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:
£500,000 EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Development of technology platform
- Build sales and marketing strategies
- Continued international expansion
- Staff recruitment
The Insights Family is a young and fast-growing data analytics business which operates a subscription-based market research and insights platform focused on the kids market. The business currently surveys more than 4,000 children per week across 11 countries, providing valuable insights to companies such as Amazon, 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 investment, the company had grown to 31 employees, led by Nick and a very talented management team.
DSW Ventures made a £500,000 EIS qualifying investment in July 2020. The funding will support investment into the technology platform, predominantly through new hires, and enable further international expansion as the business establishes itself as a worldwide market leader in kids market intelligence.
Key Contacts:
Capital deployed:
£690,000 EIS qualifying
Use of funds:- Further development of technology
- Continued commercialisation of range of resin-ink products
- Expansion of team
4D Biomaterials is the developer of 4Degra™, a new class of innovative 3D printing resin-inks. The business supplies unique materials which enable its customers to create biocompatible, biodegradable and bioresorbable medical devices designed to promote tissue regeneration across a range of applications.
4D Biomaterials spun out of the University of Warwick and University of Birmingham in 2020 following 15 years of research and development in founder Professor Andrew Dove’s research group. The business has since brought on board CEO Phil Smith, an entrepreneur with a track record in commercialising university research in successful spin-outs. The team is based at its lab in MediCity, Nottingham.
DSW Ventures made a £690,000 EIS qualifying investment in July 2021 as part of a £1.6 million raise alongside co-investors Mercia. The funding will support further investment into the technology and its commercialisation through continued R&D and new hires.
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:
“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 take minority stakes, typically of less
than 30% of equity 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.