UK Government set to invest £5m through Crowdcube

Crowdcube selected as only crowdfunding partner by London Co-Investment Fund; £25m funding pot to be invested in tech firms over next 3 years

Leading equity crowdfunding platform, Crowdcube, has been chosen as one of only six competitively selected partners by the London Co-Investment Fund (LCIF) and the only crowdfunding platform to be on the list of VCs, angels and other investors.  Established by Funding London and Capital Enterprise, the LCIF is a new Government-backed fund designed to address the funding gap in London faced by tech start-ups, and will see £25m invested in 156 seed stage companies within the Technology, Digital and Science sectors over the next three years.  The £25m is being contributed by the Mayor of London through the London Enterprise Panel's 'Growing Places Fund.'

Crowdcube, along with consortium partner, Braveheart Investment Group plc (Braveheart), has been awarded £5m of the overall fund pot to invest - the highest amount awarded to any of the six recipients.  With its strong track record of raising investment for start-ups and high growth businesses, Crowdcube will source the companies for co-investment and Braveheart will make the investment decisions and carry out the fund management role.

Venturefounders raises over £3.95m for growing British businesses in just four months

New equity crowdfunding platform completes four fundraises since September launch

VentureFounders has helped four growing British businesses raise a total of £3.95m across their investor base since its launch last September.

The new equity crowdfunding platform was created to make angel style investing in startups more accessible to all. Each investment opportunity has been subject to a detailed process of due diligence by the VentureFounders team to ensure that they have potential for growth and profit, a sustainable competitive advantage, a clear path to commercialisation, a strong management team and viable monetisation options.

Companies looking to fundraise on the platform are not limited by sector and have ranged from manufacturing the world's first truly ergonomic chair to a disruptive online recruitment platform

Lendix, an ambitious crowdfunding platform dedicated to SMEs, raises €7 million and appoints Philippe Citerne, former Deputy CEO of Société Générale, to its Supervisory Board

Fleximize launches service to help UK-based SMEs run by foreign nationals

New research(1) from  Fleximize, the alternative finance company, reveals that 15% of people claim to work for a business owned by a UK resident who is not British. This climbs to 23% and 20% for those aged 18 - 24 and 25 - 34 respectively, which suggests that many of these SMEs owned by non-British citizens are in younger industries such as fintech, or sectors that involve more physical activity such as building and construction.

Fleximize has announced that it is launching a service focused on helping UK-based SMEs owned by foreign nationals, many of whom it believes are struggling to secure funding from traditional banks. It believes this is because the owners may not have a detailed UK credit rating history, or if they have not been in the country for long, little or no equity in a home that they can offer as collateral to a lender.

Max Chmyshuk, Founder and Managing Partner at Fleximize, who is a Ukrainian citizen with dual British nationality, said: "There are many well run businesses in the UK owned by people who were not born here but who make a huge contribution to the UK economy and employ many people.  However, because they may not have a very long credit history in the country or no equity in a home to offer as a guarantee for a loan, they can struggle to secure funding from some lenders.

alloa based energy comparison business launches crowd funding project

Business Energy comparison and switching service, Energylinx for business, has launched a bid to raise £1,000,000 on CrowdCube

Today, Forth Valley based Energylinx for business, launched an ambitious bid to raise £1,000,000 in investment on leading equity-based crowdfunding platform, CrowdCube.com.

Bruce Laird, Chief Operating Officer, said of the announcement:

"Rather shockingly over 70% of small businesses are not switching energy supplier, despite the fact a 20% decrease in their energy cost can have the same bottom line impact as a 5% increase in sales for many of them. We hope, with the investment raised via CrowdCube.com, that we can bring our service to a larger market and eventually benefit all SMEs around the UK.

We are excited about the increase in the number of people who are already aware of our online business energy comparison solution and about making a positive impact to their business. We are very confident that our planned marketing activities for 2015 will encourage more small business owners to use our online comparison platform and are looking forward to seeing where our Crowdfunding bid takes us".