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Venrex chooses Seedrs for GBP1m fundraising

Venture capital firm Venrex has chosen to host its new GBP1 million fundraising on Seedrs, the European crowdfunding platform that focuses solely on equity investments.

The aim of the Venrex VII fund [the fund] is to open up equity investment in early-stage businesses to more investors, effectively democratising the traditional venture capital business by making it possible for more investors to take part in the potential success of startups raising VC investment.
 
Venrex is a London-based, FCA-regulated, venture capital firm with a strong 12 year track record of early-stage investments in fast-growing businesses including: Just-Eat, Notonthehighstreet.com, Orlebar Brown, Lyst, Charlotte Tilbury, Chilango, Dressipi, Thread, Loveknitting, Opus Energy and Skimlinks. Led by Tom Fleming, of the well-known Fleming investment family, Venrex takes a highly targeted approach to early-stage venture investing, focusing only on opportunities that the team believe can deliver a minimum 10X return because of their expertise, market niche and passion.
 
Since January 2003 Venrex has invested GBP26 million, through six funds into 54 businesses on behalf of its partners and other investors. Collectively, the realised and unrealised net return (i.e. based on current valuations of those they have not yet sold) has been an estimated GBP59.5 million at an approximate net IRR of over 20% calculated over the past 12 years (estimated in accordance with the BVCA method and have been reviewed by a third party accountant).
 
As the team will be investing in early-stage businesses, it’s likely that many will be eligible for the Enterprise Investment Scheme; but they’d prefer to invest in high-growth potential businesses regardless of the investor reliefs.
 
Jeff Lynn, CEO and Co-Founder of Seedrs, explained: “One of the biggest benefits of crowdfunding is that it opens up investment opportunities to a much broader audience than just ultra high net worth or institutional investors, breaking down traditional barriers within the venture capital industry. Tom and his team have a fantastic reputation in the marketplace for spotting the potential winners amongst early-stage startups and we are pleased to partner with Venrex on this new opportunity to enable crowd investors to access its next portfolio of highly curated companies.”
 
Tom Fleming (pictured), Partner at Venrex, says: “We are on a mission to democratise the venture capital investment business and make exciting early-stage investment opportunities available to a much wider investment audience.  We chose Seedrs as our platform for this fund raising as it provides a professional environment that is straightforward for everyone to use and protects investors’ rights while attracting new investors who could become evangelists and customers for our portfolio companies.”
 

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