Overfunding: UK Startup Wriggle Secures Over £365,000 on Seedrs

Last month, award-winning startup Wriggle launched an equity crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs to raise £350,000 as part of its plans to develop its technology and to prepare for scalable-launch across the UK.

The crowd investment will be used to build out their technology to provide the following key features:

1. Customer intelligence platform: Smart-platform analyzes customer data to provide what customers want, when and where they want it.Behavioural analysis will be performed by analysing data on customers’ preferences, sales, activity, discount rates, proximity, frequency etc. The algorithm will become smarter as customers purchase more often – allowing Wriggle to fine-tune individual preferences and our assumptions.
2. Business Intelligence Platform: A data-driven dashboard for restaurants to track performance, review price-reductions, and  create new price-reductions. The generalised business data and customer intelligence will direct businesses and created content to market more efficiently and respond directly to customer needs
3. Reactive pricing: Fluctuate pricing based on real-time activity, levels of capacity and remaining time of availability reinforces the concept of the perishability of the content, pushes people to book early and boosts sales during quiet times.

Since its launch, Wriggle’s campaign has successfully secured its initial goal and is currently sitting at £365,000. This isn’t the first time the company has looked to the crowdfunding portal for funding. During a recent interview, the Wriggle’s founder Rob Hall opened up about the company’s first experience with Seedrs:

• Filling the Tricky Funding Gap between £150,000 and £1m: “There’s a headache funding gap for startups to negotiate between heavily incentivized SEIS funding (up to £150k), and the Series A stage — which seems to be moving later-and-later. Crowdfunding is an excellent tool to help startups manage this gap.”
• Leveraging the Private Investment: “The plan was to raise the first portion of the round privately. We ensured a sizeable chunk of the round was committed privately (through Creative England and a number of Angels) at the same valuation. With that in place, crowdfunding becomes an excellent tool. By directing their money through Seedrs, we demonstrate their commitment and belief in Wriggle to the crowd, to attract their investment too.”
• Marketing: “Wriggle is a consumer-facing product with a broad customer-base. The crowd fundraising process puts Wriggle in front of a wide audience of potential customers, and give our existing “Wrigglers” the chance to own a part of the brand.”
• Seedrs has matured: “Crowdfunding is a nascent industry and evolving constantly. We’ve seen increasingly larger crowdfunding rounds, with a more clued-up investor-base in the last few years as it matures. On Seedrs, more than 340 businesses from 24 different countries campaigned on Seedrs in 2015. And in 2015, investors from 75 countries made 38,000 investments totalling over £64 million.”