Collider 2015

About

What is Collider?

Collider, one of London’s leading MadTech accelerators is fund raising for its 4th portfolio of startups. After a successful Seedrs campaign for our third portfolio, we are collaborating with Seedrs once again for the Collider15 Autumn cohort.

This raise will be invested across up to 10 MadTech startups. These startups will participate in the Collider Academy, and have the opportunity to connect with some of the world’s leading brands and agencies within one year.

By investing in Collider, you are investing in a growing sector where the UK leads the way in Europe.

COLLIDER’S VISION

Collider is an accelerator dedicated to marketing and advertising startups (MadTech). We invest capital in these startups, we coach them through a highly structured programme and we connect them to potential corporate customers and investors. Through productive collaboration, we foster the fastest route to product-market fit, follow-on funding, competitive edge and revenue.

The thing that defines us, sets us apart and drives us, is our laser focus on the sweet spot between startups and brands & agencies, and the commercial benefits they bring to one another.

What does collider invest in?

We invest in early-stage MadTech tech startups. You can see the startups from our 2013, 2014 and 2015 cohorts here: http://collider.io/the-team/.

We invest specifically in technology startups that are building disruptive platforms, products and services that enable brands to better engage, understand and sell to their consumers.

We look for startups with a top-notch team and great ideas who we believe have the potential to create game changing companies in the madtech sector.

The madtech ecosystem

MadTech is becoming a prominent sector and one we believe investors should be focusing on. The number of MarTech companies worldwide has almost doubled as compared to last year. And in the EU, the AdTech sector was one of the top 5 verticals for company exits in 2014.Just as Foundation Capital details in its report ‘Decade of the CMO’, the role of marketeers is to engage in dialogue with consumers, not interrupt them. How brands and agencies engage with their consumers is changing. Quickly.

There’s also a lot of money to be spent. The UK leads the world in digital media spend relative to other forms of advertising as £8.1B is spent on digital advertising in 2015. Mobile digital advertising is predicted to rise 45% to £3.3B in the UK this year as well. And this is just from the marketing and advertising industries, not including the amount of venture capital being poured into marketing and adtech. The top 10 adtech investors of 2014 alone invested over $1.5Bn into e-commerce companies globally. Two of those investors are based here in the UK.

We’ve laid the groundwork in London.

As London leads the EU in the amount of available capital, the ecosystem is ripe for startups to scale and eventually exit. As FinTech leads the way, we believe MadTech will follow closely behind – and there are some amazing industry leaders to look up to. Unruly is a home-grown startup turned global business, Skimlinks and Somo have all attracted big investment, and 6 of the fastest growing UK digital media companies were MadTech last year.


HOW DOES COLLIDER ACCELERATE STARTUPS

We’ve brought together angel investors from the marketing and advertising world, meaning more expertise, more connections and also more cash, for our startups.

1. Capital. Yes, almost every accelerator will offer some cash, but much of our cash comes from angel investors from the marketing and advertising sector meaning more expertise, more connections and more cash for our startups

2. Coaching. We’re comprised of a diverse group of successful entrepreneurs with decades of experience to help accelerate the startups. Every one of our companies is assigned a dedicated coaching team that will guide them and grill them on their journey to growth. Collider provides over 120 hours of one-on-one coaching that covers everything a startup needs to know to get ahead.

3. Customers - We’re here to build businesses and to do that, our companies need customers. So we connect our game changing startups face-to-face with the UK’s senior executives of influential global brands- think Unilever, Havas and National Lottery. They’ll be giving first-hand feedback to the startups on how to find that perfect product-market fit. This support has been instrumental in helping our startups secure their first major contracts.

WHO'S DELIVERING THE MAGIC?

Our three Partners are the key figures here, alongside investors who choose to roll up their sleeves and get actively involved. The Partners, who act as coaches, founded Collider three years ago and all have experience of building and selling companies:

• Rose Lewis is ex- VC having worked at 3i which explains why she is good at helping startups fundraise and ex Ziff Davis, which partly explains her hustler mentality.

• David Prais was Director of Global Marketing at Gateway before setting up Chumbo.com, which he sold to AOL in 1999. Good timing, David.

• Andy Tait is a tech entrepreneur, having joined Superscape and helped it grow from seed funding to IPO.

The rest of the team have blue-chip backgrounds but have been lured in by the excitement of working with startups. They bring the organisation and discipline to keep this running smoothly.

WHO AM I INVESTING ALONGSIDE?

We’re raising £1m through Seedrs. As for the rest, we’re all about golden experience. We’re focused on MadTech so we work with investors from marketing and advertising backgrounds. Investors who are prepared to roll their sleeves up and help our startups with their experience and network. Our investors tend to have held senior roles at global brands, or have built and sold their own agencies.

Previous investors include:

• Gabbi Cahane – Investor and advisor to Brandid, 3 Beards and co-founder branding agency And Meanwhile.

• Unilever Ventures – Corporate venturing arm of Unilever.

• Richard Fearn – Ex ad-man, now angel investor, interested in early stage technology start-ups. Founder and director of The Friday Club.

• Rod Banner – He is leading the charge for MadTech in the UK and for good reason - he founded the tech marketing group, Banner Corp in 1984 and sold it to WPP which makes him a madtech lifer.

• Mat Morrison - most recently the Head of Social Media at StarComm with a long history in social media.

We’d love it if you have knowledge of the industry but, of course, it’s not essential. Startups need help running their businesses as well, so expertise in any of these areas is beneficial.

WHY SHOULD I INVEST?

Because we have a track record to point to. With Collider, you get a ready-made portfolio of startups, supported by a highly tailored accelerator programme. You are also investing alongside industry-leaders who are using their experience to help and guide the startups you have invested in.

You are investing in a growing sector where we believe the UK leads the way in Europe.

Furthermore, investments made into this fund will be eligible for SEIS tax relief. Read all about the benefits you can receive on the Seedrs blog: http://learn.seedrs.com/guides/uk-tax-relief/

PERFORMANCE

We’re accelerating fast. We learned from our first programme and we’re now working closer with more brands and agencies, and better startups.

Many of our startups have gone on to raise further funding. Examples include:

LivingLens makes any video searchable. Currently working with Unilever. They have raised £1M Series A from Angel Investors.

Miappi pulls brands’ social networks together in one place to give their audience a single, handsome view of what they are saying across multiple channels. Miappi has raised follow-on funding from Downing Ventures and a number of Collider investors.

Seenit turn your employees into a camera crew via their mobile phones. They recently raised £300K investment from The Collective Elevator.

Avocarrot is a mobile ad network for app developers – presenting an entirely new breed of reward-based advertising. They attracted the interest from Google Entrepreneurs inviting them to attend their Blackbox accelerator in the valley. They have since raised $2M.

WHAT'S THE DEAL THEN?

By investing in this campaign, you are investing in the equity of each of the startups that will make up the Collider15 Autumn cohort. The investments will be made from the total £1m fund as follows:

Round 1 – 10 startups will receive £50k for 11% (Nov 2015)
Round 2 – 5 of the 10 startups will receive £100k for between 8-12% (March 2016)

Investors' funds will be held in escrow by Seedrs until the 10 startups are selected, and then Seedrs acting as nominee will invest directly in each company in exchange for the equity. Seedrs will then hold your shares as nominee (in the same way that it does for all startups that raise money through its platform).

And there are perks too.

THE PERKS

We love having active investors who can directly add value to the startups. And our investors love it too. Below is our proven framework for engaging with startups from an investment point of view, and how you’ll be able to get involved with the Collider15 Autumn cohort.

[13/15 slots remaining] BRONZE £5K – Welcome to the Collider Community.You’ll get an invitation to the Collider Launch Party, Demo Day and monthly MadTech Drinks, and monthly mail updates.
[11/13 slots remaining] SILVER £15K – Take a front seat on the innovation train. You’ll get an observatory seat at Selection Day, and exclusive networking events with the other Collider investors in addition to everything in bronze.
[6/8 slots remaining] GOLD £25K – Roll up your sleeves and get involved. You’ll get the opportunity to lead a Collider Academy Workshop, a half-vote at Selection Day, invitation to monthly Investor Portfolio Review sessions in addition to everything in silver.
[3/10 slots remaining] PLATINUM £50K + The big one – you’re in as a full investor. You’ll get special invites to Founders Dinner, coordinated one-on-one mentoring with the startups, exclusive Investor events, free pass to the Collider Startup Academy sessions in addition to everything in gold.

HOW DOES COLLIDER MAKE MONEY?

First things first, 100% of your investment goes to the startups. Collider pays the bills in two ways: charging startups and doing deals with brand and agency partners.

We charge each startup £10k to take part in the four month programme. The five startups which are selected to receive £100k follow-on investment will pay £10k for a further 8 months’ of support.

Now that we have a great track record to point to, brands and agencies are paying us for a more structured, tailored programme, giving them increased exposure to our startups; more speed-dating sessions, workshops and brand hackathons.