FounderCatalyst

Exciting news - the much anticipated Beauhurst H1 2024 report is out. It's impossible to tell if this report shows the much anticipated 'green shoots' or just continues the notable 'alternating one quarter up, one quarter down' amount raised and deal size trend. Much more information on sector / regional variations and some noteable deals in the report - link in the comments. Hat tip to Henry Whorwood and team, as always.

A big thank you to our new FounderCatalyst customers that have joined in an amazing July.  July is traditionally a slow month, but we’ve… 📈 4.5x our best July  🙌 Smashed our best month ever by over 25% 👥 Welcomed new team members (Max Heal and Rebecca Gibson)  🚀 Introduced game-changing new services (EMI and unapproved option schemes)   So, thank you again to our new customers 🎉   If you're looking for the most cost-effective way to achieve SEIS/EIS advance assurance and close a funding round, let’s speak - Calendly link in the comments

Our founder, Sam Simpson will be a judge again this year at The Pitch UK on the 4th of September in Bristol. We are a huge supporter of this competition and was delighted that FounderCatalyst customer EdenFiftyOne™ (hat tip to the awesome Tom Reynolds SLE) was overall winner last year. Hopefully Sam will get to meet lots of you there 👏

Many founders know the pain of the HMRC SEIS/EIS advance assurance process, but few know that something even more painful awaits. But first, a reminder that FounderCatalyst takes the pain of an advance assurance away - we produce advance assurance submissions for founders for free when they commit to a funding round. So...more painful than advance assurance? It's the SEIS/EIS Compliance and Certificate (AKA (S)EIS1 to (S)EIS3) process required whenever you issue shares under the SEIS or EIS schemes.  The process is painful in and of itself, but each submission can only cover one scheme (SEIS/EIS), one share class (hopefully you are only issuing Ordinary shares anyway) and, crucially, one day of issue. So, you may find yourself undertaking this process several times for just one funding round. Ouch. Great news though - FounderCatalyst has you covered: we'll support you in undertaking the compliance process and we'll issue each investor a fully completed SEIS / EIS for ⭐️FREE⭐️. This is a service that our competitors charge £490+VAT for 🤷♂️ Try FounderCatalyst today - we are sure you'll love it as much as James Tanner from Last Fan Standing did 🎉

Our friends at Venturebeam have recently launched ‘Venturebeam Impact Scoring’ a standalone, free-to-use tool for venture backed companies to assess, measure and improve their impact on people and planet. The tool is designed to give actionable feedback on how to affect positive change inline with the UN17 sustainable development goals. It is built on a proprietary methodology, which you can read about here.https://https://lnkd.in/ejwXW3EB All companies are encouraged to use Venturebeam Impact Scoring, whether impact is at their core, or they are simply interested in finding out how to help bring about the collective change we need to see in the world. Help drive meaningful change by measuring the impact your company is making and how it can make more in the future. Try out Venturebeam Impact Scoring for yourself here - https://lnkd.in/e-mxCxby - would be interested to understand your scores

This Thursday, FounderCatalyst is running a FREE workshop in conjunction with Emmie Faust from Female Founders Rise mapping out your journey from bright idea to fully funded. Through this workshop, you’ll learn how to: ✅ The critical path from bright idea to fully funded. ✅ Key decision points along the journey ✅ How to minimise cost and duration without compromising on outcome. Join us on 27th June at 1pm by registering using the link in the comments 

Delighted to share that our CEO Sam Simpson will be speaking with Emmie Faust and Female Founders Rise on: The journey from bright idea to closing your first funding round. Join us on 27th June at 1pm - registration details below to shortcut your funding journey

Congratulations to Aalok Rai from upLYFT who, using FounderCatalyst and received SEIS+EIS advance assurance in less than 24 hours 🎉 You could use alternative providers (more expensive, higher failure rate) or you could make use of our best in class service which is FREE when you commit to a funding round 🤷♂️

Great news on (S)EIS advance assurance applications The average response time has dropped recently from an average of 2 weeks to a week. And for the first time in a few years, HMRC are routinely returning positive responses next business day 🤩 Chris Rogers from ZoneAware one of many examples. As a reminder, the (S)EIS advance assurance from FounderCatalyst is just awesome: 1️⃣ 100% success rate over the last 3 years (vs 18% average failure rate, according to HMRC) 2️⃣ Completely free when you commit to a funding round with FounderCatalyst 3️⃣ We do the heavy lifting: we review the pitch deck, forecast and ensure that these are HMRC friendly then build the submission for you 4️⃣ We can build a submission NBD if you are in a hurry 5️⃣ We are also the only way of achieving the (S)EIS compliance and certificates for free and, again, have a 100% success rate here ✅

The Pitch UK and FounderCatalyst have teamed up to undertake free pitch reviews for a selection of founders. Our first review is now complete and, between you and me, I really liked the hati pitch deck by Zaahirah Adam. A few little tweaks and this gets a solid 9/10 from me - bravo! 🙌 Link to the review in the comments...and another link if you fancy throwing your pitch deck in the ring 🤔