Investment Showcase cements its place as the highlight of SETsquared’s events calendar

(Image from left to right shows: Philippa Roberts, founder of Binit; James Symes, Founder of the Bike Club and Adrian Cunlifee, Technical Director at Mafic)

A bin, a bike and a hard hat or the latest cutting-edge tech innovations?

The answer is very much the latter. They represent an app to reduce business waste, a subscription service for kids bikes and a wearable that uses machine learning, IoT and cloud services to solve industrial health and safety problems – all of which were pitched at our latest showcase.

Tech collided with tradition once again at One Great George Street, London for our 16^th annual Accelerating Growth Investment Showcase on 4 December. 21 high-tech companies, each seeking investments of between £150k – £3m, from across our incubation centres pitched to over 140 investors who attended on the day with further investors watching online. The Showcase was a platform for many different technologies including the next generation of medical devices, a portable phone charger rental network, a specialist drone service for emergency services, biodegradable cellulose beads to replace harmful plastic, digital eye care via smartphones and an application which helps film producers create and deliver interactive films quickly and easily without coding. It featured six spin-outs from four of our university partners Bath, Bristol, Exeter and Surrey.

Each of the 21 start-up teams that pitched for investment all received mentoring and support in the run up to the event to ensure their pitches were investor ready and over £100m has been raised as a result of previous Investment Showcases.

Gosbert Chagula, representing Invest HC, an investor in attendance said: “SETsquared is a vital part of the UK’s innovation ecosystem. It leverages its partnership with five research intensive universities to benefit the entrepreneurs it supports but also to bring investors great opportunities to deploy capital. I’m here looking for investment opportunities in the sustainable energy sector and there are some very interesting early stage clean tech companies here today.”

The Showcase comes hot on the heels of our ranking as the Global no 1 University Business Incubator for the third time by UBI Global, an independent consultancy which ranks incubators and accelerators across the globe. This ranking recognised the wide reach of our business support programme and incubation which has now support over 4,000 entrepreneurs, helping them raise over £1.8bn.

Dr Simon Bates, CEO of Actuation Lab, one of the showcasing companies said: “SETsquared’s Investment Showcase has given us a high-profile platform to deliver our investment pitch. We’ve had some fantastic conversations with investors following our pitch and now have some follow up meetings in place. Sometimes it’s the little things that turn out to be hugely beneficial. By just being here our network has expanded today, we’ve met other start-ups, people from industry and had a few referrals to other contacts who could be really useful to us.”

Simon Bond, Innovation Director, SETsquared summed up: “The Investment Showcase really ends our year on a high. Every year I’m so proud that we’re able to line-up a really strong array of ambitious start-up teams and this year’s cohort was no exception. I saw many positive conversations going on around the room and look forward to hearing about deals done as a result in the near future.”

Investors can find out more about the companies that pitched at this event plus others on our Online Investment Platform. Our next Showcase takes place on 21 May 2020 at Deloitte, London, is open for registration.

Find out more and register