For founders
If you are looking for investment funding, we can help. Send us your deck to review.
About us
We offer venture funding from start-ups to Series A
- UK-based, regional companies
-
Cheques of £100,000 to £1 million
(happy to participate in much larger rounds) -
All sectors with a focus on software, deeptech/university
spin-outs and consumer - SEIS/EIS qualifying
Who we are
We’re hands-on investors
- We attend every board meeting and are in weekly contact with most of our portfolio companies
- We help founders build management teams
- We make deals happen – we act quickly, decisively and act as the catalyst to bring all parties together
- We fix problems
Start your journey today and send us your deck for us to review
Our portfolio
Our success stories
Capital deployed:
£300,000 EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Working capital
- Strengthen logistics and supply chain
- Develop digital marketing & offline channels
- Strengthen management team
The women’s outdoorwear business was founded by Joe and Kasia Bromley who had taken the business from the kitchen table to £1 million of turnover in three years and with very limited capital. ACAI is the first to market with Kasia’s innovative outdoor skinny trousers, uniquely combining function and comfort with a stylish, feminine design.
DSW Ventures led a £350,000 raise alongside Jen Atkinson, a prominent North West businesswoman and Angel Investor, who will provide non-executive marketing support and board advisory. We also sourced and introduced former Berghaus President, Richard Leedham, who joined the board as Chairman.
The investment round is enabling the team to invest in working capital to fund further growth, build marketing capability and invest in new product design.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£500,000 EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Improve organic reach
- Build a global reseller network
- Development of product
- Strengthen marketing capability
Avanite’s software enables sysadmins to significantly reduce the size of user web-data cache whilst maintaining the data essential for personalisation. This reduces the web-data footprint by over 60%, facilitating significant data cost savings for cloud infrastructure deployments and a much-improved personalised user experience.
Avanite was co-founded by Peter Jones, a former Citrix architect at AppSense. On completion of our investment Keith Turnbull, a former Chief Development Officer at AppSense and Angel Investor joined as Chairman of the board.
DSW Ventures invested £500,000 of EIS compliant seed capital in March 2018 to fund the development of both direct sales and reseller channels and fund further development of Avanite’s ground-breaking product.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£2m EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Development of technology platform
- Build digital marketing strategy
- Strengthen management team
- Staff recruitment
One Utility Bill simplifies the utilities experience for for consumers, landlords and letting agents by consolidating household bills into one monthly payment, providing a unified front-line support service and providing cost splitting features for shared accomodation. Having launched in the student market, they have now successfully extended into the wider rental and homeowner markets.
One Utility Bill is based in Newcastle upon Tyne and was founded in 2015 by two young entrepreneurs, Chris Dawson (CEO) and Dale Knight (CTO). At the time of investment, the business managed £10m of utilities for its customers.
DSW Ventures has led two investments rounds totalling £3.3 million of EIS qualifying investment alongside Northstar Ventures. The funding has enabled the business to expand its Newcastle-based team, enhance its technical capability and extend its reach to both consumers and partners.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£625,000 EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Implement game-changing features
- Build organic reach
- Develop further digital marketing and offline channels
- Strengthen management team
The PopTop events marketplace enables consumers and corporates to design and book bespoke events across the company’s network over 11,000 UK event and party providers. The platform matches customers planning events with suppliers such as caterers, entertainers, DJs and photographers. PopTop became the first online events marketplace globally to offer real-time transactions in October 2019, with its Instant Quotes functionality.
PopTop is led by CEO, Eugene Shestopal, and CTO, Ignat Tkhorovskiy who launched the business in 2014 in Kiev. The business subsequently relocated to Newcastle upon Tyne to focus on the UK market.
DSW Ventures has led two investments rounds totalling £1.05 million of EIS qualifying investment alongside Northstar Ventures. The funding has enabled the business to further develop the technology platform, expand the team and invest in its digital marketing activities’
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£450,000 EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Build direct sales capability
- Build channel partner network
- Platform development
- Strengthen management team
Shopblocks is a hosted e-commerce Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform designed and built in Manchester. It offers an incredibly simple and intuitive online shop designer enabling small businesses to easily create beautifully designed websites, including integrations into inventory, finance and other operational systems, without the need for deep technical skills.
Kevin Jones, CEO, is an experienced software engineer and entrepreneur with many years of experience in the e-commerce and digital marketing industries. Our initial investment facilitated the appointment to the board of Stewart Reynolds as Sales Director. Shopblocks is a portfolio company of the North West Fund for Digital and Creative, managed by AXM.
DSW invested £350,000 in the autumn of 2018 on an EIS basis. This investment funded the building of a strong direct sales team which has significantly grown the customer base. Building on this success, DSW Ventures and the GMCA invested a further £500,000 alongside management in late 2019, facilitating the development of the senior leadership team and expansion of the company’s sales partner channel.
Through our network of entrepreneurs, senior executives and professionals, DSW Ventures introduced Shopblocks to its first Platinum partner – a transformative deal enhancing revenues, reputation and reach of the company.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£950,000 EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Development of technology platform
- Build sales and marketing strategies
- Continued international expansion
- Staff recruitment
The Insights Family is a fast-growing data analytics business which operates a subscription-based market research and insights platform focused on the kids, parents and under-30s market. The business currently surveys more than 3,400 parents and 4,000 children per week across 22 countries, providing valuable insights to companies such as Lego, Crayola and Warner Bros.
The Insights Family is based in Manchester and was founded by Nick Richardson in 2017 after spending his early career in marketing and digital publishing. At the time of our first investment, the company had 31 employees.
DSW Ventures made an initial £500,000 EIS qualifying investment in July 2020. The funding supported investment into the technology platform, through new hires, and enabled further international expansion as the business established itself as a worldwide market leader in the provision of first-party data intelligence into its target markets.
Our investment has catalysed significant growth with ARR increasing almost five-fold and the company proved its scalability by achieving this with an increase in headcount to 46. Company leadership has also been strengthened with the appointment of a new Chair and CEO.
This success has resulted in DSW participating in a £5.6 million Series A in December 2023, led by BGF – one of the largest and most experienced growth capital investors in the UK. The investment will allow The Insights Family to rapidly grow its international market share, capitalizing on the business’s differentiated software platform and its track record of delivering market-leading real-time insights for blue-chip customers.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£1.3m EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Further development of technology
- Progress towards a first product towards US regulatory approval
- Expansion of team
4D Biomaterials (“4DB”) has developed an innovative biomaterial that has potential to be used for a wide range of 3D printed implants and surgical devices. 4DB’s product 4Degra is a resorbable biomaterial that is being used to develop implants such as orthopaedic devices or soft tissue scaffolds to help patients recovering from surgery or injuries. Preliminary testing has shown that as healing progresses, the biomaterial gradually erodes and is resorbed by normal metabolic processes as natural tissue grows back in its place.
4DB was founded in 2020 as a spin-out from the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick and is now based in Nottingham. DSW Ventures made a £690,000 EIS qualifying investment in July 2021 as part of a £1.6 million raise. In April 2024 DSW Ventures invested a further £640,000 of EIS qualifying investment as part of a £3.4m Series A investment. The latest funding brings the total raised to date to £5m. The company is now preparing to raise a Series B investment early next year.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£409,000 EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Expansion of team
- Investment in marketing activity
- Further development of technology platform
Stressfreecarrental.com operates a price comparison and booking platform for car hire and airport transfers. It aims to bring a fresh approach to product, service and technology and offer lower prices, improved transparency and better customer experience.
Stressfreecarrental.com was launched in 2020 by founders John Charnock, David Mathews and Rory Powers, a proven team who have previously grown and exited their former venture together. The business is based in Manchester and has since brought on board travel industry veteran James Jennings as chairman and Tom Knopek, who has had a 30-year career in the car rental industry, as non-executive director.
DSW Ventures made a £409,000 EIS qualifying investment in November 2021 as part of a total round of £534,000, co-investing alongside an industry experienced angel investor. The funding will support multiple new hires alongside further investment into marketing and the technology.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£716,000 EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Scale-up of manufacturing capabilities
- Development of lead anti-fungal compound
- Expansion of commercial and product development teams
Aston Particle Technologies is the developer of a novel technology, iDPC, a tuneable blending process which greatly simplifies formulating active pharmaceutical ingredients in the drug production process. iDPC enhances the properties of drug formulations and provides a simpler route to developing high-dose dry powder inhalers, oral solid-dose drugs, fixed-dose combination drugs, and biologics. The technology allows pharmaceutical companies to develop the undevelopable and manufacture the unmanufacturable.
Aston Particle Technologies spun out of Aston University in 2016 following its development in Professor Afzal Mohammed’s Pharmaceutical & Clinical Pharmacy Research Group, with the support of Chairman and co-founder, Ian Smith, an industry expert in inhalation product development. David Wyatt since joined the company as CEO, bringing over 35 years’ experience in respiratory medicine across development to commercialisation.
DSW Ventures made a £716,000 EIS qualifying investment in April 2022 as part of a £1.016m raise alongside co-investors Aston University and an Aston alumnus. This funding will support in-house development of a lead anti-fungal compound, scale-up of manufacturing capabilities and its commercialisation through product and business development hires.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£616,000 EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Development of platform and product features
- Expansion of team
- Internationalisation
Hike SEO have developed a DIY search engine optimisation (SEO) platform, designed to help small businesses improve their visibility on Google in a cost-efficient but highly effective way. The product tells the user what they need to know to build a bespoke SEO strategy – and then guides them through the execution of that strategy. Hike’s customers can optimise their online presence without the significant cost of engaging a specialist consultant.
The Leicestershire-based business was founded by CEO Andrew Allen and CTO Kieran Headley, who worked together as SEO experts before starting the business in February 2017. They are supported by two seasoned operators – Jim Hogkins, former Managing Director of ContentCal, as Chair and Deborah Jones, former Finance Director of MLS, as CFO.
DSW Ventures made a £616,000 EIS qualifying investment in January 2023 as part of a total round of £675,000, co-investing alongside incumbent investor, Jenson Funding Partners. The round will accelerate Hike’s growth through new hires and support further product development.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£500,000 EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Investment in sales and marketing activity
- Expansion of team
- Internationalisation
Propello Cloud is a white-label customer rewards SaaS platform which offers customers a fully branded yet quick to implement “plug-and-play” solution. The platform enables customers to easily build their own rewards and partnership programmes, increasing value provided to their own end-customers and reducing churn.
The business was founded by CEO Mark Camp and COO George Charlesworth after spinning out of integrated marketing agency Workhouse in 2020. Propello Cloud is based in Manchester and is supported by Richard Gregory as chairman, an experienced start-up non-executive.
DSW Ventures made a £500,000 EIS qualifying investment in November 2022 as part of a total round of £650,000 co-investing alongside a syndicate of angel investors. The funding will support further sales and marketing activity and new hires to support further growth.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£308,000 SEIS qualifying
Use of funds:
- Development of technology platform
- Build sales and marketing strategies
- Continued international expansion
- Staff recruitment
Mesenbio was founded by Professor Paul Genever and Dr David Kuntin, following more than a decade of research. The Company is developing a new treatment based on nano-sized ‘messengers’ created from engineered human stem cells that not only curb inflammation but can kick-start the process of regenerating damaged tissue.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£924k SEIS & EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Further expansion of the team
- Manufacturing scale-up and initial sales of the R.O.S.A.L.I.N.D. instrument
- Further regulatory work
InvenireX is commercialising the world’s first benchtop instrument capable of detecting and absolutely quantifying DNA and RNA at the single-molecule level, unlocking a degree of precision previously unattainable. This breakthrough enables foundational measurements across the life sciences, with applications spanning point-of-care diagnostics (for example, rapid COVID-19 or malaria testing), gene expression analysis, mutation detection, SNP genotyping, and drug discovery.
Founded in 2021 by Dr Dan Todd and based in Newcastle, InvenireX received its first investment from DSW Ventures in early 2024 – a £385k commitment as part of a £500k round alongside XTX Investments. In August 2025, DSW Ventures invested a further £385k of EIS-qualifying capital as part of a £1m seed round, complemented by £1.1m of grant funding from UKRI and the Royal Academy of Engineering. A further £414k raised in April 2026 from DSW Ventures and new co-investors, brings the company’s total funding to £3m. InvenireX is now preparing to commercialise its R.O.S.A.L.I.N.D. device.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£1m SEIS & EIS qualifying
Use of funds:
- Establish team & facilities
- Further, develop lead assets
- Progress pre-clinical programmes
Founded in 2022 as a spin out from the University of Dundee, Glen Clova Scientific is developing a new generation of active biologic drugs for chronic inflammatory and autoimmune disorders. The initial seed funding round of £2.5m in April 2024 was supplemented with a further £1.4m in Q1 2025 enabling the Company to advance the preclinical development of its lead assets for the treatment of dermatological conditions.
DSW Ventures participated alongside Norcliffe Capital, TriCapital Angels and Scottish Enterprise in an initial combined SEIS and EIS investment and follow on EIS investment.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£384,500 SEIS qualifying
Use of funds:
- Pre-clinical development
- Extend the IP portfolio
- Staff recruitment
Dia Beta Labs is a spinout from Ulster University with a portfolio of novel therapeutics for the treatment of metabolic diseases including diabetes and obesity. Founder and CEO Ryan Lafferty developed the lead asset during his postdoctoral research within the Diabetes Research Group at Ulster University.
In a market currently dominated by high-profile drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic, DBL’s lead candidate promises similar benefits without the harmful side effects or long-term complications.
DSW Ventures led a £1.2m funding round with support from QUBIS Limited and leveraged grant funding through Innovate UK’s Future Economy Partnership programme.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£385,000 SEIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Investing in partnerships
- Commercialising the product
- Operational scalability
TheNextLevel has developed a no-code, social commerce mobile app builder for e-commerce brands. TheNextLevel’s platform allows clients to quickly develop and securely host a feature-rich and highly engaging mobile app with no upfront cost.
TheNextLevel was developed by Paul Rawlings and Ionut Vasiliu who both have a proven track record in the tech and e-commerce sectors. They have developed a software platform which allows online brands to build community-led mobile commerce apps in a no-code environment. The platform enables the creation of highly functional, feature rich apps and provides advanced functionality that enhances customer engagement and improves customer lifetime value. The Founders’ vision for TheNextLevel is to continue to build this into a feature-rich, highly configurable, platform which enables brands, such as Oscar Piastri (the launch partner), to engage with their customers on-device and in the storefront, providing an experience beyond simply purchasing a product.
DSW Ventures made a £385k SEIS investment in September 2024 with further investment from Richard Hong, the cofounder of e-commerce personal care brand owner, Pangaea Holdings. The investment seeks to provide the resources to allow management to go to market and bring new features to the platform. These new features will further enable brands to engage further with their audience through TNL’s social commerce community feature and unlock a genuine revenue generation and customer retention tool.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£415,000 – £250,000 SEIS qualifying, £185,000 institutional investment
Use of funds:
- Growing traction
- Advancing Fireflai’s toolset
- Expanding the team
Fireflai is a data intelligence company developing AI-powered software for master data management (MDM) and product data enrichment. Fireflai’s platform leverages advanced machine learning and generative AI to unify, cleanse, and enrich large volumes of product data and SKUs spread across multiple systems, locations, subsidiaries, languages, and hundreds of suppliers. The companies’ technology allows customers to generate reliable, accurate, and structured product records – called a Golden Data Set – in a matter of hours. This allows customers to rapidly reduce inefficiencies, prevent revenue loss, and reduce compliance risks caused by poor-quality data.
Fireflai was founded by entrepreneur Tom Gardner (CEO) who previously cofounded Robiquity, a successful automation consultancy, and Craig Sumner (CPO) a former management consultant and expert in digital process transformation. Further supporting the team is Laura Malins (non-executive director), former Chief Product Officer of Manchester unicorn Matillion, and James Clarry (chair of the board). The team is building the next-generation of data management solutions and are setting a new standard for product data integrity, enabling companies to stay ahead in an increasingly digital and data-driven marketplace. The platform also includes generative AI features that enrich records with automatically generated content – text, images, and descriptions – allowing companies to scale their product data management without relying on semi-automated or outsourced solutions.
DSW Ventures made a £415,000 pre-seed investment into Fireflai in early 2025 to accelerate product development and commercial expansion. The investment will help the team position Fireflai as the go-to solution for businesses looking to take full control of their product data and unlock new opportunities for automation and growth.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£382,000 Seed EIS fund
Use of funds:- Expansion of the team and Chair recruitment
- Unlocks £607,000 Innovate UK grant
- Staff recruitment
- Complete further pre-clinical studies to prepare for clinical trials
StimOxyGen (Stim) is a spinout from Ulster University (UU) that has developed a targeted technology for the treatment of hypoxic (low oxygen) tumours that are resistant to traditional cancer treatments. Its initial focus is pancreatic cancer. The technology has been developed within the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science at the University following many years of research.
The Company was spun out of the university upon completion of the ICURe programme in March 2021 through which it was awarded £350k of grant funding and is led by CEO Sian Farrell.
DSW Ventures led a £900k funding round with support from QUBIS Limited, Co-Fund Northern Ireland (managed by Clarendon Fund Managers) and leveraged an additional £600k grant funding through Innovate UK’s Future Economy Partnership Programme.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£1m SEIS & EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Accelerate product development
- Expand the team
- Extend Roxfit’s global ambassador network
Roxfit is a training and race-day performance platform built specifically for hybrid competition. The app provides AI-powered training tools, pacing guidance, post-race performance analytics and wearable integration, allowing athletes to simulate race conditions, benchmark results and track progression.
Founded in 2024 by Hyrox enthusiasts Ben Wilson and Joey Allott, who recognised the poor quality of results and performance data provisioned from events, along with the absence of training plans and data insights, Roxfit has quickly grown to over 250k users and has positioned itself as the ‘go-to’ technical solution for Hyrox event participants and athletes interested in following hybrid training programmes.
DSW Ventures first invested in Roxfit in May 2025 with a £338,000 SEIS investment, as part of a round totalling £790,000. In March 2026, DSW Ventures invested a further £630,000 of EIS-qualifying capital as part of a £1.9m seed round.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£415k SEIS qualifying
Use of funds:-
Initial commercial sales and customer deployments of the AMIS instrument
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UKCA and CE marking ahead of first commercial sales
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Continued development of the LINK imaging software and further hardware modules
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International expansion preparation from 2027
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£415k SEIS qualifying
Use of funds:-
Expansion of Nexco’s AI agent platform
- Deepening candidate intelligence capabilities and CRM integrations
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Commercial expansion across executive search firms, corporates and private equity clients
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£415k SEIS qualifying
Use of funds:
- Support further technology development, including adding automated workflow orchestration to the platform
- Scale the engineering and sales teams
- Build on initial commercial traction and extend go-to-market partnerships.
Voxshell is a Cranfield University spinout developing software to improve engineering simulation workflows. The company’s initial focus is on meshing – a required step in converting 3D computer-aided designs (CADs) into simulation-ready models.
The company’s flagship product, ChopMesh, is software that uses a proprietary method to automatically identify and repair invalid mesh elements without triggering cascading errors. Meshing of complex implicit geometry designs requires significant human intervention from an expert engineer and is the most time-consuming and error-prone step of the workflow (up to 80%). ChopMesh enables engineers to mesh these designs in a fraction of the time and without bad elements. ChopMesh’s ability to mesh implicit geometries automatically is unique to Voxshell and protected by significant know-how and patents.
Voxshell was founded by Dr Liang Yang during his time as a lecturer at Cranfield and officially spun out in April 2023 following a £26k UKRI grant and continued growing through further grant funding and bootstrapping. DSW Ventures led Voxshell’s £800k seed round in July 2026, with matched funding from Innovate UK.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£1 million SEIS and EIS qualifying
Use of funds:
- Continued product development ahead of regulatory certification
- Initial commercialisation within neuro-intensive care
- Expansion of collaborations with healthcare providers and commercial partners
Key Contacts:
“DSW Ventures have been ideal lead investors. From the outset they were easy to work with, quick to understand our complex context, rigorous in due diligence but also pragmatic and supportive. They have provided sound corporate finance advice and have helped to shape strategy without ever dominating the debate. I would not hesitate in recommending DSW.”
Phil Smith
4D Biomaterials
Our partners
FAQS
Below you’ll find the answers to some of our most frequently asked questions.
Our typical investment is from £100,000 up to £1 million at the pre-Series A stage, typically as a single or lead investor. Our primary focus is on software, science and consumer technology businesses, but we will invest in businesses in other sectors with a scalable model, protectable market positions and talented founders. We typically take minority equity stakes and our investments are usually compliant with the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) or Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS).
Our key investment criteria are as follows:
– UK-based, regional companies
– Revenue-generating or demonstrable commercial traction, or in the case of deep technology, IP-rich with early validation of the technology
– Total round size below £2.5 million
– Valuation below £10 million
– SEIS/EIS qualifying
– Exceptionally strong and capable founder teams
The timescale for investment with us is around two to three
months from the initial meeting depending on requirements and stage of
business. All our portfolio companies
meet and present to our Investment Committee during the investment process.
We work closely with our portfolio companies in order to add genuine value to our investments. We go beyond just ‘the money’; our founder teams benefit from the network and experience of the DSW Ventures team, as well as that of our Investment Committee and individual angels.