Small businesses spend an average of 120 working days per year on administrative tasks. To help alleviate the accounting portion of this burden, most modern accounting software integrates directly with your bank thanks to open banking protocols. Countingup takes it one step further. It’s a business current account with an integrated tax management and accounting platform so that small businesses can manage and plan their finances in one app, simplifying both bookkeeping and taxes. London TechWatch caught up with CEO, repeat entrepreneur, and Founder Tim Fouracre (Founded Clear Books) to learn more about the company’s traction, future plans, and latest funding round from investors that include Framework Venture Partners, Gresham House Ventures, and Sage.
London Startups
The February 2021 London Venture Capital Funding Report
After setting records in January, startup funding down 71.8% MOM and 51.3% YOY in February.
These 10 London Startups Raised the Most Capital in February 2021
Everything you need to need to know about the largest London startup funding rounds of February 2021; broken down by industry, stage, investors, and more…
Hoxton Farms Raises £2.7M to Make Meat Alternatives Indistinguishable by Using Animal Fat Made in a Lab
Meat analogues are meat-like substances usually made from plants. These substitutes are growing in popularity thanks to brands like Impossible Burger and Beyond Meat. However, for meat enthusiasts, these substitutes often lack the feel, look, and taste of the real thing. Hoxton Farms is looking to produce real animal fat without harming animals for use in meat alternatives by extracting fat cells. Using cultivated fats has the potential to relieve pressure on the environment caused by factory farms including helping with antibiotic resistance and climate change. The company uses machine learning and mathematical modeling to build its cultured fats with plans to build a scalable prototype within the next 18 months. London TechWatch caught up with Cofounder Ed Steele to learn more about the work to make meat alternatives viable at scale, the company’s future plans, and recent round of funding from investors that include Founders Fund, BACKED VC, Presight Capital, CPT Capital, Sustainable Food Ventures, and others.
Ember Raises £1.6M to Empower Small Businesses with Automated Accounting and Tax Solutions
Small business owners are often the jacks and jills of all trades, especially when teams are small and operations are lean. But for many businesses, the time spent handling administrative functions could be better spent building the business. Ember is an accounting and tax platform that streamlines these functions with automation, freeing up valuable time. The platform uses machine learn and has integrated open banking so that businesses can manage all aspects of taxes and accounting from a single platform. Users are able to view the business’s finances in real-time, get support from qualified experts, and optimize, pay, and file taxes with HMRC, which recently made it possible to file digitally. London TechWatch caught up with Cofounder and CEO Aaron Shaw to learn more about the company’s progress since we covered their pre-seed round in late 2019, fundraising during the pandemic, the company’s latest funding round from investors that include Anthemis, Spring Ventures, and Innovation Nest, and much, much more…
Limitless Raises £8M for its Crowdsourced Customer Service Platform
Providing a remarkable customer experience throughout the customer journey is critical to the growth of any company in today’s digital age, where consumers are sophisticated and have high lofty expectations. While there is an abundance of software to help you manage these needs, setting up a fully functional 24/7 customer service center to support the customer experience process can be quite resource-intensive in terms of capital and time. Limitless allows companies to leverage crowdsourced talent to provide customer service in what the company calls a GigCX model. Experts in the gig network are passionate about the brands they are willing to provide support for and are paid for each successful case they resolve. Think of it as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for customer service. The gig experts are able to introduce flexibility into their schedules and earn incremental income while companies are able to provide a complete customer service experience at a fraction of the cost of maintaining their own operations. London TechWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Roger Beadle to learn more about the need for this in the customer experience space, the company’s expansion plans, and recent round of funding from investors that include Redline Capital, Genesys, AlbionVC, and Unilever Ventures.
TapSimple Raises £900K for its Digital Platform to Help Charities Fundraise and Move into the Digital Era
The pandemic has pushed countless industries towards the rapid adoption of technology to survive in a contactless world and non-profits are no different. Traditional methods for fundraising have largely been impacted by COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns. TapSimple is a digital payment and infrastructure platform that enables charities to these new realities by equipping them with a robust set of tools to manage their fundraising efforts. Charities can leverage contactless solutions, host video giving events, build landing pages, sell tickets, and generate QR codes seamlessly from the platform. At a time when things are so difficult for so many, TapSimple is empowering the organizations that are helping the most vulnerable. London TechWatch caught up with Cofounder Alex Coleridge to learn more about how the team’s work to help homelessness in London inspired the business, the company’s expansion plans, and latest round of funding from investors that include Ecclesiastical, Lord Michael Spencer, Lord Mervyn Davies, Dominic Burke, Anthony Bolton, and Sir Martyn Lewis.
Sirenum Raises £2M for Employers to Effectively Manage Shift Workers
The process of managing and organizing shift schedules for workers can be a daunting and time-consuming task for employers. For employees, disorganized shift scheduling creates uncertainty and affects their personal lives in a number of ways including daily activities and sleep. Sirenum is a technology-enabled management solution that allows employees to manage their shift-based workforce from a single centralized platform. The startup handles a variety of tasks including scheduling, payroll, compliance, and reporting. London TechWatch caught up with Cofounder Joshua Pines to learn more about how the company emerged from a solution built for the 2012 London Olympics, the company’s future plans, and latest round of funding from investors that include William Currie Group and former Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy.
Storyblok Raises its $8.5M for its Headless CMS with Visual Editing Capabilities
Headless CMS has become increasingly popular due to its inherent flexibility to display content on any type of device without maintaining individual applications for each. Content is stored in a repository and using an API, the content is presented to the front-end unlike other CMS systems, like WordPress, where the back-end and front-end are coupled, which results in complexities repurposing content for several different channels and mediums. However, headless platforms have not traditionally been user-friendly for those who are not technical as headless typically doesn’t allow one to easily visualize the impact of changes on the back-end. Storyblok solves this problem with headless CMS platform that is integrated with a native visual editing experience, making the solution ideal for both developers and marketers. The company currently powers over 60,000 projects including working with brands like Pizza Hut and Adidas. London TechWatch caught up with Cofounder and CEO Dominik Angerer and the company’s latest funding round from investors that include Mubadala Capital, firstminute capital, and 3VC.
Swapp Raises $7M for its End-to-End Construction Planning Platform Powered by AI
The use of technology is reshaping the construction industry today just as the introduction of specialized tools did in the past. With so many variables and moving parts in a typical construction, there’s always a risk for delays and these delays can be costly. Swapp is the AI-powered software solution that provides a centralized platform designed for the construction industry to create, manage and refine an end-to-end construction plan as circumstances change. Typical planning for a project can take anywhere between 9 months to a year; Swapp brings this down to a month. London TechWatch caught up with CEO, Cofounder, and serial entrepreneur Eitan Tsarfati to learn more about how his work at Autodesk Israel inspired this venture, the company’s future plans, and latest round of funding led by Point72 Ventures and Entrée Capital.