The UK Institutional Investment Scheme has been a driving force for start-ups outside the UK as it has allowed angel investors to invest in a very tax efficient manner.
Launched in 1994, it was designed to encourage investment in unquoted small businesses. as such Wikipedia We’ll tell you that by the end of the 2014-2015 tax year, a cumulative total of £14.2 billion was invested under the scheme in about 25,000 businesses, for example.
This policy has been adopted and copied by several European governments since then. But with the UK’s cultural and historical appetite for risk and investment in assets outside of property, EIS has been a boon to tech companies as the UK’s tech industry expands exponentially.
Although it’s not always perfect – a lot of entrepreneurs sometimes find problems with the whole thing – EIS and SEIS have at least invested a significant amount of seed money in the tech ecosystem for the years since they were first launched. The result has led to many startups taking their first breath and continuing to attract institutional investment from venture capital.
A good example of that portfolio projects (PV), which has now closed a second angel fund (which they claim is oversubscribing), as many angel investors do so under EIS.
This means that the fund will receive more than £5 million to invest, between £100,000 and £500,000 in checks, in UK technology companies in their early stages, from pre-incorporation to Series A. SaaS.
The second PV Angel Fund is backed by some of the UK’s most active angels, including Chris Adelsbach, Will Neal and Michael Pennington, along with founders from Credit Kudos, FreeAgent, BrandWatch, Wayve, Passfort, ContentCal, Griffin, Bibliu and Rahko and Fixflo. Moreover, a number of partners from other venture capital firms are investing personally, NEDs and former CEOs from the likes of John Lewis, AXA and BBC, according to PV.
The new fund made its first three investments, jointly with Hoxton Ventures in RePlan and Juno, while also investing in Passionfruit along with Firstminute Capital, Playfair Capital, FJ Labs and scouts from Accel, Notion and Atomico.
PV does much of its community-driven culture, with a network of founders, investors, and others along with PV founders Will Martin and Will Brooks putting the fund together in 2014. It’s a kind of “institutional angel” that fosters the LP community and a broader investor and founder network. James Pringle, founder of Pringle Capital and co-host of riding unicorns podcast, recently joined PV.
Martin and Brooks say they have helped raise funding for more than 200 companies from inception to Series A, including Tractable, Many Pets, Marshmallow, OLIO, Pensionbee, Attest, Smart, Ably and Credit Kudos, among others.
“We are pleased to close our second Angel Fund as we continue to invest and support some of the UK’s leading entrepreneurs as they expand. PV has always been about grid and accessibility,” Will Brooks said in a statement.
During a call, Pringle explained to me how the box works.
Starting a Finance Club (SFC) It is a provider of financing services, all investors commit to the fund, and Portfolio Ventures are discretionary fund managers who spread out from the amount of capital these investors have put in.
This means that PV is “like a small VC, but with angels instead of LPs.”
The main beneficiaries are individuals as the EIS Initiative fund. So our fund is somewhat unique in that we only have individuals in our fund, and it’s a component of what we consider to be some of the best institutional angels and operators in the UK,” Brooks tells me.
So we’ve put a real focus on quality. And that comes from Will and Will, who started Portfolio Ventures as an angel network, and has done many deals over the years since 2014. They’ve done a lot of deals with these very active angel investors. And now they are In a fund structure so we can access certain trades because some trades are very competitive and are really only available to funds [our angel investors] Take advantage of conducting some kind of financing model.”
He also added that this is the first fund to be over £5m, which means PV “can do a ticket normally around £250,000. So in most of the deals we do, we’re third on the cap table.”
At a time of macroeconomic slowdown, Portfolio Ventures’ second fund appears to have arrived in time to capitalize on ongoing innovation across the UK.