Seedrs

Idea

Introduction

Seedrs is a leading European marketplace for private company investment. We operate an online platform which serves growth investors and growing businesses:

(1) INVESTORS: We provide investors of all shapes and sizes—including retail, intermediary and institutional—with a transparent, straightforward and cost-efficient way to invest in the equity of private companies.

(2) BUSINESSES: We offer growing private companies—from seed-stage to pre-IPO—access to a broad base of investors who can provide patient capital together with community engagement.

We have grown very quickly, at 71.5% p.a. revenue growth over the last two full years, with very ambitious plans for the future.

We recently announced that we had agreed terms with two of our institutional shareholders for a £4.5 million investment into the company (please see the Overview of Terms document in the Documents section for full details on the investment terms). This investment will help us finance our next stage of growth in advance of a major international push. We are now inviting our users and supporters to join in this funding round and become a part of our journey.

Intended impact

We believe that the equity of private businesses is a highly compelling asset class. A diversified portfolio of these companies has the potential to outperform most other types of investment.

The market for private company investment, however, continues to be hampered by complexity, lack of transparency and cost, creating substantial challenges for investors and businesses alike.

Seedrs changes that. Unlike other platforms in the market, Seedrs is building the capabilities to solve these limitations with the aim of becoming the most liquid and trusted marketplace for investing in private companies, globally. We are building our marketplace in order to bring private company investment the same type of efficiency and simplicity that have long existed in the markets for other asset classes. In doing so, we aim to become the infrastructure layer of private company investment, giving investors a straightforward and trusted way to deploy their strategies in this asset class and providing companies access to a deep and diverse pool of capital.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Since our launch in 2012, we have played a key role in defining and building our section of the capital markets. In the process we have become one of the largest and most prominent firms operating in it.

ACHIEVEMENTS: Some of our achievements include:

● Over £400m investment deployed into nearly 900 deals
● Over 85,000 individual and institutional investors have made over 330,000 investments through the platform
● 12% IRR across all deals as of latest Portfolio Update, with the top decile of portfolio investors (those investors with 20 investments or more) achieving an average IRR of 39%, all before tax reliefs.*
● First wave of M&A/public market exits (eight to date, with buyers including Apple, Debenhams and Aviva), and Seedrs Secondary Market has seen over 10,000 investor exits to date
● Value of carry pool roughly doubling each year

AWARDS: Year after year we are recognised for this success, and a few of our recent accolades and awards include:

● Winner, Finance Technology of the Year, National Technology Awards (2018)
● Winner, Equity Crowdfunding Platform of the Year in Europe, Corporate Intl Global Awards (2018)
● Winner, Industry Game Changer, Growth Investor Awards (2018)
● Listed, Fintech50 Hottest Fintechs in Europe (2018; 2017)
● Winner, Alternative Funder of the Year, British Small Business Awards (2017)
● Winner, Best Crowdfunding Platform, Shares Magazine (2017)

* See Seedrs Autumn 2018 Portfolio Update for full details and methodology of IRR calculation: https://portfolio.seedrs.com

Monetisation strategy

Seedrs generates revenue through two sets of fees that align our commercial interests with our customers’ success:

1. Deal Fees. We charge a success-based commission to businesses who raise funds through us. Based on demand, we have recently added a new revenue stream by satisfying a need for a premium level of marketing support in connection with a business’s campaign. Collectively, these are the “deal fees” we earn, and they represent the primary source of our revenue today.

2. Investor Fees. We charge carry to investors on profits they make on an investment. We also occasionally earn direct fees to investors (generally in connection with one-off transactions). Although small to any one investor, over time we expect investor fees, including carry, to become a significant revenue stream as the portfolio matures and secondary market evolves.

As we continue to grow the breadth and value of our marketplace, we expect to increase revenue earning services and also introduce new types of recurring revenue.

Use of proceeds

This funding round precedes what we expect to be a significantly larger, priced round in 2020. This larger round is designed primarily to drive two sets of initiatives:

1. MARKETPLACE: Our “Marketplace” initiatives are a series of efforts, which include our Secondary Market, AutoInvest, funds and others, to step change liquidity and customer adoption. These efforts will drive our move “Beyond Crowdfunding” and toward becoming a full-scale marketplace.

2. EUROPEAN EXPANSION: The new EU rules that will harmonise our regulatory framework in Europe are likely to be adopted in Brussels this autumn. This opens a unique window of opportunity to rapidly expand into a very underserved market, by launching our full pan-European effort, and in so doing, massively expand the size of our addressable market.

The convertible round we are now raising allows us continue to investing in growth while we are raising the larger round. We also expect that it will provide us with sufficient capital to steer the core business to breakeven and operate profitably if the macroeconomic environment causes the larger round to take longer to raise than expected.