Fundraising just got less painful.

NEWS RELEASE: Envestors empowers start-ups with the launch of stand-alone Equity Crowdfunding Platform – the first to give control back to the entrepreneur

A fully ‘owned’ crowdfunding platform, to support start-up and scale-up companies throughout their growth cycle

Fundraising for growth businesses has always been challenging. It’s time-consuming, expensive and there are no guarantees of success. Exacerbating these challenges are complicated regulatory requirements that prevent businesses from promoting their investment opportunities to more than 150 people. Until now, that has meant that businesses have to work with a middleman to raise funds.  In exchange for support, companies sacrifice control, typically over campaign length, branding and ownership of investor data – which is crucial for subsequent funding rounds. Envestry for Scale-ups empowers companies by giving them their own crowdfunding platform for the duration of the growth phase, which will typically include three to five funding rounds.

Envestors, the fintech for fundraising company, has launched a Software-as-a-Service platform for start-ups and scale-ups to raise funds and manage investors from seed through to maturity. The platform, Envestry for Scale-Ups, has been proven across a base of over 50 customers and – uniquely – gives companies total control of their fundraising activities. 

‘What’s great about having our own platform is that we can maintain total control, we can communicate directly with investors, share our latest successes and monitor how the investment round is going whenever we want’.  Kate Collinson, VZInternet.

The platform has the added benefit of allowing companies to set their fundraising campaign length – whether they want to run a long campaign for a large raise, a series of short micro raises or respond on-the-fly to positive news and open themselves up for funding. Zap&Go, an early Envestry for Scale-ups customer, found having the ability to open and close themselves to accept investment highly lucrative.

‘Following a piece on BBC Click’, says Simon Harris, Investment Director of Zap&Go, ‘we were able to capitalise on this welcome ‘buzz’ and, through our platform, were able to connect to 137 investors, make 39 deals and raised a further £437,000’.

Envestry for Scale-ups offers a new way of crowdfunding:

• A customisable own-brand crowdfunding platform that can be launched in less than one hour
• Secure Data Room with restricted document access to support investor due diligence
• Full regulatory cover – FCA, GDPR – within the UK
• An investor relations tool – including a Q&A section – that makes keeping shareholders up-to-date easy
• 365-day fundraising: no cap on campaign length or number of fundraising rounds
• Secure database for housing investor details
• Syndication options to share deals with network of +7,000 angel investors

‘This is all about empowering companies and giving them the best chance to raise funds,’ says Scott Haughton, COO, Envestors. ‘An own-brand fundraising platform prepares businesses for their whole growth cycle, looking beyond a single raise and making sure that once a business secures investors, they are able to keep them happy and warm, ready for their next round.’