As folks spent more time at home as a result of the pandemic and with fewer places to spend discretionary income, homeowners in the UK have spent £55b on home renovations since March. My Bespoke Room offers a technology-powered, personalized interior design service for a flat fee to anyone looking to hire a professional to spruce up their homes. It takes less than 15 minutes to complete your design brief and then you are connected with a designer based on your preferences and tastes. The service starts at a very affordable £195 per room. London TechWatch caught up with Cofounder Diana Greenlaugh to learn more about the inspiration for the business, how the lockdown has bolstered interest in interior design, and the company’s recent funding round.
Angel/Seed
The December 2020 London Venture Capital Funding Report
Funding down 28.7% MOM as much of the nation under lockdown in December. Find out where it went… Aggregate statistics for all London funding deals by stage of funding (Early, Series A, Series B, and Late) including mention of notable rounds for December 2020.
eXate Raises £2.3M for its All-In-One Enterprise Data Management Platform
Data volumes are growing exponentially and expected to hit 175 zettabytes by 2025. For businesses managing this unprecedented growth, ensuring compliance with regulatory initiatives like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act has become a challenge. eXate is the data management solution that enables enterprises to have a single application to manage data visibility and privacy across the data landscape. Companies can now readily capture the value of the data that they possess and share the data internally without getting bogged down by privacy concerns, resulting in significant value creation, cost savings, and efficiency. London TechWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Peter Lancos to learn more about pain point that eXate addresses, the burgeoning data privacy space, and the company’s recent funding round from investors that include Outward VC, ING Ventures, and Triple Point Ventures.
myGwork Raises £750K for its Professional Community for the LBTQ+ Community and Their Advocates
Although impressive strides have been made to make the workforce more inclusive recently, still 56% of workers think that companies should be doing more to recruit and hire from the LGBTQ+ community and almost 20% believe employers have negative attitudes towards LGBTQ+ hiring. myGwork is a professional community and network focused exclusively on the needs of this community and its supporters. The free network, which currently has over 300,000 members, offers resources for employers and prospective employees to connect, features events and news, and offers a mentorship program; the company charges corporate members on a tiered schedule.
London TechWatch caught up with brothers and Cofounders Adrien Gaubert and Pierre Gaubert to learn more about the inspiration for the business, the company’s traction, expansion plans, and first institutional round of funding from 24Haymarket.
The November 2020 London Venture Capital Funding Report
Alphagreen Raises £1.1M to be the One-Stop Marketplace for CBD in Europe
The demand for CBD products across the globe has been steadily increasing and in Europe, consumers are projected to spend approximately €13.6B on CBD products by 2025. The e-commerce CBD marketplace, Alphagreen, makes it easy for consumers to discover and purchase high-quality CBD products while providing emerging CBD brands the tools to scale and launch products in new markets. London TechWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Alexej Pikovsky to learn more about how Alphagreen’s plans to become more than just a CBD marketplace by becoming the go-to intelligence platform for CBD products, the company’s impressive traction, and recent funding round from investors that include Enexis AB, West Creek, and Igor and Oleg Tikhturov.
Guardara Pulls in £120K to Make Fuzzing Accessible for Software Development Teams
Fuzzing, or fuzz testing, is a quality assurance technique used to identify coding errors and hackable software bugs in enterprise software, networks, or systems. Guardara has built a general-purpose fuzzer, FuzzLabs, to help enterprise security teams easily find code defects and vulnerabilities earlier on in the development process. London TechWatch caught up with Mitali Rakhit to learn more about Guardara, the inspiration for the business, fundraising virtually, and the company’s recent funding from Techstars.
Avion Raises £300K for its User Story Mapping Tool to Help Agile Software Teams Build Better Products
When it comes to building digital products, user story mapping is a critical component of the development process that can either push a project forward or set it back for months. Avion is the user story mapping tool that helps agile software teams build digital products smarter and faster. Avion’s interface enables software teams to collaboratively visualise the entire product map and user journeys on a user story map in order to effectively plan future releases, uncover gaps, and prioritise the most important tasks. London TechWatch caught u with Cofounder James Sear to learn more about Avion, how it’s making the software development process more agile, and the company’s first funding round from Haatch.
The October 2020 US Venture Capital Funding Report
Juggle Raises $2.1M for its Job Marketplace That Focuses Exclusively on Flexible Roles
The popularity of flexible work arrangements has skyrocketed due to COVID, however, flexible work arrangements can have a larger impact. According to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, flexible work arrangements are a primary driver for improving gender equality in the workplace and encouraging more roles to be flexible could solve the gender pay gap. Juggle is the employment platform solely dedicated to flexible roles. The platform matches companies with top-tier mid and senior-level talent seeking flexible working arrangements. London TechWatch caught up with CEO and Founder Romanie Thomas to learn more about how her experience as a headhunter inspired her to create Juggle to increase the number of women in senior leadership roles, her experience fundraising as a sole founder, and the company’s latest funding round from investors that include Social Capital, 7percent Ventures, Oxford Capital, Andreas Mihalovits, Andrew Gault, Andrew J. Scott, Charlie Kemper, Charlie Songhurst, Curtis Chambers, Rajiv Kapoor, and Pip Wilson.