Funding for Startups

Funding for startups – secure up to £250,000.

Up to £250,000 funding for startups.

RISK WARNING: INVESTING IN EARLY STAGE BUSINESSES CAN MEAN LOSS OF INVESTMENT, DILUTION AND ILLIQUIDITY. THE START-UP SERIES FUND IS EXCLUSIVELY FOR SOPHISTICATED INVESTORS WHO UNDERSTAND THESE RISKS. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL RISK WARNING.

SECURE UP TO £250,000 OF FUNDING FOR YOUR START-UP

The Start-Up Series is designed to uncover new UK businesses with bright teams & smart ideas. Each month we aim to select one business to qualify for an equity investment of up to £250,000, along with invaluable support from experienced & successful entrepreneurs. In partnership with smallbusiness.co.uk, we’re open for entries from the 1^st to the 14^th of every month and have developed a quick and easy application process to follow.

#1 ENTRIES

Simple online entry – just a two page summary or two minute video outlining your business model, market & team.

#2 QUALIFIERS

Comprehensive online business plan submissions followed by telephone interviews with our competition judges for pre-finalists.

#3 FINALISTS

A half-day deep dive with our team to explore the true potential of your business and properly get to know one another.

#4 WINNER

Technical due diligence by our Fund Manager before an investment is made, then publicity & on-going support help to you grow.

Enter the Competition Learn more about the Start-up Series

Applicant Feedback

What is different about Worth Capital is that you are honest, so thank you and colleagues for your straightforwardness. I appreciate your additional feedback notes which do help.

Philip de Jong – Co-founder, HousingFind UK (qualifier)
The deep-dive was informal and very much a two-way conversation, which was a big contrast to some of the other fundraising conversations we’d had. Regardless of whether we’d got the investment from Worth Capital, we got lots of valuable insight and constructive feedback on what we were doing.

Dan Verblis – Founder, The Moving Home Warehouse (winner)
I have to thank you for taking your precious time to give me straightforward feedback on both your evaluation and strengths/weaknesses. You have to know that it is very rare that anyone does this.

Maleka Dattu – Dounder, Merumaya (qualifier)

COMPETITION CRITERIA

EIS & SEIS ELIGIBLITY

Winners are required to have secured EIS or SEIS assurance from the HMRC before an investment can be made. Winning businesses which are selected for investment will be able to make an application to the HMRC with a letter of intent from Worth Capital. Businesses considering entering the competition need to satisfy the following criteria set by HMRC:

You must be a UK resident and run a UK-based business.
You must be over 18 years-old at the time of entry / application for advanced assurance.
Certain financial services and property businesses are unlikely to qualify.
Please visit the HMRC website for further information on eligibility.

OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL

Not every entrepreneur nor innovation deserves to be funded. But every entrepreneur deserves a level playing field when being considered for investment – regardless of gender, location, colour, economic background or beliefs.

As early stage investors we recognise some responsibility for creating rock star company founders that are representative of the society we live in and provide diversity as role models for the next generation of entrepreneurs.

We have a respectable record of funding diversely. Since 2019 38% of our funding has gone to businesses with female founders, 19% to businesses with a BAME founder and 81% to businesses outside the London funding bubble. Visit our diversity & inclusion page to learn more about our performance and the actions we are taking to further improve.

FAIR, CONSISTENT AND OBJECTIVE

As we review our entries and talk to the founding teams, we look for clues across a comprehensive set of criteria. We consider the market you are looking to operate in, your business model, the team who keep the wheels moving, your marketing approach and of course, how excited we get about the overall business ‘idea’. These are the rough weightings we give to each area we explore.

FEEDBACK WE HOPE IS VALUABLE

We love looking at new business ideas. We also hope that our perspective as investors can be useful for businesses that don’t win our competition. So we take time to provide feedback to all applicants. We don’t have much information to go from in the early stage of the competition, so we just send an email picking out something we liked about the business. But as an entrant progresses through our process we provide progressively more detailed feedback on our criteria and what we saw as strengths & weaknesses.