Augmentum Fintech raises £28m in oversubscribed placing October 30, 2020 Listed venture capital firm Augmentum Fintech hit its £28m fundraising target through an oversubscribed share placing launched this week. The firm said demand from both existing and new investors exceeded the maximum issue and applications have been scaled back accordingly. Augmentum Fintech raised £28m through the issue of 23.37m shares at 120 pence each. The [...]
Octopus Ventures ‘extremely optimistic’ about investment landscape October 28, 2020 Investors have spent most of this year looking inwards as they sought to shore up their portfolio companies in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. But even as the UK continues to grapple with uncertainty amid another round of lockdowns, some investors are starting to look for opportunities to expand their portfolio. London-based VC firm [...]
Octopus Ventures leads seed funding round in pet-tech firm Katkin October 28, 2020 London-based pet food company Katkin has secured £4.5m of funding in a seed round led by venture capital firm Octopus Ventures. Katkin was set up by siblings Brett and Nikki O’Farrell to produce healthy cat food after realising the options available didn’t provide cats with the nutrition they needed. The wet food contains 95 per [...]
Startup community Supernode merges with VC fund to invest in media-tech October 21, 2020 Investor and startup community Supernode has absorbed media-tech VC fund Rooks Nest Ventures in what it claims is an industry first. The creation of Supernode Global comes out of the £28m Rooks Nest Ventures fund, launched in 2017 by film producer Michael Sackler, and the community platform Supernode. The new venture will offer access to [...]
Ada Ventures launches £250,000 angel investor programme October 13, 2020 Ada Ventures has launched a £250,000 angel investor programme to create a new generation of investors who may have otherwise been excluded from the industry. The London-based VC firm, named after the first computer programmer Ada Lovelace, has identified five candidates – “Ada’s Angels” – from its Scout programme. Co-founder Check Warner told City A.M. [...]
Small business would suffer from a capital gains tax hike – not just investors September 28, 2020 Capital gains tax (CGT) increases were reported to be in the chancellor’s sights before the Autumn Budget was cancelled to allow Rishi Sunak to focus on his winter economic plans. However any changes to CGT down the line could discourage small business investment just when it is needed most, says Claire Madden. Has there ever been a [...]
The UK has £10bn skills gap, so investors must back the ‘edtech’ boom August 17, 2020 The “edtech” revolution began long before 2020. The last two decades have seen a surge in demand for skills such as coding and data science, which traditional educational institutions have, as yet, been unable to meet. A recent study by Qlik and Accenture estimates this skills gap, evidenced by the difficulty to fill positions or [...]