New figures show
Seedrs continued its reign as the most active funder in UK private companies in 2017, as the London based fintech company announces its biggest year since launch.
With £125 million invested into campaigns on the platform and 168 deals funded in the 12 month period, the Woodford-backed investment platform has seen another year of impressive growth. The company recently surpassed £300 million invested into campaigns on the platform and has now funded over 590 deals since its launch.
5-year old Seedrs completed over 130 per cent more £1 million+ campaigns in 2017 than the previous year, breaking a number of records in the process. Challenger bank Revolut raised its cap of £3.8 million from over 4,200 investors in August 2017 as part of their £50 million Series B round led by Index Ventures, awarding them the accolade of the largest number of investors in a campaign on Seedrs.
Seedrs continued to strengthen its position across Europe with businesses raising from 8 different European countries across the year. 2017 illustrated an eco-automotive trend with Berlin based Sono Motors raising €1.8 million and Dutch startup Bolt, hailed as the ‘Dutch Tesla on Two Wheels’, raising €3.2 million from an impressive 2,400 investors. Bolt became Seedrs’ biggest non-UK crowdfunding campaign of all time by both amount raised and number of investors.
Strong interest from venture capital firms in equity crowdfunding in the UK has continued to increase exponentially in 2017 with Seedrs seeing an influx of co-investment from widely respected VCs such as Oxford Capital, Draper Esprit, Ascot Capital and more. Moreover, VC interest was not solely limited to the UK. Dutch based trading app Bux allocated €1.4 million to the crowd as part of its €10 million Series C led by Germany’s Holtzbrinck Ventures, one of Europe’s most successful venture capital firms. Bux hit it’s funding target on Seedrs in just 24 hours from over 2,000 investors.
In a game-changing move for the sector, June saw the launch of the Seedrs Secondary Market after responding to a growing demand for liquidity from investors and industry bodies. The innovative product allows shareholders in Seedrs portfolio businesses to trade shares during a one-week window each month. In 2017, shares in 147 different businesses were traded, with investor exits just shy of 700. Many investors achieved impressive returns, some up to 19x returns on a tax-adjusted basis.
Later in the year, Seedrs successfully closed its own £10 million funding round led by star fund manager Neil Woodford who increased his existing stake in the investment platform with an additional £4 million. In addition to this, 1,900 of Seedrs’ own customers invested a further £6 million into the oversubscribed round.
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