Glasgow based investment syndicate Kelvin Capital has moved into its tenth year of business by completing its biggest investment year yet.

A total of £10.5 million was invested across nine businesses in its portfolio in 2018, made up by eight follow on investments and one new investment. 

The Kelvin Capital portfolio covers sectors including internet and app technology, biotech, life sciences and electronic manufacturing and medical technologies and continues to support disruptive technologies with global ambitions. 

Angel Investment Network (AIN) the UK’s largest online platform connecting angel investors with startups has launched a new platform connecting female founders and investors. The new ‘Female Founders’ platform was set up to address the underrepresentation of women in the industry both as investors and founders.

In  this month's Startup Spotlight Invested Investor speaks to Ramona Liberoff, an experienced and dynamic investor with decades of business experience.

She is currently a Fellow of the Zinc VC programme and is an active angel investor, and was formerly the chief operating officer of the Innogy Innovation Hub and CEO of SPRING Accelerator. She is passionate about global system challenges that create major opportunities such as energy access, electromobility, automation, the use of data and machine learning.

VenueScanner has raised £1 million to roll out its sharing economy marketplace for booking venues.

VenueScanner aims to become the #1 online destination for events globally, changing the landscape of discovering and booking space online, by creating a simple and smart self-service platform for hosts and organisers.

Current investor Tom Singh explains: “We’re excited to continue to back the VenueScanner team. They've scaled a unique approach to innovating in the events market, with 18k spaces live across 15 UK cities. The range of companies using VenueScanner for finding event space, from Deloitte to Lululemon is testament to the product.

Growth in the UK private sector remained stagnant in the three months to February as momentum in early 2019 remained subdued, the latest Confederation of British Industry Growth Indicator showed on Sunday. Looking ahead, further decline is anticipated with private sector activity expected to fall slightly, in the quarter to May, with a negative balance of 4%.

Two trade associations, who work at policy level to help small businesses secure growth funding, and a private investment house specialising in alternative investment for SMEs, discuss the reasons behind the slowdown and the support needed for small businesses to prop up the private sector.

Angel CoFund backed energy technology company Limejump is to be acquired by Shell*.  With this deal Limejump’s technology and management team will enable both companies to continue to take steps to support the UK energy system’s transition to a lower carbon future.  Upon completion Limejump will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Shell.

Aston University and University of Birmingham Enterprise have teamed up with Minerva, one of the UK’s largest traditional angel investor networks, to expand the funding opportunities available to start-up businesses in the West Midlands by launching a network of ‘business angels with insight’ for Birmingham. 

Minerva Business Angels is part of the University of Warwick Science Park. The new Minerva Birmingham network will meet regularly at Aston University to provide access to investment for innovative businesses in the region looking to grow.  University of Birmingham Enterprise will provide pitch training and mentoring for those local businesses seeking investment from the network, while Minerva will contribute its tried-and-tested angel investment model.

FLOWERBX, the online, wholesale, flower-delivery service, has announced it has closed a £4.2m ($5.5m US) fundraising round. The new funding will pave the way for the company’s US launch, scheduled for May 2019.

Gradtouch, a Manchester Based job matching business, has received a funding boost of £150K from GC Angels, the angel investment arm of the Growth Company.

Angel-backed peer-to-peer tasking app Pinga has announced its expansion across Central London, following a successful launch in Hackney last year. 

Investors have pumped £300,000 into the company behind operations and issue management software used at golf’s Ryder Cup and athletics’ European Championships.

The funding for Glasgow-based Raven Controls is coming from business angels David Fletcher, Malcolm Jones and Clark Wilson.

The cash will be used to create up to five jobs at the company, adding to the teams in house development capability in addition to growing Raven’s sales and marketing.

Two tech entrepreneurs aim to transform cybersecurity with a new software platform that allows businesses to monitor the whole of their cybersecurity from one easy-to-use dashboard.