UK-based crowdfunding platform Seedrs has closed a £10m financing round by raising £6m from its own crowdfunding platform.
Seedrs said the new investment round, which includes a previously announced £4m investment from Woodford Investment Management, values the startup at £50m on a fully-diluted, post-money basis.
Over 2,000 people from 35 countries backed the startup over the course of the five-day campaign, with the average individual investment priced at £3,200 and the largest individual investment at £800,000. The highest number of investors came from the UK, Germany, Portugal, France and Italy.
Jeff Kelisky, the newly installed chief executive who took over from co-founder Jeff Lynn over the summer, said: “This round is yet more evidence of the market’s conviction that Seedrs is on the right path to delivering shareholder value by opening venture capital opportunities to retail investors for fast growth companies – and without Seedrs having pioneered regulated equity investment, these opportunities would have remained closed to them.”
The startup said the capital will be used launch new product capabilities that will ‘materially increase liquidity and return potential for investors and businesses’. Seedrs is also looking to build out increased sales and marketing efforts, launch a select set of strategic partnerships, and massively scale campaign execution through automation, machine learning and AI.
Long-time backer and tennis champion Andy Murray has also provided a ‘substantial follow on investment’.
He added, “It is with great pride that I have made this investment into Seedrs latest funding round. As an active investor into early stage businesses through the Seedrs platform, it was important for me to take up my pre-emption rights.”
More than 500 deals have been raised through Seedrs to date, raising a combined $260m. Earlier this year, Social peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform Flender secured more than £500,000 in a equity crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs.
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