Funding and finance: taking a strategic approach
Securing funding and finance ranks alongside entering new markets and managing innovation effectively as a key priority for fast-growing, innovative businesses that ultimately want to scale.
If securing funding and finance is pivotal to your growth, our innovation and growth specialists can help you identify your funding needs and help you understand the capital options and alternative sources of investments. We can also help you identify regional and national connections to realise your ambitions.
Support to raise equity finance
Equity finance is often an appropriate way to unleash game-changing growth for innovation-focused companies. Our specialists are well equipped to help innovation-focused businesses establish an approach to investment that realises their growth potential and supports them on their journey.
Alongside tailored one-to-one support from your innovation and growth specialist, you may also be suitable to take part in our Invest-Ability investment readiness pathway: Invest-Ability Intensive Training and Invest-Ability Pitch Panel.
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Invest-Ability Intensive Training offers innovation-focused businesses an opportunity to receive structured training in the fundamentals of investment readiness and invaluable constructive feedback from investors. The training takes place in the context of 1:1 support from a business’ innovation & growth specialist, to ensure it is prepared for and exploited fully.
Invest-Ability Intensive Training is suitable for companies that still need to align their value proposition and business model and at a stage where substantial traction and revenue are some way off. Their pitch deck relies on potential and vision rather than traction and tangible metrics. They have secured a minimum investment of £100k in income from grants, investment, or revenue and are targeting £300k and above in funding over the next 24 months.
Invest-Ability Intensive Training is by invitation only from your innovation and growth specialist. Please contact your innovation & growth specialist to discuss further if you are interested in joining.
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Invest-Ability Pitch Panel gives businesses the opportunity to road test and refine their investor pitch in front of a panel of leading investors, receiving constructive feedback. This provides innovation-focused high-growth businesses the chance to improve their confidence in pitching and readiness for their next raise.
Invest-Ability Pitch Panel is suitable for companies that have already secured pre-seed funding, crafted their product, validated it in the market, and trialled/tested it with evidence of market engagement and demand. They should also have a clear financial plan and roadmap and are targeting £500k and above in funding over the next 24 months. Pitch Panels focus on certain sectors and are either in-person or virtual events.
Invest-Ability Pitch Panel is by invitation only from your innovation and growth specialist. Please contact your innovation & growth specialist to discuss further if you are interested in joining.
Post investment support
Clients who receive investment will continue receiving 1:1 post-investment support from their innovation and growth specialist. During this time, they could consider the next steps such as corporate finance and M&A. We have close relationships with partners such as the London Stock Exchange who can help accelerate their progress.
Furthermore, suitable clients may move on to the Innovate UK Business Growth Scaleup Programme for more specialised support.
Funding and finance options
We have collated a list of common funding and finance options, including grant funding or non-equity sources of finance. You may decide with your specialist’s input that grants or loans, such as Innovate UK Innovation Loans, are a more appropriate strategy, or that your appeal to investors would benefit from having secured such funds.
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"Innovate UK has been very supportive all the way through, helping review grant material and our Series A funding round, for example ... I really value the engagement and support we’ve received."
— David Newton, Chief Operating Officer, Akrivia Health
"The sessions were so useful ... Pantea was very good at listening, asking questions and then gently pushing you in the right direction."
— Tim Williams, Commercial Director, DataQube Global
Success stories
Dataqube
DataQube developed and raised significant funding for its innovative podular data centre system business, enabling high-speed, high-performance and low latency processing.
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Akrivia Health
Akrivia Health launched its new research platform for pharmaceutical companies, a subscription platform that will enable them to run complex queries on anonymised data.
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Ablatus Therapeutics
A spin-out from Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital has had support from Innovate UK to pioneer a new procedure for destroying tumours without the need for invasive surgery.