An entrepreneur who invented 3D printed personalised gummy vitamins tailored to people’s nutritional needs, lifestyles and goals is just one of the highlights of a new documentary featuring weird and wonderful ideas that will change the world. 

BankiFi, a fintech business specialising in payment processing and financial administration services for SMEs, has secured a £2.2m investment in a funding round led by Praetura Ventures, with participation from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA).  Headquartered in Manchester, BankiFi was founded to help financial institutions better serve small and medium-sized businesses. 

Responsibly, the supplier data platform for responsible supply chains, has announced a $2Million pre-seed investment round led by venture capital firm Flash Ventures. This investment will allow Responsibly to expand its team of engineers, data scientists, and the impact intelligence team, to accelerate the building of its flexible data feed and interpretation engines. The raise will also enable the Danish startup to soft-launch the first version of Responsibly, a service making sense of the world’s supplier data, empowering businesses to purchase responsibly and efficiently.

Seneca Partners, the specialist SME investment business based in the North-West, has announced the launch of its new AIM focussed EIS Fund – the Seneca AIM EIS Fund (the Fund).

Lead generation technology company, ROI Media UK, has acquired Norwegian digital marketing business, Effective Marketing. 

BGF, the UK & Ireland’s most active investor, has invested more than £316 million across nearly 80 businesses in the first six months of 2021. Exit activity reached record levels during the same period, with 15 exits generating an average money multiple of 2.5x.

Having delivered growth beyond expectations, digital martech innovator, Modo25 has secured a fourth six-figure investment round for its award-winning BOSCO™ Connect solution that delivers real and significant benefits to online marketers globally.  This time, the investment has come from three new investors with significant industry experience to support the continued global growth of Modo25 and BOSCO™.

Olsam Group, a company which buys and scales category leading e-commerce businesses, has successfully raised $165 million in a Series A equity and debt round. The equity investment was led by Christian Angermayer’s Apeiron Investment Group and Elevat3 Capital, which counts Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund as a strategic partner. Alongside the equity raise, the debt financing round was led by leading European special situations investor North Wall Capital, from the firm’s dedicated e-commerce lending strategy. Stanhope Capital advised Olsam on the transaction. 

The QUBIS Innovation Fund has been established specifically for university spin-out and start-up companies operating in the UK’s fastest growing sectors. The objective of the Innovation Fund is to enable more efficient deal closing for high potential companies through co-investment with aligned partners. Investments will qualify for SEIS and / or EIS tax relief (Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme and / or Enterprise Investment Scheme ), helping to incentivise investors to back these early-stage ventures.

PALATINE Private Equity has exchanged contracts for the sale of its stake in Verdant Leisure,

Gary Stewart, founder and CEO of FounderTribes, looks at the blind spots inherent in early stage investment.

Does anyone still invest in pre-seed and seed-stage start-ups? And does it matter that the decreasing flow of early-stage funding disproportionately locks out women and minority founders?

Leading UK law firm Shoosmiths has advised the shareholders of Go Geothermal Ltd on their sale to the Stockholm exchange listed group, NIBE Industrier AB (publ.).