Access to great deals may be one of the hardest thing about investing in startups. The hottest startups never struggle for money. They can raise quickly and only a few people will know about them in the early days.

Over the years, we’ve built up deep connections within the venture world including VC funds and startup founders. These trusted contacts share opportunities with us as we’ve built up great relationships over the years and we are known for being genuinely founder-friendly. We’re startup founders ourselves, so we completely get it.

We review dozens of startups every month in our search for the next big thing and present the ones we are investing in.

As the platform grows and we start making a name for ourselves through the investments we make, we are also seeing an increase in the number of startups that approach us directly for investment.

The quality of our deals is indicated, in part, by the investors we are co-investing with. They are almost always tier-one venture capital funds and leading angel investors. You can see a full list on our home page.

We’ve written an article that breaks down every step of making your claim. Check it out here: https://www.islamicfinanceguru.com/articles/how-to-claim-back-seis-eis-tax-relief-the-complete-guide

1. Startups submit their applications to us either through the website or through an introduction by a mutual connection. Every startup starts off with a pitch deck. Once we review the pitch deck and are interested in finding out more, we organise a call with the founder of the startup. Most startups that approach us are rejected at the pitch deck stage.
2. On the first call we have with the founder, we try to understand as much as possible about the business and try to get to know the founder(s). If we are comfortable with both the business and the founder, and believe this startup has the potential to reach suitable scale, we would ask the startup to send us further documents to review.
   These documents include financial forecasts, past financial accounts, customer agreements, any patents the startup has and other relevant documents. This is the stage where we will do in depth due diligence into the startup, the technology the startup is building, the industry the startup is operating in, and any competitors the startup has. We would also bring in an industry expert at this stage for their point of view if we think that is needed. We go away and do this deep work to bring objectivity to the process.
3. After this deep dive, if we are still happy with the startup and we are interested in investing, we will then organise another call with the founder to ask any follow up questions that arose from our deep dive.
4. We’ll do some more deep work based on the second call and knock our heads together to make our final decision. If it’s a yes, we’ll then start negotiating the terms of our investment with the startup.
5. Once everything is agreed upon, we then send the deal out to our investor list to give our Angels the chance to invest alongside us. We also give investors the opportunity to request the original deal documentation to help them make the decision to invest or not.