Seedrs announced that during 2016 more than £85M was invested by the crowd in 159 campaigns. Since launching by Jeff Lynn and Carlos Silva in 2012, Seedrs has facilitated more than 450 deals and counts £190M raised through its platform.
“The ongoing success of many of our portfolio companies is exactly why equity crowdfunding is instrumentally important to the future of the early stage investment and why sophisticated investors should be looking at this asset class as a part of their broader investment portfolio in 2017,” indicated Lynn.
Seedrs also opened a new office in Berlin in addition to these 2016 highlights reported in late December:
Over £85 million invested into campaigns- Nearly 160 crowdfunding deals funded
- More than 45,000 investments made
- £1,902 was the average investment
- Investors from 65 countries around the globe
- Average portfolio has 9 investments
- Over 200 investors per deal on average
- More than 14,000 conversations started by investors with entrepreneurs
- Businesses from 14 countries campaigned
The site also noted that October 2016 was a record-breaking month, with nearly £20M raised in investment funding on the site. Other 2016 news includes Perkbox’s £4.35M campaign and P2P travel money platform WeSwap’s £2.4M round, which both benefited from tennis player’s Andy Murray’s own investment (he invested in 18 campaigns this year alone). WeSwap set the record for the most participants in a single Seedrs campaign with 3,000 backers. Seedrs’ fastest funded deal of 2016 was Tandem, which reached its goal within 15 minutes flat.
In 2016 more VC firms and other institutions invested alongside Seedrs , included with Draper Esprit, Ascot Capital, Zoopla, Unilever Ventures and JamJar Ventures.
“We are strong believers that VCs, angels and the crowd can work together to provide the right long term patient capital to the best entrepreneurs, empowering teams to build global companies that last,” Draper Espirit CEO Simon Cook explained.
In November, the accounting software firm FreeAgent, which closed £1M on Seedrs in 2015, raised £10.7M listing on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), in what was thought to be the first time a company had gone on to IPO after raising finance through equity crowdfunding.