On Thursday, 4 September, techSPARK hosted the latest Quarterly Investment Briefing at S&W in the lovely EQ Building in Bristol. These events are an opportunity for investors and enablers of investment to connect, learn about the latest investment news in the region, and explore how we can help increase the flow of capital into the region for fast-growth companies.

Today was jam-packed with updates worthy of a quick blog, so here it is:

We compared investment trends from Q2 2024 against this year. Thanks to data from Beauhurst, we also discovered that the South West is bucking the national trend (down 34%) and seeing a 75% increase in investment fun H1. We heard that Crowdcube once again tops the most prolific investors with 5 deals, hotly pursued by Angel Investors Bristol and South West Investment Fund.

We celebrated the companies that have raised the most funding in the last quarter – a ground source heat pump company, a website development company, a financial advice network from Swindon (possibly the first unicorn in Swindon if rumours of their valuation are true), and an internet company started by a man who wanted faster broadband in his Dorset village (which received £50m from the National Wealth Fund).

Image Showing Quarterly Investment Briefing Q2
Image Showing Quarterly Investment Briefing Q2

Next, we invited Paul Jelley (Director, Dynisma) and Louis Spencer (Relationship Director, NatWest) to share the story of one of the fastest growing companies in our region (whose early customers included Ferrari). We talked about the journey that Dynisma has taken since its incorporation in 2017 and its growing presence in Barrow Gurney. From friends and family investment initially, they have most recently worked with NatWest to secure an IP-backed loan (a novel service launched just last year for high-growth businesses).

The Roundtable discussion was perhaps less energised than I might have liked but brought some key investment headlines to the fore. We heard about:

  • A new deep tech venture fund (Blank Page Capital) led by Nigel Toon, CEO of local unicorn business, Graphcore.
  • Halceon – New Cyber and national security angel network launched in June in Cheltenham. They’ve made 3 deals so far and have a team of 30 investors which began with a group of 12 exited founders. 
  • Allica Bank are building their presence in the region and their novel savings account offers 4% interest on up to £5 million 
  • London stock exchange shared news of a new trading option for liquidity (a Pisces venue) – angels and VCs are encouraged to find out more and transactions will likely begin later this year to the platform. 
  • Tech for Good SW released an impact report earlier this year which helped spotlight Bethnal Green Ventures. It turns out that BGV’s second largest concentration of investments is in the South West and they’re running an event together on 24th September to celebrate. Check out Tech for Good SW for the details.
  • Bristol has been selected as a pilot region for the new British Business Bank Innovation Clusters. They are running a series of events through September and October – connect with Ed Tellwright on LinkedIn to find out more.

And finally, we took a canter through the 7 companies who had shared news of their fundraising needs ranging from £150k – £6m.

If you’re an investor in the South West region or keen to find out more about what’s happening here, connect with techSPARK and learn about the Investment Activator Programme.

Briony Phillips

Briony is Scaleup Lead at Rocketmakers, a software development agency that designs, develops and deploys technology for startups, scaleups and corporations. Briony champions the scale-up business ecosystem and works with partners across the public and private sector to deliver content, events and resources that help to overcome challenges faced by fast-growth companies such as access to investment and office space availability.