Private company investment platform Seedrs experienced a record-breaking year in 2019 with GBP283 million invested into pitches, resulting in 49 per cent growth in investment compared to 2018.Seedrs completed 250 deals in 2019, up from 186 in 2018, and delivered 7,858 investor exits on its Secondary Market.
In 2019, Seedrs helped businesses from 16 different countries raise funds, and received investment from 78 different countries. Fifty one per cent of the 250 completed deals were fundraises of over GBP1 million, showing 89 per cent growth in larger funding rounds over 2018. Highlights include Scottish fintech Paysend raising GBP10.7 million in Series B funding, Seedrs’ first Danish company LuggageHero completing a EUR1.5 m illion round, and AFC Wimbledon raising GBP2.4 million from over 5,000 investors in one of the UK’s largest public funding rounds for a football club.
Seedrs launched two more industry-firsts in 2019. The EIS100 Fund offers investors passive exposure to the venture capital asset class at scale. It began deploying capital into EIS-eligible pitches in April 2019 for 12 months. The second launch came in November when Seedrs announced the first ever in-app investment opportunity for an early-stage company, through a new partnership with London-based firm Oval Money.
The Seedrs Secondary Market delivered 7,858 investor exits across 317 different businesses in 2019, taking the all-time total of exits since launch to 13,671.
The Seedrs Anchor Investor Service, which supports select businesses in finding institutional capital, had another positive year securing GBP9.5M in investment offers for companies raising on Seedrs and its portfolio businesses.
Jeff Kelisky, CEO at Seedrs, says: “It’s been an outstanding 12 months for the business. I’m excited to share our 2019 in numbers, announcing record levels of investment which demonstrate tremendous growth while continuing to deliver true pioneering achievements over the course of last year.
Our vision has always been to create a marketplace for all investors in private companies, and 2019 has been a real step-change for us as we move towards that. With more industry firsts like API driven in-app investing and the EIS100 Fund, along with further iterations to our existing innovations like AutoInvest and Secondary Market, we’re getting very close to becoming the de facto standard in the industry on our path to achieving our vision. Our plans for 2020 are big, and include a number of innovations like auction pricing on the Secondary Market. Watch this space, because investing in private companies just got a lot more exciting.”
