GrowthFunders Full Service Station

SMEs: Growth Of Alternative Finance (U.K.)

The Growth of Alternative and Complementary Finance – An infographic by the team at
Platform Black – Invoice Trading

The Ultimate Crowd: 100 Projects A Day

100 projects went live on Crowdfunder today! A new record! Welcome everyone&well done team! Which 1 are you funding? http://t.co/4r40kHHVah
— Crowdfunder (@crowdfunderuk) November 6, 2013

And all the rest of it

The Next Best Thing?

Adam Bradford, UnLtd, on the rise of young social entrepreneurs. Building support for social entrepreneurs.

 


UnLtd Org

Celebrating 50th Funded Business

Crowdcube - Men

Hangout – All you need to know about #Crowdfunding, as told by @crowdcube – Tuesday, June 11th, 11ambit.ly/13gV35K
— Ingenious Britain (@ingeniousbrit) June 7, 2013

crowdcube:

Just last week we celebrated the funding of our 50th business (we’ve done a couple more since then) but this is a major milestone for both a company and an industry that were not born until February 2011. Wild Trail (the said 50th business) raised £195,100 (£45,000 over their original target) which led us to think of some of the other milestones that we have achieved during our short life.

February 2011 – we launched! a momentus day which included a great press piece in The Telegraph and Darren speaking to Simon Mayo on Radio 5.

July 2011 – Bubble & Balm hit their £75,000 target with 82 investors – testimony that crowdfunding actually works!  We were also filmed by the BBC.

September 2011 – We won an award! The great guys at Smarta listed us in their Top 100 and shortlisted us in their Innovation category.

November 2011 – The Rushmore Group hit their target of £1 million – creating a new crowdfunding world record.

December 2011 – We crowdfund ourselves – eating our own dog food as the expression goes!  We raised £320,000 from 163 investors in 2 weeks!

Affiiliate Programme with Startups

January and April 2012 – Darren is invited to No 10!  involved in talks on alternative finance.

March 2012 – We join forces with other Alternative Finance companies to launch The Next Generation Finance Consortium (NGFC)  - this led to Darren making a trip to Buckingham Palace to meet Prince Andrew in September.

September 2012 – We are shortlisted for the National Business Awards for both categories entered – Small Online Business and Startup Business of the Year.

January 2013 – Kammerling’s (Kamm & Sons) complete a second round of funding, raising £325,000.

February 2013 – We are authorised by the FCA!  Having worked with them for 18 months we finally became the first equity crowdfunding platform to enable users to be direct shareholders in the business they invest.

May 2013 – Crowdcube raise £1.5 million for themselves in 3 days, hooorahh! An equity crowdfunding record! This will go towards growing the business at home and internationally.

May 2013 – With a total of over £9.2 million raised on the site for 54 businesses and having 36,000 registered members, we are now looking to smash our targets for the forthcoming year!

Great article about #WildTrailFoods in #LondonLovesBiz"He was deluged with offers ... reaching 130% of his target" ow.ly/lE6zI
— Crowdcube (@Crowdcube) June 3, 2013

Currently engaged with a client about @crowdcube and how crowd funding could help them grow their business
— Howard Hackney (@HowardHackney) June 5, 2013

Crowdcube announces 500% increase in funding for UK start-ups @startupsfeed ow.ly/lLpn5
— Crowdcube (@Crowdcube) June 6, 2013

RT @dazwest: Leadership lessons from Dancing Guy - awesome funny video on crowd mentality ow.ly/lNe0D
— Crowdcube (@Crowdcube) June 7, 2013

crowdcube in the news

VC-backed Crowdinvesting

The UK’s first venture capital backed equity platform for buying shares in unlisted companies is to launch next week. Actively recruiting investors from next Wednesday,InvestingZone enables early stage UK companies to raise investment through crowdfunding, and enables private investors to invest confidently in unlisted equities.

The platform was developed specifically for professional investors and is optimised for tablet and mobile devices, accessible anytime and anywhere. Investors can invest directly in start-ups, and tap into lucrative tax incentives, such as the Seed Enterprise Investment scheme (SEIS).

Companies have already started to list their pitch details – they come from a diverse range of sectors, such as clean tech, SaaS, media and e-commerce. Investments will kick off when the site goes live at the end of the month.

Its launch will make InvestingZone the only crowdfunding player with venture capital expertise. It is backed by E-Synergy, one of the consortium delivering the Access to Finance programme in London, South East England and the East Midlands. InvestingZone founders Richard Brockbank and Jean Miller are both directors of E-Synergy Limited.

Read more

InvestingZone

Pitching Food

British Food Pioneers to pitch to Sainsbury’s

British food start-ups have a tasty opportunity to pitch their innovative products to Sainsbury’s this summer through their new PitchUp with Sainsbury’s initiative. The overarching initiative, StartUp Britain enables the growing number of small British companies a direct route to retailers and will continue the supermarket’s commitment to offering food products from small suppliers on shelves

The competition is part of a wider initiative to help start-ups find routes to market. The campaign’s retail arm PopUp Britain has already helped start-ups and micro business find a co-working space via empty shops.

Online applications open today, 5 June and close at midnight on 7 July. The online process will call on businesses to say why their product should be on supermarket shelves, demonstrating innovation and scalable potential. The most promising ideas will be invited to pitch their products in August to representatives from StartUp Britain and Sainsbury’s, at Sainsbury’s food centre in central London.

StartUp Britain co-founder Emma Jones said: 

We’re seeing record numbers of people starting new food businesses with some deliciously creative ideas. Getting their products on supermarket shelves is a really important step in helping smaller producers to achieve sustainable growth. This competition gives the start-ups a real chance to find out how they can take their brand to the next level. This kind of initiative is essential for allowing leading retailers to harness the creativity of the next generation of food entrepreneurs – and we’re delighted to have Sainsbury’s on board.

Sainsbury’s Group Commercial Director Mike Coupe added: 

We’re proud to have such an important role in this great initiative and look forward to reviewing the ideas. Over the years we’ve offered a starting platform for a number of small producers that have grown their brand nationally – including Reggae Reggae Sauce.

"British food and drink is really important to our customers and this initiative mirrors our ambitious target to double the amount of British food we sell by year 2020. We anticipate products from this campaign will play a part in this journey.

StartUp Britain 

Crowdfunding In The Science?

Congrats To Crowdcube

UK Crowdfuding platfrom @crowdcube raised $2.3 million - congrats crowdcube.com
— Eze Vidra (@ediggs) May 10, 2013

Free Falling - Do You Want To Change?

offBeat Films crowdfund most ambitious film to date

In just 30 days offBeat Films have raised funds to produce a twenty minute short film titled Free Falling.

Free Falling is a twenty minute short film produced by offBeat Films that was shot last summer in London. The crowdfunding campaign was launched to raise funds for post-production costs. The film follows a boy who wakes up on Waterloo Bridge with no recollection of how he got there. He then embarks on a journey of discovery towards a shocking truth.

ffBeat Films was launched over a year ago by Nina Moniri and Robert Sladden with the aim of producing exciting and thought provoking work, it was started through its sister company Red Line Productions. offBeat Films first project was ‘The Basement’ and two minute short film funded purely by themselves. ‘Free Falling’ was produced in the hope of raising the profile of offBeat Films.

Robert said: “We used Crowdfunder as we wanted to raise the funds to complete our project but also the profile of our company and the film we were making. It was a great success and we have raised more than we aimed for and many more people now know about the film and are invested in its release. Crowdfunder have been hugely helpful and supportive in making this happen for us.”

A massive well done to all the team and we cannot wait to see the film.

filched from CROWDFUNDER

Chance To Invest In Crowdcube Ltd.

The UK-based Crowdfunding Platform Crowdcube Ltd. communicates:

Last week we raised an incredible £500,000 in just two days from our existing investors via Crowdcube and we're now excited to be able to extend this offer to you. As such, we've increased our pitch target to a cool £1 million pounds to give you the opportunity to invest in Crowdcube Limited.   This forms part of a wider fundraising round of £1.5 million, of which we have £500,000 already committed from a US-based institutional investor.

The investment will be used to expand our team significantly to be able to support our rapid growth, to execute our marketing strategy to raise the awareness of Crowdcube amongst entrepreneurs and investors and to expand internationally. 

Crowdcube, which is eligible for EIS tax relief, is a leading equity crowdfunding platform and has grown rapidly since its lauch in 2011.  The award-winning website, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, has raised over £6.7 million for 46 UK businesses and has over 34,000 registered investors.  As one of the leading global players in the equity crowdfunding space we have ambitious plans to replicate the Crowdcube model internationally, which have already begun in Sweden – which launched in March 2013, Brazil and the US.   

Click on the button below to find out more about the market opportunity that Crowdcube is set to address, key milestones so far, our performance vs. our plan, what we need this round of finance for and the terms of the investment.
This offer is only available for you a short period so if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact either Darren or Luke on investor@crowdcube.com.         Find out more
   

One Million Pound Startup

About:

Digital Shoreditch is extremely proud to introduce the Million Pound Startup – the first ever contest offering one lucky young digital/tech company one million pounds in investment funding.  We’re looking for the best and brightest companies to show us they have proven potential and deserve £1 million pounds in investment funding. This money will be injected into their organisation with the goal of rocketing the chosen company into a £100,000,000 net worth enterprise.  Digital Shoreditch is providing a very special opportunity to encourage, enable, and strengthen those visionaries that have big ideas and even bigger potential.

Criteria

You, your company and your product or service should be:

• Prepared to put the HQ of your business in east London’s Tech City. There will be help to available to achieve this.
• Represented by a person over 18 years old and be eligible to work in the UK (although if abroad you do not need to have a visa before you apply for the competition).
• Turning over less than £1M per year and have been trading for less than 10 years.
• Investment ready. You should have a company, customers, revenue, product or service, and a management team in place.
• Legal under UK law and not immoral or unethical. Due to the mixed nature of our partners and investors we will be using a fairly broad based definition of unacceptable that is likely to include, but is not restricted to: gambling, pornography, violence, incitement of hatred, defamatory and discriminatory.
• Relevant to the digital and technology space.

The most important thing to remember is that your company needs to have high growth potential.

Enter

Need help?

Download the guidance MPS contestant Pack v2_4

Visit the Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Transform where you live

Civic Crowdfunding In The U.K.: Spacehive

Spacehive about:

Like to add bit of fuel to your funding campaign? Need some volunteers to help make your project happen? We can help!

We've teamed up with the UK’s biggest business-led charity, Business in the Community (BITC), to match Spacehive projects with some of Britain's biggest companies, bringing you armies of volunteers and the opportunity to attract pledges of funding for your campaign.

Every May 17th, some of the UK’s largest companies dispatch teams of employees into the community where they help with local civic projects, giving something back to the communities that support them. This annual day of volunteering is called Give & Gain Day and it's the largest event of its kind in Britain.

This year Give & Gain Day is offering communities the opportunity not just to benefit from volunteer elbow greace but to fund a wider project using Spacehive. So rather than just clean graffitti from a playground in a day, you could crowdfund some shiny new swings and a roundabout.

The idea is that the companies matched with projects will be inspired to pledge funding contributions as well as volunteer. 

It's a fantastic opportunity to build a relationship with a top business that will hopefully last well beyond the 17th May.

If you're interested in taking advantage of this opportunity email us at info@spacehive.com to find out more - but be quick, places are going fast!

 Link

VenusMars To Back

Venus/Mars is a play unapologetically about words…

Sex words
Come here I hate you words
Teasing words
Small words
Big words
Bitter words
Love words
Grey words
Our words - your words.

The writer of Venus/Mars - Patrice Etienne was born and bred in Hackney, East London and continues to live there.  He started writing after rembering how beautiful it was to have his mother read to him at the end of his bed.  He wants all of us to remember that feeling when we enage in his work and like every talented writer he his celebrating the art of good storytelling.

Pitches On The Move

Guardian Witness

Guardian Witness about:

GuardianWitness is our new home for content you've created, online and on your mobile. You can contribute your video, pictures and text, and browse all the news, reviews and creations submitted by others. Posts will be reviewed by our team and suitable contributions will be published on GuardianWitness, with the best pieces featured on the Guardian site – you could even help shape the news agenda.

Contributions fall into three main categories:

1) Assignments. Editors will issue call-outs for your input on a wide range of topics - be it a photograph of the first daffodils, your filmed thoughts on the latest cinema release or a witty re-imagination of a sporting event.

2) Live news tie-ins. Our editors and reporters will sometimes flag live blogs as suitable for contributions, which will enable you to be part of a breaking or fast-moving story. We'll include the best contributions in the live blog - for instance your experiences of austerity protests around the world or your videos of the latest extreme weather event.

3) Open suggestions. This is where you can send us something that we haven't requested. There are two main elements.

1) Send us a story: This might be a tip-off or something you may have witnessed in your local area that you think we might want to see. We're always looking for unreported stories, so we would like to hear about things that we might decide to follow up as a story for the Guardian.

2) Send us your assignment ideas: Have you got an idea that your think other Guardian readers would like to participate in? It might be a simple but beautiful idea such as asking everyone to take a picture at a certain time of day or it might be a way of investigating an issue in more detail. For example asking everyone to share the cost of parking at their local hospital. Or it might simply be an interesting or funny assignment idea which doesn't fit into any of our current assignments.

Assignments will be updated regularly so check back for new assignments and contributions. The GuardianWitness badge will appear in lots of places where you can get involved on the Guardian site, so keep an eye out for it on your favourite areas.

The project is supported by EE, the first providers of 4G in Britain, who are transforming the way people share news, information and entertainment. 4G works up to five times faster than 3G so you can upload and download photos, videos and stories more quickly than on traditional mobile networks. With EE, you're part of a network for the new digital age.

Things you should know

If the image, video or text was originally created by you, you will still own it. If you were given permission by a copyright owner to use the contribution, they do. By using GuardianWitness, you are allowing us to use your content. Read our Terms and conditions to learn more.

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It Feels Like Spring Has Sprung

in Crowdcube Towers with four businesses hitting their respective targets and raising nearly £1 million so far in April.  East End Manufacturing was the first to reach their £150,000 target from 83 investors for their clothing manufacturing company. This was followed last Friday by private members' club, The Rushmore Group, who completed a private pitch on Crowdcube, raising £500,000, which was quickly followed byGLOBALDRUM who successfully hit their target of £125,000 later that evening. 

And finally, just last night, Nottingham-based Flossonic hit their £150,000 target for their flossing toothbrush enterprise. With a couple of weeks still remaining in April who do you think will be the next to hit their target to take us over £1 million investment secured in April?

More information and pitches at Crowdcube.com

SEIS

Discover the benefits of SEIS

A group of enthusiastic graduates led by Anthony Ng Monica had an idea for an online service to help shoppers buy the right laptop – without all the jargon about processor speeds and memory size. They believed the idea had the potential to expand into other consumer electronics and that they could make money from directing readers to online retailers where they could buy what had been recommended. The only problem was raising the money to set up a working website to market their idea. The group tried every avenue, including Mr Monica doing an internship with a venture capital company in the hope of catching their eye.

Swogo.com

 

Finally Swogo, as the business is now called, was able to raise what it needed from investors using the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS), which had come across their pitch on the crowd-funding website Seedrs. Read more by Amy Wilson, Telegraph

Surf Berbere

Surf Berbere - Short Film Partner of The Creatives - PleaseFund.Us

PleaseFund.Us are delighted to announce our Short Film Fund with Surf Berbere, one of the UK's leading surf travel companies, who happen to be in search for a talented film crew!

If you’ve got a short film which is under 40 minutes that you’re looking to crowdfund, Surf Berbere are now offering a £500 grant to put towards helping make it happen. Not only that, but the winning project will also win themselves a one week free holiday to their Moroccan surf school AND get the option of being commissioned a further £200 to make a short film about their holiday at their camp.

1 Winner will get the following:

•  £500 pledge to their project whilst it is live on the PleaseFund.Us website

• An all inclusive surf holiday for 2 out at the Surf Berbere Taghazout surf camp

• £200 commission to make a short video on your surf holiday.

The winner will be announced 24th April, 2013. Check out our rules tab and find out how you can eligible.

The PleaseFund.Us Short Film Fund

Every few months, we partner with an organisation to try and give a boost to our crowdfunding projects with our Creatives Grants. The goal is not to hand over a whole heap of our money, but to reward the best projects as decided by you our crowd. 

We have applied for grants in the past and the system of awards seems to be very opaque and sometimes downright unfair, so if you read "The Rules", you will see why we have taken a slightly different approach to our "Creatives Grants" awards.

Surf School

 

The Rules

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO?

Become a member of PleaseFund.Us (which is absolutely free!).

Submit a short film project (of any category, which is shorter than 40 minutes) that is live at the time of the award.

Update your Member's Profile with a profile picture and up to date information about yourself.

WHO IS GOING TO WIN THE PRIZES?

We know how time consuming it can be applying for grants. That is why we, at PleaseFund.Us are making it as easy and simple for YOU to WIN one of the grants.

The grant winners will be

• Someone creative, just like you!

• Someone that has a brilliant short film project.

• Someone that gets the crowd behind them.

• Someone that is passionate about what they do.

• Someone that is dedicated to achieving his or her goals.

HOW ARE THE AWARDS BEING JUDGED?

• The grants will be awarded based on

• How many people have pledged towards your campaign (not the amount funded).

• How many times your campaign has been shared on facebook.

• How many tweets your campaign has had on twitter.

• How consistently your campaign has been promoted over the duration of the campaign.

• How the PleaseFund.Us community has reacted to your project.

WHO WILL NOT WIN THESE GRANTS?

To make sure the grants are awarded to fantastic projects, we have come up with a tiny list of conditions that your listed project must meet in order to qualify for a grant. Note: if you are passionate and dedicated, we know you will meet the following conditions very easily – just have a quick browse through the list below to make sure you don’t slip through the net.

Your project will not be eligible if on the 24th April, 2013 your project has:

• Less than 20 backers on the PleaseFund.Us platform

• Less than 100 facebook shares directly from the project’s page.

• Less than 50 tweets directly from the project’s page.

In addition to the above minimum entry conditions for the grants award process we have outlined the following key points to help clarify a few factors that will drastically reduce your chances of winning a PleaseFund.Us grant:

• If your project has been uploaded right before the deadline, you are unlikely to be awarded a grant.

• If you only start promoting your campaign in the week leading up to the awards, you are unlikely to be awarded a grant.

• If your short film project is longer than 40 minutes

• If you don't have a project live on the 24th April, you will definitely not win a grant on the 24th April from PleaseFund.Us.

 PleaseFund.Us

 

Independent And Passive Investing