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ACF Investors passes landmark 100th investment

ACF Investors, a UK venture capital fund that works alongside sector expert business angels to invest in high potential businesses, has passed its 100th company investment. 

The angel-partnership investment model has been highly successful, funding businesses through multiple investment rounds and is validated by the fact that the funds investments have almost tripled their initial value.   

Almost half of ACF’s investments over the past decade have been in companies outside of London and the South East. Its commitment to the regions has showcased some of the amazing talent and businesses that can be found across the country such as Wayland Additive in Yorkshire and the Humber, Neurovalens in Northern Ireland, and Dogtooth in the East of England. The power of its investment style along with the talent of the teams it works with has resulted in noteworthy exits such as LivingLens (Based in the North West) as CREO (based in Wales) as well as Ebury to Santander, LimeJump to Shell and City Pantry to JustEat.

To build on their success ACF Investors also launched the Delta Fund earlier this year, a fast-track investment fund that provides equity or convertible loans to UK businesses that have been backed by a syndicate of angel investors with significant funds and deep sector knowledge. 

Its decade-long support of fast-growing businesses and the fact that ACF Investors is sector agnostic, has also seen it back companies operating in a range of different markets, the top three of which are Medtech/Biotech (26), software (15), and Fintech (15). 

ACF Investors reached this latest milestone with the completion of three new investments, which are representative of the fund’s unique investment model across sectors and geographies. Kuano.ai which is a London-headquartered software platform for rapid, cost-effective quantum modelling of enzymes adds to ACF Investors’ growing Medtech portfolio. On the software side, Scene Group, the Manchester-based creator of animation software Cavalry, which was backed by mobile games entrepreneurs and founders of Playdemic, Paul Gouge and Alex Rigby, and Scotland-based SnapDragon Monitoring, an online brand protection business, which demonstrates the wider reach of ACF Investors across the UK.

Tim Mills, Managing Partner, ACF Investors, says: “We had a bold ambition when we launched the fund to build a big portfolio, to invest widely  and to remain an active and engaged investor and reaching  a portfolio of 100 businesses is testament to that hard work and dedication of the team. This milestone cements our position as one of the country’s most active, and regionally diverse, early-stage investors. Through our tried and tested co-investment model, we partner with sector-smart angels who provide much needed specific expertise to portfolio companies. We pride ourselves on being a pan-UK fund and our underlying investment philosophy is that future market leaders can emerge from any area, and any sector, in the UK.”

George Whitehead, Partner, ACF Investors, says: “Our hypothesis when we launched the fund a decade ago was that sector smart angels can have an enormous, positive impact on the success of a business and as we reach our 100th investment with a top decile performing fund we now are more certain than ever that spending time partnering with the right angel investors can lead to extraordinary success.”

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