. What we’re working on is a wear-and-forget solution. A lot of what we’re doing to achieve that is around miniaturising the hardware and minimising the number of sensors, focusing in on just the specific areas of the brain relevant to what we want to measure. Something approaching the quantity and quality of data that an MRI scan would give you, for example, is not really that practical to walk around with. By reducing the number of sensors, miniaturising them, as we are with our first device, Float, by just focusing on mental attention with a single sensor, we can achieve a genuinely ‘wear and forget’ solution.

What’s the first sector that you’re concentrating on with the Float technology?

The first sector we’re addressing is what we’ve defined as the hardhat market, including industries such as construction, engineering, oil & gas, infrastructure, forestry and mining. The hard hat is an indicator of a high degree of risk, obviously, but also allows us to embed our technology in something workers are already putting on their heads. If you’re asking somebody to wear something that they’re not already wearing, that’s a barrier to adoption. You just put your hard hat on as you normally would, make sure our device is switched on, and beyond that, it’s wear and forget. We’re trying to remove all of the traditional barriers to adoption of new technology in sectors such as construction and engineering, which have traditionally been quite resistant to new tech, particularly technology like this. But that’s changing, at quite a pace, particularly because we’ve all become so used wearable technology in our personal lives.

We’re all far more interested than we were five or 10 years ago as to what’s going on in our own bodies. We have devices that you wear on your wrist like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch, which claim to have some insight into what’s going on inside our heads, which to a degree they can, making inferences from temperature, movement, blood flow, pulse, heart rate, those sorts of things. But ultimately, if it’s a function of the brain, like sleep or mental attention, unless you’re measuring what’s going on inside the brain, you’re really just guessing.

What does the Float hardhat tell me if I’m wearing the technology?

Think of it like a canary down a coal mine. We’re aiming to give an early warning of when mental attention levels are either declining or lapsing to a degree which could be of concern. We’re not trying to diagnose what’s causing loss of attention. We’re just trying to identify when mental attention might be declining or lapsing to a point that it may cause an accident or an error.

The data could be tracked long term to identify optimum shift patterns, for example. Everybody has different circadian rhythms. Some people work better in the morning, some people work better in the afternoon. We can help to identify the working patterns which produce the optimum productivity and mental wellness ultimately for workers.

What other areas could you see Float being used in?

We’ve had discussions with healthcare where we were initially thinking of those high-risk roles such as surgeons or anaesthetists where, if they if they make a mistake, then the results could be catastrophic.

Interestingly the healthcare sector was far more interested in how our tech could give people insights into how their mental attention levels are changing over time, driving behavioural change, encouraging them to just be more aware, to self-manage potential fatigue issues by taking rest periods for example, as well as providing management with data to optimise shift patterns and productivity.

Other people have approached us and said this could be really good for something like banking or financial services.

Call centres are another interesting one where it can be a pretty stressful environment. You have to deal with complaints and callers aren’t going to be particularly happy if you’re getting tired and not paying them enough attention. The level of service customer service then drops. Being able to identify when certain people might need to take a break and prompting them to do so is something call centres have expressed an interest in.

At what stage is FC Labs now?

Right now, we’re finalising what we’re calling our research unit. We’ve designed and manufactured our own sensors, which can be connected together in any quantity or configuration and positioned in specific locations on the head using a neoprene cap. This allows us to carry out experiments to identify the best position for collecting the data we need for FLOAT. This work should be completed by the end of August, after which we move into a 12-month project with the University of Stirling to develop our first fully functional prototype. We aim to go out start pilot projects with industry partners by the end of 2022 and then fully launch in early 2023.

What was it that appealed to you about the Start-up Series competition? Why did you decide to enter?

The simplicity of the process was incredibly attractive. I had been aware of the Start-up Series for a number of years. I’ve known people who’ve applied, some who were successful, some not. I’d heard very good things. When it came to looking for our first external funding, the Start-Up Series was right up there for me.

For a start, the process was so simple and approachable compared to many others. I approached taking on external investors for the first time with an amount of trepidationSo much VC investment seems deliberately intimidating. Partly it’s because of the cult of personality that has grown up around some tech founders, who have become the new rock stars in recent years. The performance element of pitching for investment in some of these competitions, the flamboyance of many of those succeeding was somewhat off-putting. My attitude is if you’ve got the idea and the team and the talent, a lack of experience behind a mic on a big stage shouldn’t be something which holds you back.

Apart from investment, the Start-up Series also offers mentorship and a peer network. How important was that for you?

Having that support is fantastic. Paul and Matthew’s backgrounds and experience were really appealing in terms of entering the Start-Up Series. Being a founder and entrepreneur can be quite a lonely existence at times, even when you have a fantastic team as we do at FC Labs. This tech start-up world is still relatively new to me, so having a team like Worth Capital to steer me in the right direction is great. If you’ve got any questions, any concerns, it’s a real comfort to have them close on hand and that really gives me confidence in the future of FC Labs.

What advice would you have for anybody thinking of entering the Start-Up Series?

Just go for it, don’t think twice. The I know that the Worth Capital team – Hayley, Paul and Matthew – will be more than happy to chat if you’re unsure whether you’re ready or not. Just speak to them. If you’ve got an idea, if they like the sound of it, then there’s that support, even at the early stage. And I’d be delighted to chat to anybody who’s thinking about it, as well.

Now that you’re a Start-Up Series winner, what milestones would you like FC Labs to hit over the coming year?

The two key milestones we’re focused on just now are completing the testing and validation of our research unit by the end of August. We then commence the 12 month project to develop our fully functional, looks-like works-like prototype, the delivery of which will be a huge milestone for us.

The Start-Up Series competition

The Series opens for applications every month, with the aim to select one or two winners to receive:

• Up to £250,000 of SEIS/EIS equity funding (subject to due-diligence, terms & conditions).

• A minimum of 2 years invaluable hands-on help from experienced & battle-scarred entrepreneurs

• Media coverage on smallbusiness.co.uk & other channels to promote your business & follow your journey.

We are on the hunt for B2B or B2C business across all sectors. As long as your business is eligible for SEIS or EIS HMRC advance assurance, then we’ll consider your application.

We’ll be impressed by innovative products or services, in high growth or underserved markets, with the potential to build a loved brand. If you can demonstrate these, you’re in with a fighting chance.

Because the investment will come from an EIS & SEIS FCA regulated fund, businesses who are considering entering need to satisfy the following criteria set by HMRC:

• You must be a UK resident and run a UK-based business

• You must be over 18 years old at the time of entry

• Certain financial services and property businesses are unlikely to qualify.

Find out how to enter The Start-Up Series here

Winning the Start-Up Series – Carrie Davies, ONE Essentials

Small Business Team — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 11:06:46 +0000

By Small Business Team on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

In Britain, we throw away 350,000 tonnes of old clothes each year, which means nearly one third of our unwanted clothing goes to landfill, according to charity Clothes Aid.

Globally, an estimated 92m tonnes of textile waste is created each year, the equivalent of a dustcart full of clothes being buried in landfill each and every second.

By 2030, the world is expected to be throwing away 134m tonnes of textiles a year.

Indeed, the whole fashion industry accounts for 10 per cent of global emissions once you to take production, manufacturing and wholesale into account.

It’s something former Barbour and Monsoon designer Carrie Davies was determined do something about. Starting with underwear, tee-shirts and sweatshirts, her sustainable fashion brand One Essentials uses an equal split of recycled and organic new cotton to manufacture garments. Even better, she offers to take back her brand’s worn-out items and recycle into them into fresh products. It’s a virtuous circle concept that is taking root in business.

Here, Davies explains what’s wrong with fast fashion, what makes One Essentials unique and why she’s not afraid to admit her weaknesses.

Tell me about your background as a woman’s clothing designer

I’ve been working in the fashion industry for about 13 years now as a designer and consultant mainly for lifestyle brands in the UK. I’ve worked for Barbour and Monsoon and Crew and I started my career at Debenhams. I’ve also worked as a consultant as part of the Central Saint Martin’s design agency as well as some other agencies based here in London. So I’ve had kind of a broad portfolio as a multiproduct designer covering lots of categories, specialising in denim and casual wear.

What’s the gap in the market? What’s the problem ONE Essentials is trying to solve?

It’s quite interesting when people talk about ‘gap in the market’ because you kind of presume that there’s a space in the fashion industry so overcrowded. Actually, there’s not a lot of space for more businesses but there’s a lot of space for businesses that are doing better.

There’s so much that’s inherently wrong with how the fashion industry has worked for decades. Whether that’s from manufacturing and how we process things through to our disposable culture, where there’s no value on any of the products that are created. And we’ve totally lost any sort of tangible link to how much something should cost or based on how long it would take to make or the cost of a resource. If you can buy a tee-shirt for a pound, there is something really wrong. I think the whole system really needs to change. And that’s where One Essentials started. There’s a huge problem throughout the whole process from the consumer and the manufacturing side, the whole thing. So for me, that’s where it started. How can we fix that and to create a brand that would show that you can do it better?

Explain the One Essentials brand to me

With One Essentials we look at basically reducing our environmental impact from the off. And one of the things that I’m personally really passionate about is looking at the end-of-life-use case of our clothing. Because we have this disposable culture, so much of a product that just ends up in landfill. Even if you think you’re doing something good and taking it to a charity shop, the likelihood is that doesn’t stay in the charity shop very long. If it’s not sold, it goes to another distributor and ends up in landfill, not here, but in other parts of the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s just a really abusive system. And that throwaway culture is something that I think it’s going to be difficult to change. It’s a long-term game.

The question I wanted to ask was, what the end-of-life use case for everything that we create? So I set up One Essentials as a circular business. We have a take-back scheme embedded in our own products, so we’ll take all of them back. And we take responsibility for disposing of those products in the right way.

Underwear is a highly disposable item as there’s no resale market. Generally people buy their underwear and keep it until the point where they’re a bit embarrassed about it, so they put in the bin. And then it ends up in landfill.

We’re also selling tee-shirts and sweatshirts, which again we will recycle using fabric to fibre recycling methods as they’re not a blended fibre. One of the things that’s really important to me is building in recycled materials, reducing our need for virgin resources from the off. So our tee-shirt, for example, is 50 per cent recycled and 50 per cent organic cotton. And hopefully, we’ll also be repurposing our tee-shirts back into new fibres and fabrics when they come back to us. So we’re trying to build into the end-of-life-use cases of what we create, so that we’re building into the new circular economy. It’s all a very new space, hopefully reducing the environmental impact of the garments as we’re creating it, but also the environmental impact of the garment throughout its lifespan.

What’s been the biggest challenge in getting One Essentials to where it is now?

The biggest challenge for me has been Covid. We manufacture in Portugal and I’ve never had to wait so long for samples. The factory in Portugal that’s working with is fantastic. It’s somebody that I’ve worked with before. But I’ve also very used to being able to get out to a factory if there’s a problem and of course you can’t go there. So everybody’s learning how to work remotely, and factories are having to learn how to work where they’ve got staff on shift patterns. And you know, we’re a start-up, we’re not placing huge orders while they’ve got bigger customers and clients to fulfil. Covid has meant a real struggle to get things to market. I was hoping to bring the brand to market earlier on this year, but realistically now we’re going to launch in September.

Also, one of the biggest challenges was massively underestimating the complexity of underwear. I thought it was going to be really simple. I mean, it’s only a bit of fabric, some elastic. How wrong was I? You can make the biggest change by changing just a few millimetres, which can affect the whole garment. It was a very big learning curve for me.

What made you decide to enter The Start-up Series competition, what was it that appealed to you?

I like that the Start-Up Series was an open call. So there wasn’t a smokescreen. You didn’t need to chase down emails to investors or try and find an advisor who had a bank of investors or know a contact who’s got a family fund.

Also they were open to pre-trade and pre-revenue applications, which was important to me. We were in a global pandemic and I was a fashion designer, and there’s not a lot of need for a fashion designer in a global pandemic! I really needed investment to come into the business before I could even launch. So to find a competition or even a fund that was willing to invest in pre-trade and pre-revenue fashion retail business was a was quite a feat. It was definitely a great opportunity for me.

Another thing that I liked was that Worth Capital had a lot of direct-to-consumer brands within their portfolio. So I knew that they had experience in that space, and they would understand kind of the complexities and difficulties of trading retail. And they weren’t going to be surprised coming into a retail business. Because they’d already done it, it was all a really good mix for me.

Apart from funding, The Start-Up Series also offers mentoring and a peer community. How important was that for you?

I think it’s really important, especially as a solo founder. And when you’re working in isolation, being able to have a mentor, that’s hugely beneficial. Whether that’s a sounding board or for advice, or even just to clarify the ideas you have, it’s good to have somebody you can run things through with and say, I’m making the right call here. Otherwise, you’re just talking to the wall. So that’s super helpful. That’s been so important, and super beneficial for me. And I think having a network of entrepreneurs who have been through the same thing as you or are even ahead of you, who’ve been through a process and who can give you advice and guidance is a great kind of network to have around you.

What advice would you have for any other entrepreneurs thinking about entering the next round of The Start-up Series?

The first thing to say is that I entered the competition twice and was knocked back the first time. Even entering the competition helped me hone my proposition. When I first entered at the end of 2020, my business idea was too broad. What I had was this amazing, great lifestyle brand – which hopefully is something we could one day become — but it wasn’t investor ready. So I would say, be really clear about what your proposition is so that people know what they’re investing in.

Second, be honest about yourself and be honest about your own strengths and weaknesses. Because there’s no point going in and saying, yeah, I can do this, I can do that. It’s helpful to be honest about what your what your strengths and weaknesses are.

Even entering the Start-Up Series competition helped you define what your business is?

I hadn’t really refined the business proposition enough. And so as I spent more time thinking about and then refining the business proposition, I think that that made it just a more compelling offer.

You’re launching ONE Essentials this September. What other milestones would you like to hit this year?

Other than actually launching, which is a big one, there are two big milestones.

First, I really want ONE Essentials to get B Corp status or pending B Corp status. I think we’re in a really good place be able to do that. And I need to go through the process of doing that and hopefully achieving it.

Second, we’re looking to build the marketing side, because that’s my weakness. I have lots of experience on the product development side, but I’ve never worked in marketing. It’s a mystery world to me. So I really wanted to bring somebody into the team who could kind of own and build the marketing side. The next big thing for me is bringing in that key hire to help us launch and grow.

The Start-Up Series competition

The Series opens for applications every month, with the aim to select one or two winners to receive:

• Up to £250,000 of SEIS/EIS equity funding (subject to due-diligence, terms & conditions).

• A minimum of 2 years invaluable hands-on help from experienced & battle-scarred entrepreneurs

• Media coverage on smallbusiness.co.uk & other channels to promote your business & follow your journey.

We are on the hunt for B2B or B2C business across all sectors. As long as your business is eligible for SEIS or EIS HMRC advance assurance, then we’ll consider your application.

We’ll be impressed by innovative products or services, in high growth or underserved markets, with the potential to build a loved brand. If you can demonstrate these, you’re in with a fighting chance.

Because the investment will come from an EIS & SEIS FCA regulated fund, businesses who are considering entering need to satisfy the following criteria set by HMRC:

• You must be a UK resident and run a UK-based business

• You must be over 18 years old at the time of entry

• Certain financial services and property businesses are unlikely to qualify.

Find out how to enter The Start-Up Series here

Winning the Start-Up Series – Henry Acevedo, Fox Robotics

Partner Content — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 11:16:53 +0000

By Partner Content on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

One of the pain points with Brexit was always going to be the shortage of migrant EU workers coming to Britain for the summer fruit picking season. The government is trialling a scheme that would only allow a maximum of 30,000 migrant EU workers into Britain this summer to pick soft fruits and vegetables. It is estimated that 70,000 fruit and veg pickers are needed in Britain each season.

Henry Acevedo, a computer scientist from Colombia, has developed a robot transport system which is about to start trials at a fruit farm. Given that nearly a quarter of any fruit picker’s time is spent carrying produce to collection points, Acevedo and his Fox Robotics team believe they can boost productivity by letting pickers concentrate on just picking fruit.

Being a winner at this year’s Start-Up Series will help turn his childhood passion for robotics into a business that can help farmers avoid fruit and vegetables rotting unpicked in the fields.

What’s your background as a tech entrepreneur?

I’m a Colombian computer scientist with almost 30 years’ experience in industry across many areas, such as telecommunications, working systems engineering, software development, information security, automation and, of course, robotics. I’ve worked with blue-chip organisations throughout my career. This has allowed me to gain experience and insight into the key aspects of how a successful company should be developed, managed and all the end-to-end ides from conceptualisation, R&D and product development through to sales and marketing.

Where did you get the idea for Fox robotics? It seems a big step to set up on your own.

I’ve always been interested in robotics since a very young age. However in around the early 2000s I started to imagine what a robotics companies might do to improve our lives and have an impact on industries. In 2016, I started to take more determined steps into ideas for a robotics company. At the end of 2017, I started to develop a robot prototype specifically for logistics in my free time, using my own resources, and that basically triggered me to start Fox Robotics. And after some meetings with angel investors, farmers and software companies, I decided to found Fox Robotics.

What’s the problem that Fox Robotics is trying to solve?

In agriculture, the margins are very low. And the work is very strenuous. So most of the logistics when it comes to fruit picking is divided into very clear tasks: from picking, transporting, queuing through to waiting, paperwork and other activities. Just the task of transporting produce from fruit trees to collection takes on average between 21 per cent to 25 per cent of the time. That’s time wasted, which could be carried out by a robot assisting the pickers and runners to move all the produce back and forth. In fact, those runners who currently do the transporting could become pickers, naturally increasing farm productivity exponentially. A robot will help to gain the efficiencies on the picking activity. A picker would also spend less time walking to collection points and spend more time picking, therefore the productivity of the farm will increase.

Why did you decide to use a robot for collecting as opposed to actually picking fruit?

With present technology the clear option is to assist the pickers because humans are 100 times more efficient and quicker at making decisions when it comes to fruit picking. A robot arm by comparison is very slow, lacks dexterity and quick decision making compared to a human. A fruit picking robot requires many attempts and errors just to pick one piece of soft fruit. So for us, the idea was to support human pickers with the current technology that’s available.

We’re about to start a pilot with a fruit farm and we’re looking to demonstrate what automation can do and how our robots can improve productivity. Our robotics reduce the inefficient task of moving collected produce from pickers to collection points by using autonomous robots.

One of the anxieties about Brexit was it would create worker shortages, especially in the agricultural sector, and specifically in fruit and flower picking. Has Brexit actually helped farmers understand what Fox Robotics is doing, made its concept more attractive?

Absolutely. Brexit has been a problem for the UK farming industry. Current government immigration policies have reduced the potential number of annual migrant EU workers to just 30,000. What the farming industry needs is double this capacity. So there’s a clear need and the stress felt by farmers losing this productivity is significant. In this case, robotics can come and help use human resources more efficiently. We take away the unproductive tasks from a human and give them to the robot. So a farm can optimise the number of human pickers to a level close to what they would have been if Britain had stayed with EU migrant worker levels of 2016.

Farming, especially soft fruit farming and even flower picking, is always looking for technological improvements. And since Brexit and now the Covid-19 pandemic, there’s more interest in what and how robotics and automation can do to help this industry.

What has been the biggest challenge for you getting Fox robotics to where it is now?

When I started the company, the biggest problem has been always funding and, of course, finding the right people for the job. But also selecting a leadership team that compensates for my own lack of skills in some areas, closing those gaps which I have, to ensure this can be a successful company.

You’ve just been named as one of this year’s winners of the Start-up Series competition. What made you decide to enter the Start-Up Series?

Well, one of the things I was looking for was to connect with the experience of other founder-managers, as well as both capital and the support that might give us. Most important was the business mentoring side, the experience and knowledge we as a company could receive, because that will allow me to grow Fox Robotics, to mature it. Worth Capital’s support will help us get on a successful path within this industry, as well as all the connections and benefits you have with other founders.

So for you, it wasn’t just the equity investment but more the mentoring, the networking with peers which appealed to you?

Well, the investment is handy, of course! That will allow me to carry on and hit our own milestones. But the mentoring will help us get onto the right path, enabling us to be successful.

I’m sure some readers will be thinking they’d like to enter this year’s competition. What advice would you have for other entrepreneurs thinking about entering the Start-Up Series?

If I had any advice, it would be to be bold. If you have the right idea, the right concept which has been tested, has been checked with experts within your own industry, if you can show the need for it, then you can be a winner.

The Start-Up Series competition

The Series opens for applications every month, with the aim to select one or two winners to receive:

• Up to £250,000 of SEIS/EIS equity funding (subject to due-diligence, terms & conditions).

• A minimum of 2 years invaluable hands-on help from experienced & battle-scarred entrepreneurs

• Media coverage on smallbusiness.co.uk & other channels to promote your business & follow your journey.

We are on the hunt for B2B or B2C business across all sectors. As long as your business is eligible for SEIS or EIS HMRC advance assurance, then we’ll consider your application.

We’ll be impressed by innovative products or services, in high growth or underserved markets, with the potential to build a loved brand. If you can demonstrate these, you’re in with a fighting chance.

Because the investment will come from an EIS & SEIS FCA regulated fund, businesses who are considering entering need to satisfy the following criteria set by HMRC:

• You must be a UK resident and run a UK-based business

• You must be over 18 years old at the time of entry

• Certain financial services and property businesses are unlikely to qualify.

Find out how to enter The Start-Up Series here

Winning The Start-Up Series – Adrian Lawson, The Preference Hub

Small Business Team — Tue, 01 Jun 2021 09:20:21 +0000

By Small Business Team on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

An increasingly common sight when you answer your front door to take delivery of an online order is the delivery person scanning your parcel with a handheld device. Or doing an inventory stocktake in a supermarket.

Businesses increasingly rely on these handheld devices to keep on top of things, but how do businesses track these critical handheld devices? What if they’re faulty? Or if they get lost?

Adrian Lawson has 25 years’ experience in mobile technology, having worked for Hewlett Packard, Honeywell and Phones4U, among others. The Preference Hub is the platform he has developed to help businesses responsible for dozens if not hundreds of handheld devices keep tabs on them.

Only launching last spring at the height of lockdown, The Preference Hub already counts Zebra Technologies and Honeywell as partners.

What is your background as a tech entrepreneur?

I’ve mainly worked in the IT and telecoms sector in a range of sales and marketing roles. Most recently, I was the MD of a tech company in Bristol. They provided managed services for organisations with large quantities of mobile devices, mainly in the retail and supply chain sectors.

‘Entering The Start-Up Series competition was really a no-brainer’

Can you explain what managed devices are?

Managed devices are business critical handheld devices. You often see them when you receiving home deliveries as they scan the parcel on your doorstep. Or, if you go shopping, you often see one of these mobile devices being used instore for stocktaking or scanning barcodes. As they are mission critical, the need for these interconnected devices working all the time is really important for our business customers.

Where did the idea for The Preference Hub come from?

Being involved with lots of organisations that use these mobile devices, I knew that there were a number of issues which regularly came up.

One such recurring issue that came up all the time was tracking mobile devices, because they can move around from store to store or from driver to driver, they tend to be hard to locate.

And if a device isn’t working, then perhaps you can’t deliver that crucial parcel. That’s a major problem. The requirement for these devices to be working all the time is so important. If you can provide some analytics and some data that helps maximise the uptime of these devices, then it’s a really winning solution for the customer.

Of course, having the idea to launch The Preference Hub during lockdown 1.0 had its own challenges.

Indeed. What was the biggest challenge you had trying to start The Preference Hub during lockdown?

Knowing myself as I do, I am incredibly impatient. Certainly one of the things that you have to wrestle with is when you start a business, nothing just happens overnight, things take time. I was always beating myself up that I wasn’t making enough progress. So I had to kind of wrestle with my own impatience. But you do have to relentlessly pursue things. Because a ‘no’ today might mean a ‘yes’ tomorrow. And, if you keep that relentless focus, you’re going to move the business forward.

Launching The Preference Hub during lockdown must have been difficult, but has Covid affected your business in any other way?

With Covid, there’s a trade-off for us. I haven’t got a comparison for pre-Covid because, as I say, we started the business, right in lockdown 1.0. But we’re selling B2B. And we’re selling to service providers. So those relationships are really important to build. And I know that those relationships can be built better and stronger when you’re face to face — there’s only so much that you can do when you’ve got the odd phone call and the odd Zoom call. So I think there’s a trade-off where we have some limitations in not being able to get out face to face with our customers, but we do benefit from just the amount of work that you can get done from home. One day, for example, we had seven demo calls of our software. I would never have been able to do seven demo calls with customers face to face in one day.

Also when setting up a business from scratch you’re wearing lots of different hats. So the ability to work on many things in one day is definitely amplified when you’re at your desk all the time, rather than driving up and down the motorway each day.

What made you decide to enter The Start-up Series competition? What was it that appealed to you?

I’ve always been interested in what investment might do to help this business. Getting investment may enable us to make decisions that otherwise we would have had to put off. So, instead of hiring one salesperson, perhaps we can hire two. Or that software development we had planned for next year, now we can do this year. So the ability to get investment actually improves and increases the number of decisions you can make sooner rather than later.

Also, those who know me know how competitive I am, once I got into something called a ‘competition’ it was actually all about winning it! And I was pretty laser focused on making sure that we had the best value proposition and we were going to get that win at the end.

One of the things The Start-up Series competition prides itself on is mentorship and also putting you in touch with a peer community. How important was that for you?

It became increasingly important as the process went on. Because when you spend time talking to Paul Soanes and Matthew Cushen (who run Worth Capital, the engine behind the Start-up Series), you start to realise just how experienced these guys are in start-up businesses and similar software companies to mine. Actually, getting some mentoring and some support at a leadership level from these guys became very, very important for me as the process went on and something that I felt was actually going to be more valuable than the investment itself.

Another thing that I really liked was that it’s individuals who invest in The Start-Up Series competition winners, and they want a return on investment. So it gets you a little bit more ‘ focused on shareholder value, building an organisation which in three to five years is going to have some really good inherent value. And I liked that kind of mindset because it would help us really stay on point with those key things that were important to me as well.

What advice would you have for any other entrepreneurs thinking about entering the next round of The Start-up Series?

I mean, it was really a no brainer. At the very least, you’re going to be able to hone your messaging, your strategy and your pitch. All those things are a good thing, irrespective of the outcome. Just the process that you go through is really exciting and interesting. There’s some really good dialogue and debate that goes into the process. And then ultimately, there’s the opportunity to get the investment.

What milestones would you like to see The Preference Hub pass over the coming year? What KPIs do you have?

We’re really focused on a number of key milestones this year. We decided to run our new tax year from the beginning of April and we’re already well ahead of plan for Q1 and where we were expecting to be in the first quarter.

We brought on two new salespeople to the team and they’re very KPI driven and bringing on some really exciting customers and opportunities. And as a subscription business, it’s very much around building more licences to our base and getting as much value from the platform as possible. We’ve got some good milestones to build on as a result of winning The Start-Up Series.

The Start-Up Series competition

The Series opens for applications every month, with the aim to select one or two winners to receive:

• Up to £250,000 of SEIS/EIS equity funding (subject to due-diligence, terms & conditions).

• A minimum of 2 years invaluable hands-on help from experienced & battle-scarred entrepreneurs

• Media coverage on smallbusiness.co.uk & other channels to promote your business & follow your journey.

We are on the hunt for B2B or B2C business across all sectors. As long as your business is eligible for SEIS or EIS HMRC advance assurance, then we’ll consider your application.

We’ll be impressed by innovative products or services, in high growth or underserved markets, with the potential to build a loved brand. If you can demonstrate these, you’re in with a fighting chance.

Because the investment will come from an EIS & SEIS FCA regulated fund, businesses who are considering entering need to satisfy the following criteria set by HMRC:

• You must be a UK resident and run a UK-based business

• You must be over 18 years old at the time of entry

• Certain financial services and property businesses are unlikely to qualify.

Find out how to enter The Start-Up Series here

What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Matt Oldham, Unizest

Small Business Team — Mon, 10 May 2021 13:29:39 +0000

By Small Business Team on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

Thousands of foreign students and migrant workers are deterred from coming to Britain because of the difficulty of obtaining a UK bank account. Often you need a UK bank account to rent somewhere to live or have your earnings paid into it, yet the rigmarole involved in setting up with a high street bank is off-putting.

Matt Oldham, CEO of Unizest, has created an e-account for overseas workers and students coming to Britain. It solves a huge problem for recruiters of the 1.5m contingent workers who come to the UK each year.

Although it hasn’t even launched yet, the Unizest team have been handpicked as one of eight winners in the latest round of The Start-Up Series Competition, sharing £1.1m between them.

Where did the idea for Unizest come from? What is the problem that it’s solving?

The idea came from some work that Tony Shawcross, one of our co-founders, and I were doing with one of our clients at the time, a large CRM organisation working in the recruitment space. They framed the challenge they had getting non-UK workers seamlessly into Britain. The problem they encountered was that it was very difficult for those workers to get a UK bank account if they didn’t have UK residential history. And that causes problems for both recruiters and individuals themselves. It was causing delays and friction.

When we dug deeper, we discovered it was the same problem for quite a number of other pockets of users, such as international students, who often need to set up payments for things like accommodation before they actually start their courses.

Unizest is a basic UK e-account that’s very easy for non-UK residents to get. They can even apply and set up their account before they leave their home country. And once they get here, we can issue them with a Debit MasterCard and their account is ready for them from day one.

You started having conversations about Unizest 18 months ago. When did you actually launch?

We haven’t actually launched yet. We plan to go live in June. We set up the company almost exactly 12 months ago. We got our heads together and worked out what the problem was about six months before going out and validating our thinking by talking to people in the recruitment space.

Over the last year, we’ve been gearing up in terms of setting up the technology and getting ready to launch properly. That process has taken 12 months since we first incorporated the business.

With all these new barriers between the UK and the rest of Europe, has Brexit actually helped your business?

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Brexit’s helped. It’s probably neutral. There’s always been an inflow of labour from overseas, dating back hundreds of years. That’s not going to stop. So let’s wait and see if those patterns change.

For example, international students are essential for higher education. And by far the biggest overseas country in terms of students coming here is China. In 2019, there was about 220,000 Chinese students in Britain, which was clearly unaffected by Brexit.

As mentioned, we first started having serious discussions about Unizest about 18 months ago. And that was obviously before Covid. At the time, we were talking to recruiters about large-scale construction projects, which clearly haven’t materialised because of the current economic situation.

However, other pockets of demand are still there, and growing. For example, there’s been a huge growth in the need for adult care workers. And there are other sectors that the UK economy doesn’t naturally fill, such as healthcare workers or seasonal agricultural workers, for example. Those roles still need to be filled.

‘People aren’t coming to the UK to get a bank account, they’re coming here to start a new life’

What made you decide to enter the Start-up Series competition, what was it that appealed to you?

When we saw the criteria and the process, we thought, why not? The actual application process wasn’t particularly paperwork heavy, but it rather focused us as on who we are, what our values are. And that was something we quite enjoyed working on.

Once we got into dialogue with Matthew Cushen and Paul Soanes from Worth Capital, it became much more of a conversation. And it felt collaborative, quite informal. We were also introduced to some previous winners, which was useful, so they could talk about their own experience. It became clear that in in addition to just investment, what the Start-Up Series offered was help, advice and tangible support. That became more and more appealing once we got deeper into the process.

Support and advice became part of the appeal?

When you’re a start-up requiring funding, there are lots of places you can go. As we started to talk to more and more people, it felt obvious to us that, in addition to the money, having a framework and people around would add value as well.

We’ve already started feeling the benefits of it, in that we’ve had some practical help and support in things like developing our value proposition. Having external input is good because you can get a little bit locked into your own ideas. It feels much more like a collaborative partnership.

What advice would you have for any other entrepreneurs thinking about entering the next round of The Start-up Series?

I would say, give it a go. Because there really is nothing to lose. I mean, even if we had not been successful, I think we would feel that the process had been useful in terms of finetuning our story. And we got feedback from experienced entrepreneurs and investors.

Where do you see Unizest in a year’s time? Are there any milestones you want to hit?

Our first milestone will be going live in June. We’re in user-acceptance testing right now, we’re just about to go out into a soft launch phase. And hopefully, we will be live in time for the important summer season when it comes to recruitment, not only for international students, but also for seasonal migrants in the food and agriculture sector.

By July/August, we hopefully will be setting up our first partnerships, which we’re already in dialogue with now.

People aren’t coming to the UK to get a bank account, they’re coming here to start a new life, whether that’s starting a new life at work or in education.

In 12 months’ time, we’re really going to understand a lot more about our customers and what their needs are. In terms of customer numbers, we feel that this is a type of product which will grow through referral. People talking to people back home about their experiences and what they did when they first came over here.

A whole year seems a long way from where we are right now, we’re so busy getting prepared for launch. But I think it’s going to be a really exciting time for Unizest. We’re looking forward to it.

The Start-Up Series competition

The Series opens for applications every month, with the aim to select one or two winners to receive:

• Up to £250,000 of SEIS/EIS equity funding (subject to due-diligence, terms & conditions).

• A minimum of 2 years invaluable hands-on help from experienced & battle-scarred entrepreneurs

• Media coverage on smallbusiness.co.uk & other channels to promote your business & follow your journey.

We are on the hunt for B2B or B2C business across all sectors. As long as your business is eligible for SEIS or EIS HMRC advance assurance, then we’ll consider your application.

We’ll be impressed by innovative products or services, in high growth or underserved markets, with the potential to build a loved brand. If you can demonstrate these, you’re in with a fighting chance.

Because the investment will come from an EIS & SEIS FCA regulated fund, businesses who are considering entering need to satisfy the following criteria set by HMRC:

• You must be a UK resident and run a UK-based business

• You must be over 18 years old at the time of entry

• Certain financial services and property businesses are unlikely to qualify.

Find out how to enter The Start-Up Series here

The post What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Matt Oldham, Unizest appeared first on Small Business UK.

The Start-Up Series competition – over £1 million invested in latest winners

Nick Ismail — Tue, 04 May 2021 10:00:42 +0000

By Nick Ismail on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

In September 2020, Small Business and Worth Capital partnered to re-launch The Start-Up Series – the UK’s largest seed funding competition.

Since then, five new winners have received a combined total of over £800,000 of equity investment from The Start-Up Series Fund and private investors. Three former winners have also gone on to receive over £300,000 of follow-on funding from the same source after achieving their impressive growth targets. All investments were subject to further due diligence carried out by Fund Manager, Amersham Investment Management.

Following the latest investment round completed in early April, Hayley Etherington, Business Operations Director of Worth Capital, said: “As the Start-Up Series approaches its 5th birthday later this year, we take great pride in having meticulously selected and crowned 25 competition winners from thousands of applications across the UK. They’ve received over £5.3 million in SEIS & EIS equity investment — that’s real cash, creating real innovation and jobs, and building loved brands.

“We welcome these latest five ambitious start-up businesses to the Worth Capital family with great optimism. As always, we’ll be working hard alongside the talented founding teams over the coming months and years, helping them to avoid risks and accelerate their growth.”

To find out about the latest winners and how your business could be considered for up to £250,000 in equity funding and receive hands-on help from Worth Capital, read on.

RECENT WINNER: UNIZEST, Fintech — SEIS investment

Founders: Matt Oldham, Anthony Shawcross & Chris Donnachie

UNIZEST (developed by Neofin Ventures) provides e-accounts for workers and students coming to the UK. Their solution is effortless to apply for and the account can be activated and used prior to arrival. It solves a huge problem for recruiters of the 1.5 million contingent workers that come to the UK each year. Unizest is built up by an experienced team from financial services industry and has recently received a large marketing support package from Mastercard.

Matthew Cushen, Founding Partner of Worth Capital, said “Unlike many businesses in the frenzied ‘fintech’ sector, Unizest has a clear target audience and a clear problem to solve. The team has a route to that target audience that should end up with a very low cost of acquisition. And they have a product and brand proposition forensically tailored to their type of user, along with a team that has delivered in the past.”

RECENT WINNER: FC LABORATORIES, Healthtech — SEIS investment

Founder: Mat Norbury

FC Laboratories develops wearable safety devices for monitoring and alerting to mental acuity. They are initially targeting the ‘hard hat’ market — construction, engineering & utilities – for whom health & safety is a huge priority and who have the budgets to support investment.

Paul Soanes, Founding Partner of Worth Capital, said: “The UK is not the only country to be building our way out of the pandemic. We expect the construction sector to be globally buoyant over the next few years and the FC Labs product is a very smart solution for those firms investing in the health & safety of their workers whilst improving productivity and quality. Mat really impressed us throughout the competition process. His grasp on both the technology and the market problem really stood out.”

RECENT WINNER: THE PREFERENCE HUB, B2B SaaS — SEIS investment

Founder: Adrian Lawson

The Preference Hub is a cloud Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscription product that registers, monitors and services the millions of handheld devices used across industries, for things like stock control, warehousing, price lookup and medical care. Their product solves a big organisational and operational problem for large corporate users. And, they have already been revenue generating after only 10 months, with sales partnerships established.

Paul commented: “Adrian had recognized a recurrent issue for organisations deploying large numbers of rugged mobile devices – they’re difficult to keep track of. His solution is a beautifully executed software platform that gives organisations control of their devices with an obvious and measurable ROI. TPH’s stellar growth is testament to Adrian’s single minded customer focus and also his natural sales and marketing skills.”

RECENT WINNER: ONEƎ, Eco Apparel — SEIS investment

Founder: Carrie Davies

ONEƎ creates clothes with a lower environmental and societal impact compared to traditional methods — less water, less energy, no chemicals, ethical labour practices, circular reuse and fabric recycling and even resolving past industry mistakes, with 1% of every sale going to the clean-up of textile waste. They’re starting with targeting the £6 billion UK underwear market.

Matthew commented: “We always ensure that a business we support is leaving the world a better place than they found it. But occasionally the whole purpose of a business is also the commercial proposition. ONEƎ is bang on trend in creating a direct to consumer, apparel brand that is an antidote to fast fashion.”

PREVIOUS WINNER: FIVE DOT BOTANICS, Healthy & Beauty — SEIS investment

Founders: Zaffrin & Brian O’Sullivan

Five Dot Botanics develop high performance, semi-premium, skincare products. The business is bang on trend, with only five ingredients in each product, minimal and sustainable packaging, and a gender-neutral brand and target audience. Revenues are growing, including within two Hut Group brands and a new Middle East distribution deal.

Matthew said: “Since the Start-Up Series Fund first invested in Five Dot at the start of 2020, we have seen steady growth in direct to consumer and wholesale trade, within a market that is demonstrating ever more desire to reduce chemicals and embrace a lesser ingredient, simpler approach.”

RECENT WINNER: FOX ROBOTICS, Agritech – EIS investment

Founder: Henry Acevedo

Fox Robotics is developing an autonomous logistics and data collection robot for farmers. The hardware and software solution improves fruit and vegetable yields dramatically, reduces waste caused by labour shortages and pays back the farm’s investment quickly. The electric product, helping farmers to become more carbon neutral, is currently in a paid trial with the UK’s second largest soft fruit farm.

Paul said: “We like the agritech space, but had struggled to find anything we liked enough to consider for investment. Finally we found Fox Robotics, leading this round to provide funds to further develop the autonomous technology during the course of real world trials this year. Fox Robotics is very clever tech solving a major and expanding problem on fruit farms, and we’re delighted to be on-board.”

PREVIOUS WINNER: THE MOVING HOME WAREHOUSE, B2B SaaS — EIS investment

Founder: Daniel Verblis

The Moving Home Warehouse is packaging supply chain software company for the moving industry, enabling removals firms to deliver on demand directly to their end customers. This removes unnecessary journeys and administration from their operations. With Pickfords and Any Van Group as clients, they are projected to generate £2 million turnover in 2021.

Paul said: “The Start-Up Series Fund first invested in November 2018. It seems that 2021 is the breakthrough year, having now developed 3 different solutions that unlock enormous value for the moving industry, with two big new contracts with leading removals groups. Their latest investment will fast track some tech development, enabling existing working capital to be applied to sales and marketing.”

PREVIOUS WINNER: WEEKLY10, B2B SaaS – EIS investment

Founder: Andy Roberts

Weekly10 is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscription business that helps companies measure and improve employee sentiment, engage and develop business culture, and improve performance on business objectives and goals. Weekly10 is a simple and real time alternative to traditional and unwieldy engagement surveys and performance reviews. It already has clients across the world from UK to the USA, from New Zealand to Canada.

Matthew said: “Weekly10 are in a competitive but huge sector – and one with attractive exit routes and multiples. One of the reasons the Start-Up Series Fund originally invested is that the proposition is boldly different to others in the space. Rapidly increasing recurring revenue, very low churn and a high volume of clients that are adding to their users, show that difference is an advantage.”

The Start-Up Series competition

The Series opens for applications every month, with the aim to select one or two winners to receive:

• Up to £250,000 of SEIS/EIS equity funding (subject to due-diligence, terms & conditions).

• A minimum of 2 years invaluable hands-on help from experienced & battle-scarred entrepreneurs

• Media coverage on smallbusiness.co.uk & other channels to promote your business & follow your journey.

We are on the hunt for B2B or B2C business across all sectors. As long as your business is eligible for SEIS or EIS HMRC advance assurance, then we’ll consider your application.

We’ll be impressed by innovative products or services, in high growth or underserved markets, with the potential to build a loved brand. If you can demonstrate these, you’re in with a fighting chance.

Because the investment will come from an EIS & SEIS FCA regulated fund, businesses who are considering entering need to satisfy the following criteria set by HMRC:

• You must be a UK resident and run a UK-based business

• You must be over 18 years old at the time of entry

• Certain financial services and property businesses are unlikely to qualify.

Find out how to enter The Start-Up Series here

The post The Start-Up Series competition – over £1 million invested in latest winners appeared first on Small Business UK.

How can you assess a Seed EIS investment manager?

Lawrence Gosling — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 08:30:17 +0000

By Lawrence Gosling on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

Checking the track records of a Seed EIS investment manager for professional advisers, investors or companies looking for funding can be very difficult because of the lack of independent data.

Although there are a number of research groups analysing the managers, they all tend to look at different elements of the groups and no-one tracks the actual investment returns.

So if a professional adviser or investor are doing their own research what should they be looking for?

Matthew Cushen, one of the founders of Worth Capital, acknowledges the challenge, particularly if the adviser is just looking for the number of companies the investment manager has successfully exited.

He says: “SEIS is much younger than EIS, which has been around for over 25 years and a number of groups can point to realised returns from exit, either with or without including tax breaks. Seed EIS is less than decade old, and by their nature many of the businesses we invest in are younger and are sometimes pre-revenue.

“At Worth we source investee companies through our Start-up Series where we offer successful companies up to £250,000 in the form of an equity injection, and these companies are at all stages in their early life cycle. We tell investors in a portfolio of ten investee companies it’s likely that one or two won’t make it. But it would be wrong to judge us by the failures. I think we should be judged on how we work with those companies that make it, and in that cohort we expect one or two will make it quite big for investors.

“If you’re a company looking for Seed EIS investment then you should look at what we can offer other than capital. In our case, myself and my business partner have long experiences in helping companies build their brands and market propositions. This is important because we meet a lot of companies with good ideas, who are generating revenue and may even be profitable, but this not necessarily the same as a business which can grow significantly, making it appealing to another company or larger VC investor to invest in.”

One of the partners of Nova, based in Liverpool, Andy Davidson, is in agreement with Mr Cushen. His firm specialises in technology-driven businesses and his firm operates an active mentoring programme which helps companies build its structure from the bottom-up, depending on where they identify areas which need support.

He says: “Many of us at Nova come from a software or technology background and we have built and sold businesses in the sector so we understand first hand the challenges. Often we come across businesses which are not a lot more than an idea — we have one currently in the health sector related to cleanliness — but we can help develop and scope out that idea so it becomes a real business.”

They are both in agreement that advisers, investors and company founders should all do as much due diligence on the Seed EIS investment manager as the managers do on the investee companies. They discuss the issues on this short video:

“For an advisor who is looking to select an #SEIS investment manager for his/her own or client’s assets, what should they be looking for with those managers?” Hear answers from Matthew Cushen, @WorthCapital & Andy Davidson, @WeAreNovaUK https://t.co/BhHUZVEQaM

— Small Business (@smallbusinessuk) January 14, 2021

The post How can you assess a Seed EIS investment manager? appeared first on Small Business UK.

The Start-Up Series Archives - Small Business UK

The importance of embracing experiments as a founder

1. Control the downside

2. Run quick and cheap experiments on your proposition

3. Embrace the learning mentality for you as an entrepreneur

4. The sky does not fall in

Spending your seed capital on marketing? You need a plan

1. Brand proposition

2. Communication plan

3. Consistency with the financial projections

Former Start-Up Series winner discusses his next growth stage – Matthew Oldham, Unizest

Can you remind us what your company does and how the business has grown since you won the Start-Up Series and first received investment?

What has been your biggest challenge during the early stages of your venture and how has the support from Worth Capital helped the business grow?

You’re now in a position where your business requires more funding. Tell us about how you’ve prepared for this funding round and how you are going to approach it.

What have you learned since your first funding round and what advice would you give to other founders embarking on their start-up funding journeys?

What’s your favourite innovation – a VC’s advice to founders

Former Start-Up Series winner discusses his next funding round – Ed Bird, Bird Eyewear

Can you remind us what your company does and how the business has shifted since you won the Start-Up Series and first received investment?

What has been your biggest challenge during the early stages of your venture and how has the support from Worth Capital helped the business grow?

You’re now in a position where your business requires more funding. Tell us about how you’ve prepared for this funding round and how you are going to approach it.

What have you learned since your first funding round and what advice would you give to other founders embarking on their start-up funding journeys?

The Start-Up Series competition is back — a chance to secure up to £250,000 in equity funding

The Start-Up Series competition

How it works: Below, we’ll introduce you to Worth Capital and its team, explain the eligibility and terms of the competition, how to enter and highlight the frequently asked questions.

1. Worth Capital

The Worth Capital team

2. Eligibility & terms

3. How to enter

4. Frequently asked questions

New small business strategic challenge or the same one in disguise?

Winning the Start-Up Series – Mathew Norbury, FC Labs

Tell us about your background as a tech entrepreneur

What is wearable brain imaging?

What’s the first sector that you’re concentrating on with the Float technology?

What does the Float hardhat tell me if I’m wearing the technology?

What other areas could you see Float being used in?

At what stage is FC Labs now?

What was it that appealed to you about the Start-up Series competition? Why did you decide to enter?

Apart from investment, the Start-up Series also offers mentorship and a peer network. How important was that for you?

What advice would you have for anybody thinking of entering the Start-Up Series?

Now that you’re a Start-Up Series winner, what milestones would you like FC Labs to hit over the coming year?

The Start-Up Series competition

Further reading

Winning the Start-Up Series – Carrie Davies, ONE Essentials

Tell me about your background as a woman’s clothing designer

What’s the gap in the market? What’s the problem ONE Essentials is trying to solve?

Explain the One Essentials brand to me

What’s been the biggest challenge in getting One Essentials to where it is now?

What made you decide to enter The Start-up Series competition, what was it that appealed to you?

Apart from funding, The Start-Up Series also offers mentoring and a peer community. How important was that for you?

What advice would you have for any other entrepreneurs thinking about entering the next round of The Start-up Series?

Even entering the Start-Up Series competition helped you define what your business is?

You’re launching ONE Essentials this September. What other milestones would you like to hit this year?

The Start-Up Series competition

Further reading

Winning the Start-Up Series – Henry Acevedo, Fox Robotics

What’s your background as a tech entrepreneur?

Where did you get the idea for Fox robotics? It seems a big step to set up on your own.

What’s the problem that Fox Robotics is trying to solve?

Why did you decide to use a robot for collecting as opposed to actually picking fruit?

One of the anxieties about Brexit was it would create worker shortages, especially in the agricultural sector, and specifically in fruit and flower picking. Has Brexit actually helped farmers understand what Fox Robotics is doing, made its concept more attractive?

What has been the biggest challenge for you getting Fox robotics to where it is now?

You’ve just been named as one of this year’s winners of the Start-up Series competition. What made you decide to enter the Start-Up Series?

So for you, it wasn’t just the equity investment but more the mentoring, the networking with peers which appealed to you?

I’m sure some readers will be thinking they’d like to enter this year’s competition. What advice would you have for other entrepreneurs thinking about entering the Start-Up Series?

The Start-Up Series competition

Further reading

Winning The Start-Up Series – Adrian Lawson, The Preference Hub

What is your background as a tech entrepreneur?

Can you explain what managed devices are?

Where did the idea for The Preference Hub come from?

Indeed. What was the biggest challenge you had trying to start The Preference Hub during lockdown?

Launching The Preference Hub during lockdown must have been difficult, but has Covid affected your business in any other way?

What made you decide to enter The Start-up Series competition? What was it that appealed to you?

One of the things The Start-up Series competition prides itself on is mentorship and also putting you in touch with a peer community. How important was that for you?

What advice would you have for any other entrepreneurs thinking about entering the next round of The Start-up Series?

What milestones would you like to see The Preference Hub pass over the coming year? What KPIs do you have?

The Start-Up Series competition

Further reading

What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Matt Oldham, Unizest