The Future Fund is part of a portfolio of COVID support programs that targets early-stage firms. Under the scheme, the UK government will match funding in a convertible securities offering thus supporting these smaller firms during a challenging time.
It is anticipated that most of these offerings will convert to equity in the future and thus the government will end up becoming a shareholder in the firm. As most of these companies do not qualify for other available programs, the Future Fund was launched to support the UKs important innnovation sector.
Several crowdfunding platforms have listed securities offerings that were approved to receive Future Fund money. Equity Crowd Expert has put together a short report that quantifies utilization of the Future Fund on crowdfunding platforms.
According to the report, 41 crowdfunding offerings seeking Future Fund support have successfully raised £50+ million to date.
Over 26,000 individual investments have been made into Future Fund supported campaigns. As well, 60% of the campaigns attracted over 200 investors, including 5 campaigns attracting over 1,000 backers.
The report states that Seedrs has been dominating the Future Fund fundraising push, as nearly 90% of the campaigns (88%) were listed on the Seedrs platform while raising 68% of the aggregate capital.
Crowdcube was a bit later to the game but with Chip Financial raising £11 million and surpassing the matching loan limit of £5 million offered by the UK government, Crowdcube has listed the largest Future Fund round so far. Chip also attracted over 8,000 investors.
The following 5 largest campaigns on Seedrs, including:
- Nude (£3.5m),
- Houst (£2.6m)
- Howsy(£2.3m)
The report states that there are still 14 active Future Fund campaigns targeting £10.5 million.
It is important to note that Seedrs and Crowdcube recently announced a merger of the two platforms. The two firms have dominated the UK securities crowdfunding market and thus the single firm should continue to be the premier online capital formation platform. The merger will make it easier for the new entity to scale, target other markets and become profitable.
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