SETsquared Bristol member LatchAid, an award winning breastfeeding and early parenthood support innovator, has closed its seed funding round with an ultra-competitive £510k Innovate UK Innovation Loan, bringing total investments to £1m, as testament to its ground-breaking technology and user traction.

By Peter Finnie, partner and patent attorney at full-service IP law firm Potter Clarkson.

Turning car finance on its head putting consumers in the driving seat, Carmoola, a newly launched motoring fintech has raised £27M in investment from Jaguar Land Rover’s investment fund, InMotion Ventures, VentureFriends, BCI and California-based Clocktower Ventures.

DBIC Ventures has led a €1.6M funding round in industry cloud CRM company, Clarity CX1, along with angel and other investors. The investment will be used to fuel Clarity CX1’s global growth plans, supported by 30 new jobs over the next two years.

State-of-the-art start-ups came face-to-face with influential investors at an innovative pitch event filmed by University of Essex students.  

A start-up inspired by an adventurous granny and co-designed by a team of retirees has raised £1.1m in funding to tackle the loneliness epidemic amongst older people. The Joy Club is a community-based platform designed to help retirees discover events, passions, and friendships that will enrich their lives.  Google Maps co-founder Lars Rasmussen has invested in the round, alongside Calm/Storm Ventures, Alma Angels, and other notable angel investors.

Turquoise, the UK merchant bank specialising in energy, environment and efficiency, has made a £150k investment in Electric Miles. Low Carbon Innovation Fund 2 (LCIF2) led the £776,000 equity round which included co-investors Vipul Amin, founder of uSwitch and owner of Kelkoo; and Blue Lake VC, which focuses on B2B and software start-ups.

Northern Ireland investors must commit to doing more to support female led businesses and encourage entrepreneurship among women if they want to ensure there is a strong pipeline of innovative, scalable businesses emerging into the local start-up scene, according to one leading Belfast fund manager.

Clarendon Fund Managers is the first local fund manager to sign up to the Investing in Women Code and is now urging other Northern Ireland-based investors to join them in committing to support female founders.

Green Angel Syndicate Founder and President Nick Lyth asks whether the monetary cost of reaching Net Zero is just too much to bear.

Olivia Sibony is Head of Impact and International Partnership at Angel Investment Network (AIN), the largest angel investment community in the world, with 40 networks extending to 90 different countries and more than 1.4m users, helping tens of thousands of businesses worldwide with investments ranging from £10,000 to £1 million.

Olivia was a founder of SeedTribe and is now a Government advisor on recruiting impact-led starts ups to relocate to the UK post Brexit. She is also a passionate advocate for getting more female founders backed but also encouraging more female investors.  

Here she shares her thoughts on topics close to her heart including how to encourage more female entrepreneurs and the future of impact investing.

Koolen Industries, the clean energy investor headed by Kees Koolen, has invested in ParkBee, the leading tech platform for off-street parking in Europe. Other investors are a number of leading (tech) entrepreneurs and investors, as well existing shareholders. Total funding to ParkBee amounts to EUR 30m.

Oliva, an advanced workplace mental health platform founded in 2020, has raised £4.84 million seed funding.  The round was led by Stride VC, a seed-stage VC firm based in London, along with additional investment provided by Moonfire, as well as adding a number of new angel investors.