Case Studies

Matillion

Matillion is a leading provider of cloud-based data extraction and transformation tools, which helps companies utilise their data for insight and decision making.  At the point of YFM’s initial investment in 2016, Matillion had only launched a product on one platform, Amazon Web Services. With funding it enabled Matillion to accelerate customer penetration within 15 months, but it actually achieved this within just six months.

Since YFM’s investment Matillion co-founder and CEO, Matthew Scullion, has grown the Manchester-based enterprise software business from a small team of 18 to over 270 employees with new offices in New York, Denver and Seattle. Vital early stage funding facilitated Matillion’s transition into a significant presence in the US, demonstrating how the UK can nurture the growth of small tech businesses.

Now one of the most successful enterprise software companies in the UK, Matillion is a great example of VCT funding achieving exactly what it is meant to do – creating a valuable business that provides employment, tax revenue and exports.

“It’s our view that every company in the world needs to compete using data,” said Matthew Scullion, CEO at Matillion. “And most of the time they’ll do this in the cloud. Only the cloud offers the speed, agility, power, and economics to cope with this demand for data insights, and to manage the exponentially growing data volumes and complexities that we work with today. As the leader in purpose-built data transformation software for cloud data warehouses, Matillion is perfectly positioned to help our customers compete and win using data.”

Elvie

Elvie is a British brand developing smarter technology for women. Its team of world-class engineers, designers and business minds are redesigning existing unattractive and outdated medical devices in women’s health into sleek consumer products that could be used at home. Elvie now has six pioneering products across two categories, the latest - a hands free, hospital grade breast pump, Elvie Stride, which won the 2021 TIME best invention award, to Elvie Trainer, its award-winning Kegel trainer and app.

Elvie was founded in 2013 by Tania Boler, a women’s health expert who’s passionate about improving women's physical and emotional wellbeing while leading taboo-busting conversations around women’s health. As an expert with over 15 years’ experience, Tania’s mission has always been to create world-class technology to address intimate (and often neglected) issues faced by women throughout their lives. Tania’s vision for the company – to produce a suite of products designed with women considered at every stage of the design process, and that address the severe gender gaps in technology.

Titan VCT, managed by Octopus Ventures, led Elvie's $6m series A in 2017 and participated in its 2019 $42m series B and $68m 2021 series C rounds, investments that have helped Elvie continually innovate and develop new, best-in-class products and services for women, and helped it move into new markets including the USA.

Simon King, Octopus Ventures said: "When we first met Elvie, the combination of a cracking team with a powerful vision, a massive market and great initial traction meant making our investment decision was straightforward.  We remain excited by the continued innovation we see from the team and the huge opportunity the company has in a historically underinvested area!”

Quorum Cyber

Quorum Cyber is an award-winning cyber security business which has developed advanced solutions to protect organisations against security attacks and breaches.

When the Maven VCT’s first invested in Quorum in 2020, the business had ambitions to grow internationally and saw the importance of further developing its innovative offering to help capitalise on the growing global demand for robust cybersecurity solutions. During the time of Maven’s investment, Quorum increased both annual recurring revenues and headcount fourfold and entered the US market. The Maven funding was used to make several key hires and to enhance the service offering, including innovations around both its Microsoft Azure Sentinel Security Operations Centre and the Managed Detection and Response service. These solutions quickly became attractive to a range of organisations across the world, helping protect them against cyber-attacks and ensuring that they could confidently operate in an increasingly hostile digital landscape.

Critically, Quorum also strengthened its partnership with Microsoft and is now recognised by industry commentators as a leading player in the sector, where its cutting-edge cyber solutions support many well-known organisations in enhancing their cyber protection.

“Our successful partnership with Maven has enabled us to accelerate growth and scale our business, and it has demonstrated what can be achieved with the right team and direction,” said Federico Charosky, CEO at Quorum Cyber. “I’m incredibly proud of the progress made with Maven as our investment partner and Quorum is ideally positioned to continue its rapid growth.”

Bloobloom

Bloobloom is disrupting the glasses market by selling premium spectacles and sunglasses at a fair price, via a seamless buying experience. Bloobloom sells direct to consumers both online and offline through a growing store network, removing the middlemen and costs associated with them. Pembroke’s latest £2.5 million investment, as part of a £3.7 million fundraise, alongside DMG Ventures and several angel investors will help Bloobloom further develop its pioneering technology and scale its business in the UK.

Established in 2018 by brothers Abbas and Fares Manai, Bloobloom adopts a transparent business model, sharing information such as raw material costs, transport and taxes with customers to demonstrate what they are getting for their money. Acting in stark contrast to its costly competitors, Bloobloom sells its glasses at an average price per pair of £95 whilst still achieving a healthy margin. The founders believe premium glasses can be reasonably priced and reject the glasses industry’s current pricing conventions.

A key goal of the business is to help the 2.5 billion sight-challenged people in the world without access to glasses. Bloobloom’s Pair for Pair programme ensures that, for every pair of glasses sold, Bloobloom donates another pair to someone in need. Bloobloom successfully launched two London stores in November and December 2021 (based in Carnaby Street and Marylebone High Street) and plans to grow this store network firstly in London before looking nationwide.

Fred Ursell, Investment Director, Pembroke Investment Managers LLP commented: “Bloobloom is a great example of a brand recognising and harnessing the power of the omnichannel approach. Fares and Abbas are transforming the customer experience of purchasing glasses into a delightful one, both online and instore. Bloobloom’s focus on experience, product and brand has led to impressive commercial traction to date to match its solid ethical foundation. We are pleased to be supporting the team to realise its next level of ambition.”

YARDLINK

YardLink is reinventing the future of construction procurement for SMEs across the UK with its full-service supply chain management software. Beringea led a $17.5 million Series A funding round, with participation from Amplifier and existing investors Speedinvest and FJ Labs, to double YardLink’s headcount and expand its supplier network nationwide.

Construction sites often have to hire equipment, but the centralized nature of the traditional hire market means suppliers can be slow to deliver, leading to downtime on-site and delayed projects. YardLink aims to speed up this process with a digital-first, marketplace approach. It has a network of 100 suppliers with more than 1,400 equipment depots across the U.K.

These suppliers can be sourced, booked, and paid for directly through a single user-friendly digital platform. This not only streamlines the procurement process but it is also far more environmentally friendly by linking up contractors with approved local suppliers and helping to reduce the carbon footprint of every project.

YardLink CEO Neeral Shah said: “Construction is one of the least digitized industries with over 95% of supply chain transactions still being conducted over the phone, email and pen and paper. YardLink connects construction customers with their supply chain on a single digital platform.”

Maria Wagner, partner at Beringea added: “In an industry that has struggled to embrace new technologies, and where supply and demand are fragmented, YardLink has the potential to establish itself as the go-to marketplace for construction supplies. Neeral and the team have built a business that enables a fast, reliable and cost-effective way for renting equipment or purchasing materials. The efficiency of the process also facilitates a lower environmental footprint. We are excited to join them on their journey!”  

Toqio

Toqio is a fast-growing fintech SaaS provider that allows any business, not just banks, to launch embedded finance solutions in a matter of days. Toqio recently secured £17.2m in Series A funding, led by Albion Capital, which also includes a £1.1m grant from a public organisation for technology development in Spain.

With a proliferation of innovative fintech and financial service providers entering the market over the past five years, Toqio was established to help make these services more accessible through its low-code platform, designed to build and launch new banking and finance solutions quickly and easily.

It removes the need to build and manage complex software through its SaaS platform and its marketplace. Toqio’s ‘Marketplace’ provides a place to incorporate curated fintech modules into a solution, offered by leading financial service providers.

Eduardo Martinez Garcia, CEO & Co-Founder of Toqio, said: “After rapidly growing our team and entering the Spanish market, we’ll now be broadening our focus within Europe. This new funding round will enable us to keep evolving and delivering on our vision to become the world's premier fintech SaaS platform, giving our clients the ability to create, customise, and launch bank-grade digital finance solutions.”

Jay Wilson, Investment Director at Albion Capital added: “We have been incredibly impressed by Toqio’s growth to date and the exceptional quality of the SaaS business it is building. We are well aligned with the company’s vision of bridging the gap between financial services and financial outcomes. The digitisation of finance is only just beginning and Toqio has a massive market to go after. We look forward to playing a small part to support them in delivering on their bold ambition.”

Hurr

HURR launched in 2019, aiming to reinvent what ownership means for consumers through fashion rental. The business has a hybrid business model: It operates its own marketplace where people can rent fashion from peers or directly from more than 130 designers and brands, and provides white-label services allowing retailers such as Selfridges to provide their own rental offerings. On top of those, HURR has opened a physical store in Selfridges London and a partnership with Depop to sell items that can no longer be rented.

The driving force behind HURR is founder & CEO, Victoria Prew. She launched the business to give women the ability to be part of the latest trends without fuelling demand for more disposable fashion. She built the business from visiting lenders’ homes with a camera in hand, to a desk at Google’s Startups Campus, to a thriving on and offline community of renters and lenders.

Building a more sustainable planet is a core value for Octopus Ventures, and the team quickly realised the values they shared with Victoria on first meeting her in 2020. The team also realised the value they could bring to HURR by applying learnings from the likes of Olio, Cazoo and Depop to the business. Octopus Ventures led HURR's £4.1m seed round in 2021.

Matt Chandler, Octopus Ventures said: "Steering consumers away from overconsumption is something we care deeply about at Octopus Ventures. It is why we were early backers of Depop, and Victoria had a brilliant vision in how to do that. Not only did she have that vision but she was executing beyond expectations – shifting to a hybrid business model and securing valuable, high-quality partnerships. We believe Victoria can reinvent how consumers view fashion."

CLUBSPARK

 ClubSpark is an awarding-winning specialist software company serving participants, sports providers, National Governing Bodies and International Federations. ClubSpark helps sports clubs with the management of operational activities and provides National Governing Bodies insight into participation and activity levels.

 In February 2019, Foresight invested £2.15 million into Clubspark, helping extend the business’ international operations - consolidating its position as the de facto standard in tennis worldwide.  

 In March 2021, Foresight completed a £2.5 million follow-on investment to allow ClubSpark to roll-out the global tennis platform and launch the World Tennis Number - developed in partnership with the International Tennis Federation. The investment will also support further product development.

PURE PET FOOD

West Yorkshire-based Pure Pet Food is an online direct to consumer manufacture of natural health food for dogs and cats. Its mission is to provide pets with customised, healthy, convenient pet food through differentiated air dried or dehydrated recipes.

Mercia’s Northern VCTs invested an initial £2.0million to support co-founders Matthew Cockroft and Daniel Valdur Eha develop a more personalised offering. The appointment of an in-house teaching technology team to build a bespoke customer-facing platform allows the acquisition of data to enable intelligent marketing and customised recipes for improved customer retention. 

 Pure Pet Food’s growth has accelerated during the pandemic with pet owners opting for online convenience, and this is set to double the company’s run rate revenue. 

Simulity

In November 2016, Foresight VCT invested £4 million of growth capital into Simulity Labs, a specialist technology business based in Bangor and Belfast, that produces embedded communications software for SIM, eSIM and the next generation of connected devices.

Following investment, Foresight and the management team developed and implemented a comprehensive 100-day plan, which involved expanding the company’s product offerings, transitioning the business to a more licensed and software focused growth strategy and opening additional offices in India and the USA. The investment, which led to a 25% growth in staff numbers in the UK, helped attract key global partners and customers with an increased level of confidence in the provision of critical products, especially in overseas markets such as Israel.  It also attracted the attention of potential acquirers and, just eight months after investment, in July 2017, Foresight successfully completed the sale of Simulity to world-leading semiconductor IP company ARM delivering a near three times return to shareholders at an IRR of 400%.

Stephane Fund, Founder and CEO, Simulity Labs said: The institutional backing of Foresight allowed us to scale the business and continue to build our world leading team and technology, whilst also providing huge credibility in discussions with large global corporates. Foresight has worked closely with us, particularly during the exit process.”