North West-based venture capital firm Praetura Ventures has shortlisted 12 companies to take part in its PraeSeed programme, a new initiative designed to identify the most promising start-ups in the North of England and support them with equity funding.
3月公布, the programme (pronounced ‘pre-seed’) received over 200 applications from start-ups in a wide range of sectors, 包括人工智能, 医疗保健, 热情好客, 休闲, 制造业, 机器人和软件即服务.
The 12 shortlisted businesses will attend a series of workshops delivered by later stage founders and experts in their field. Among the 15 speakers scheduled for the sessions are Rich Potter, Peak AI首席执行官, adviser Sophie Conaghan from Finance for Founders and ecosystem leader Liz Scott from Turin Innovation Catalyst. The sessions will focus on helping the founders across Praetura’s ‘6Ms’ model, 帮助他们制定未来计划, 融资路线图, 财务模式和市场策略, 还有市场营销方面的专家会议, 领导, 销售与人力资源.
Praetura’s fund managers will use the six weeks of workshops as part of the due diligence process, helping to determine which businesses will get investment. Praetura plans to make equity investments of £200k in up to eight of the twelve cohort businesses later in the year. The cohort will also be introduced to Praetura’s co-investment network at a showcase date to be held in September in Manchester.
这12家公司分别是, Aquaint, Bidscript, CCI光子学, 盖亚学习, Fireflai, 北艾, Praxium, 学生的途径, Scrubmarine, Robitiz3d和WAC.
PraeSeed is the latest project launched by Praetura to help support early-stage businesses with the funding they need to grow, whilst also providing them with additional support in the form of an ‘scale up’ education programme.
The programme is being led by 杰西杰克逊 – an investment manager with a long track record for funding seed stage businesses whilst also campaigning for greater diversity in the investment sector.
杰西杰克逊, Praetura Ventures的投资经理, said: “I’ve been so energised by the response to PraeSeed. 这是我们第一次运行这个进程, and we’ve been overwhelmed by both the quality of the applications and the reaction from the ecosystem.
“The UK won’t be able to fuel its future scale up success stories without early-stage risk capital. Celebrating and supporting businesses at seed stage is an essential part of the puzzle – we want to help these companies to the next stage so they can make a real impact on the region. The whole Praetura team is so impressed with the energy in the North right now.
“我们有很多公司, from robots solving potholes problems in our road infrastructure to educating children with neurodiverse needs, and from cost and sustainability savings in marine cleaning to improving radiologists’ performance in low income countries. 我等不及要开始了.”
西蒙·梅林, 现代送奶员的创始人, will be running a session for the PraeSeed cohort on his journey to becoming one of the region’s fastest growing tech businesses. Simon said: “T在这里’s something special about growing a business in the North of England. Everyone is behind you and wants you to succeed. Scaling Modern Milkman over the last few years has taught us a lot, and I believe we can support others to grow more effectively by sharing these learnings.
“It’s great to see a programme that combines both capital and advice at such an early stage. 当你想要快速成长的时候, it’s really easy to make bad decisions so I think having a network to support and share ideas and challenges with will be really powerful. I’m really looking forward to my workshop and meeting the first cohort.”
The PraeSeed programme will run for five years in total and invest over £6m into 35 start-up businesses. 它将于2025年初重新开放申请.
The launch of the PraeSeed scheme comes after Praetura Ventures was named as the manager for Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II’s equity investments of up to £5m in the North West.
