SFC Capital, the UK's most active seed investor (PitchBook, 2020), provides capital and support to British startups. By combining its Angel Network and Seed Funds, SFC has created a unique model that allows investors to get exposure to SEIS- and EIS-qualifying businesses, either directly or through a diversified portfolio curated and managed by SFC’s expert team. In 2020, SFC received a £10m allocation from Business Investments as part of the Regional Angels Programme in support of SFC's mission to back promising early-stage companies from every corner of the UK. SFC Capital is an Appointed Representative of SFC Capital Partners Ltd which is authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 736184).

SFC Capital

The stated aim of LCIF is not to fund London tech businesses that otherwise would not get funded but rather to enable those who can raise, to raise significantly more so that they have a sufficient money, time and resources to prove their business model. This way London based tech startups will be more able to raise their next round of funding and thereafter become the great tech companies that London so wants and requires. The London Co-Investment Fund was launched by the Deputy Mayor of London on the 4th December at City Hall. LCIF six co-investment partners has been selected based on their excellent track records of investing and supporting early stage tech businesses in London.

London Co-Investment Fund

Netcetera is a provider of digitization and software development services to the financial, media, transportation, healthcare, and insurance industries.

Netcetera AG

FINTECH Circle works with the most innovative and disruptive brands in financial technology and connects them with senior thought leaders and financiers in London's City and Canary Wharf.   The most senior Directors and successful entrepreneurs in the Financial Services sector will add strategic value both as angel investors and Non-Executive Directors to the game-changing innovators of the future.

FINTECH Circle

South Central Ventures is a VC investor with a long and enduring presence in the Adriatic region.  Operating out of four offices – Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade, and Skopje – the team has invested in about 40 early-stage tech companies and has been an integral part of the local start-up community. With a strong base of international investors, South Central Ventures is the go-to-investor for regional tech companies competing in global markets.

South Central Ventures

Founded by members of Tsinghua Entrepreneur & Execute Club, it bridges investors and entrepreneurs and seeks for world-leading technologies

Tsingbay Venture Capital

Newable Ventures is a private investment group that connects early-stage investors with high-growth scale-up companies. They provide Private Investors, Family Offices, and Corporate Investors the opportunity to invest in potentially high-growth early-stage knowledge-intensive companies. Many of their Investors not only invest in the companies they present but also work alongside them as Lead Investors to help them unleash their potential. Having been in operation for over 30 years they have developed an extensive ecosystem of investors, co-investors, and partners who they work with to ensure they have an extensive pipeline of early-stage companies to work with. Investors are able to attend their Investor Events to meet entrepreneurs directly or invest in their Funds for a more passive approach. Typically they invest in UK-based innovative companies who qualify for investment under the Enterprise and/ or Seed Enterprise Investment Schemes.

Newable Private Investing

With offices in 50+ cities across 25 countries, Oliver Wyman is a leading global management consulting firm that combines deep industry knowledge with specialized expertise in strategy, operations, risk management, and organization transformation. The firm's 3,000 professionals help clients optimize their businesses, improve their operations and risk profile, and accelerate their organizational performance to seize the most attractive opportunities.

Oliver Wyman

PeakSpan focuses exclusively on growth stage, B2B/enterprise software companies. We invest in companies that serve the full spectrum of buyers from small businesses to large enterprises. It’s our ambition to be true domain experts and thought partners in the categories that inspire us. All of our research, network development, and learning are focused on the sectors our entrepreneurs live in. As a result, we bring a rich portfolio of assets to the table relevant to all of the companies with whom we partner. We try to deliver this expertise “without the ego'' and pride ourselves on a collaborative approach to working with entrepreneurs and other stakeholders.

PeakSpan Capital

AXA Venture Partners (AVP) is a venture capital fund investing in high-growth, technology-enabled companies. AVP has built a unique investment platform specialized in tech investments with $600 million of assets under management through three pillars of investment expertise: Early Stage Fund, Growth Stage Fund and Fund of Funds. To date, AVP has invested in 40 Early and Growth equity deals and 6 Fund investments. AVP team operates globally backed by offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong. Beyond investments, AVP provides access to business development opportunities helping portfolio companies to scale globally and accelerate their growth.

AXA Venture Partners

Verve Ventures is a European startup investment platform for qualified and institutional investors. Their fully digital platform enables private investors to build a diversified portfolio with investments starting at CHF/EUR 10'000. Since its launch in 2010, Verve Ventures has invested more than EUR 130 million in over 100 startups. Their community consists of 5’000 registered qualified private investors, family offices, and pension funds. Several institutional investors such as a large Swiss pension fund and numerous corporates also rely on their expertise to invest in promising startups. Verve Ventures is backed by Switzerland's third-largest bank, Zürcher Kantonalbank. They have a dedicated investment team based in Zurich, Lausanne, Berlin, Paris, and Cambridge, that screens thousands of startups each year and selects the top 1% after a rigorous due diligence process. They are reshaping the European venture capital landscape and granting investors superior access to this traditionally intransparent asset class. They source the best deals, and structure rounds, and enable their investors to participate in competitive startup deals.

Verve Ventures

Swisscom Ventures is an venture capital arm of Swisscom AG, that specializes in early stage tech investments founded in 2007. Swisscom Ventures invests in growth companies with emerging business models and technologies of strategic relevance to Swisscom's core business. As a value-add investor, Swisscom brings its investees the technical expertise and strategic insights of an incumbent telecom operator. We act as a bridge to Swisscom's operational business units, which portfolio companies can also leverage as a test environment for their products and services. Swisscom Ventures seeks minority stakes in companies related to the information/communications/entertainment space.

Swisscom Ventures

Blue Cloud Ventures (BCV) is a software-focused growth equity venture capital firm based in New York City.  The fund targets investments in leading SaaS, infrastructure and open source software companies. BCV offers entrepreneurs an alternative to raising a traditional growth round by being flexible on amount invested, ownership requirements, board representation and exit horizon. BCV supports entrepreneurs in raising the optimal growth round and enables early-stage investors to double down on their most promising companies.

Blue Cloud Ventures

Viking Global Investors is an investment firm that uses fundamental analysis to select investments across industries and geographies. It is a global investment firm managing more than twenty billion in capital across long-short equity and long-only strategies. The firm was established in 1999 and is headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, with offices in New York City, Hong Kong, and London.

Viking Global Investors

Volution Capital Management is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This organization primarily operates in the Venture Capital Companies business / industry within the Holding and Other Investment Offices sector. This organization has been operating for approximately 5 years. Volution Capital Management is estimated to generate $85,000 in annual revenues, and employs approximately 1 people at this single location.

Volution Capital Management LLC

Volution backs ambitious Fintech and SaaS businesses, ready to accelerate their growth to Series B and beyond It is founded in 2021 and is based in London, England.

Volution

Cognism

Cognism is an end-to-end sales-acceleration solution that provides sales organizations with a more efficient way to prospect. Delivered as a software service (SaaS),  with its unique data asset and compliance engine, Cognism is helping to enrich CRM records, stream leads into the funnel and is using artificial intelligence to surface opportunities and identify customer trends. The company is a pure AI sales technology company that generates prospect data at scale, cleaning and enriching it, helping sales teams to grow and scale across all levels of the sales process.   Cognism using patented AI technology, to provide B2B sales teams with a blend of real-time company, people and event data to streamline prospecting, find and deliver new revenue. It integrates seamlessly with all major CRM and Email Service systems. They use it to manage their database and provide high-quality, real-time B2B data to their clients. Cognism was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in London, England, UK, with offices in USA, Macedonia and Croatia.

<div>UK-based Cognism is a customer and sales intelligence platform for sales, marketing, revenue operations, and go-to-market leaders. It operates a B2B market intelligence database, which features lead generation, outbound automation, and data processing services. Cognism’s technology extracts data from public and private sources including Mergent, S&P Global, and Crunchbase as well as crowd-sourced and consented-in private data. It also offers DiamondData (launched in October 2021) powered by intent data platform Bombora (partnered since March 2021), which provides phone-verified contacts for customer engagement. As of February 2022, the platform consists of data assets of 5.6 billion data points, including 400 million business profiles, 10 million companies, and 20 million direct dials across the US and Europe. As of January 2022, the platform had served 1,000+ customers globally, including SalesLoft, Freshworks, Amazon, Onfido, and Consenna. </div>

Artificial intelligence is helping sales teams manage relationships and optimize the customer lifecycle.

Sales Engagement Platforms

<div>
 
 UK-based Cognism is a customer and sales intelligence platform for sales, marketing, revenue operations, and go-to-market leaders. It operates a B2B market intelligence database, which features lead generation, outbound automation, and data processing services. Cognism’s technology extracts data from public and private sources including Mergent, S&P Global, and Crunchbase as well as crowd-sourced and consented-in private data. It also offers DiamondData (launched in October 2021) powered by intent data platform Bombora (partnered since March 2021), which provides phone-verified contacts for customer engagement. As of February 2022, the platform consists of data assets of 5.6 billion data points, including 400 million business profiles, 10 million companies, and 20 million direct dials across the US and Europe. As of January 2022, the platform had served 1,000+ customers globally, including SalesLoft, Freshworks, Amazon, Onfido, and Consenna. 
 
 
 The company acquired Mailtastic, an email signature marketing platform, in May 2020, with plans to strengthen its lead generation capabilities. Its most recent acquisition was in December 2020, when it acquired Ricochet, a Chrome extension for outbound sales teams.
 
 
 In January 2022, the company raised USD 87.5 million in a Series C funding round led by  Viking Global Investors and Blue Cloud Ventures. The company intended to use the funds to expand across Europe and to strengthen its presence in the US. It also reported annual revenue growth of 100% YoY in 2021. 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Outreach is a sales intelligence platform that offers a suite of tools to help sales reps improve communication with prospects and close deals. The platform integrates with existing customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and provides sales sequences, personalization tools, and multi-channel communication capabilities. The company is deeply integrated with third-party apps to attract large enterprise customers and claims to have a network of around 1,000 partners. As of June 2021, the platform served more than 4,800 companies, with the majority being mid-market tech companies in North America. It opened its London office in February 2020 to further establish a presence in the European market, which represents around 5% of its customer base.&nbsp; As of June 2021, the company has more than 800 employees globally across Seattle, San Francisco, and new global offices in London and Prague.&nbsp;
 
 
 The platform offers insights on the most effective content channels and the optimal times to contact prospects using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology. Further, managers can track sales rep and team-wide performance paving the way for sales coaching using customer interactions. Outreach&rsquo;s &ldquo;Amplify AI suite&rdquo;, launched in 2018, leverages ML to categorize buyer intent based on responses to email communication. In May 2020, the company announced the beta launch of &ldquo;Outreach Kaia&rdquo;, a voice-based AI sales assistant. In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16031?industryIds=27">
 January 2023, 
 </a>
 Outreach introduced Smart Email Assist, an AI-powered automatic email response generator, to streamline workflows for sales teams. In March 2023, the firm introduced 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17465">
 multiple new features
 </a>
 to improve sales pipeline performance and efficiency, including the Create and Close Dashboard, Create Pipeline Calculator, Buyer Topics and Reactions, Success Plans Methodologies, Deal Grid, and Deal Overview. 
 
 
 The company also opted to bolster its product offering by acquiring revenue intelligence platform Canopy.io in October 2021. With this acquisition, Outreach strengthens its sales analytics and forecasting capabilities. Canopy.io will be the foundation of &ldquo;Outreach Commit,&rdquo; a new forecasting tool under Outreach&rsquo;s suite of products. 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In March 2023, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17465?industryIds=27">
 expanded its partnership with Snowflake, 
 </a>
 a data platform, to introduce a new offering called &ldquo;Outreach Data Sharing,&rdquo; which enables organisations to connect Outreach's datasets with other enterprise data and improve sales cycle. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In June 2021, the company raised USD 200 million in a Series G funding round, valuing the company at USD 4.4 billion, a significant jump from its USD 1.3 billion valuation in June 2020. The significant jump in valuation may be justified by the company's notable growth over the past 12 months. The funds will be allocated toward expanding into new markets, growing its sales and marketing teams, and platform development.
 
 
 Additionally, in June 2021, the company stated that its annual recurring revenue doubled in Q1 2021 compared to the previous year. In 2020, the company reported a run-rate revenue of USD 100 million. 
 
</div>

Outreach

<div>
 
 Salesloft offers customer relationship management (CRM) integration, sales cadence, sales pipeline management and analytics reporting. It appeals to sales professionals working across the customer lifecycle. The company has offices in Atlanta, San Francisco, London, Indianapolis, New York City, and Guadalajara, Mexico. In August 2021, it announced growth plans in the European market by opening a data center in Germany and doubling headcount in the market. As of February 2022, the platform served 2,000+ customers and has established a partner ecosystem of 100+ companies. In January 2021, Salesloft reported that its client profile had shifted from mid-market to large enterprises such as Google, LinkedIn, Cisco, and Dell. 
 
 
 Salesloft strengthened its product offering in 2021, launched its &ldquo;Deal Engagement Score,&rdquo; an AI-driven function that can prioritize deals based on more than 30 data elements across its Cadence, Conversations, and Deals product offerings, in March 2021. Furthermore, the company announced Cadence Step Analytics and Pre-Built Cadence Frameworks. Cadence Step Analytics allows the user to gain insights on the most effective approach taken through Cadence. Pre-Built Cadence Frameworks is powered by best practices developed through positive sales interactions and the best-performing sales teams. More recently, in April 2022, the company launched its proprietary forecasting tool &ldquo;Forecast by Salesloft&rdquo;, to support organisations in generating predictable growth. 
 
 
 In February 2022, the company announced the launch of its four tier 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8630">
 Technology Partner Program
 </a>
 to provide growth opportunities for its partner ecosystem. Additionally, Salesloft also announced the launch of its Market Development Fund, which aims to support the funding of partner programs and pipeline development and create awareness among the Salesloft ecosystem. In September 2022, the firm unveiled 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12862">
 Salesloft Rhythm
 </a>
 , a platform to unify sales workflows to be launched in 2023. The firm claims that a unique aspect of this next generation solution is that the platform will provide an explanation as to why the action is important and what the likely outcome will be. 
 
 
 Salesloft has been active in the M&amp;A space. In July 2021, the company acquired InStereo, a sales strategy consulting firm. The acquisition of InStereo established Salesloft's focus on buyer engagement in sales and marketing campaigns. InStereo initially partnered with Salesloft in 2018 and had completed more than 150 client engagements for companies such as 3M (American multinational conglomerate), Cargill (global food company), and Pegasystems (American software company). In February 2024, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27169">
 acquired Drift,
 </a>
 a conversational B2B marketing platform, to improve its customer journey orchestration tools for B2B sales teams.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In August 2022, the firm 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12545">
 partnered with Highspot,
 </a>
 a sales coaching platform, to further streamline the client engagement process for sales teams.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In December 2021, the company raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Vista Equity Partners at a valuation of USD 2.3 billion, to expand beyond North America and particularly in Europe. In January 2021, Salesloft raised USD 100 million in a funding round led by Owl Rock Capital, to expanding its operations globally while investing in new vertical markets, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)-driven insights, and product innovation, as well as growing its headcount by more than 30% within the next year. 
 
 
 In August 2022, the firm reported that annual recurring revenue (ARR) surpassed USD 100 million in Q2 2021.
 
</div>

Salesloft

<div>
 
 People.ai began as a revenue intelligence platform but has widened its product to cover marketing and sales. 
 Its 
 artificial intelligence-based (AI-based) sales and marketing solutions offer sales playbooks and recommendations, automated customer relationship management (CRM), and pipeline visibility. In May 2019, the company launched &ldquo;The Wire&rdquo; which offers a real-time feed of recommended actions based on data collected from sales activity on emails, calendars and CRM systems.The platform is well integrated counting over 90 application programming interface (API) integrations with video conferencing and collaboration tools such as Zoom, GSuite, and Slack. 
 
 
 In September 2022, the firm 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13046">
 launched new features
 </a>
 1) Engagement Dashboards which contain visualisations that provide insight on buyer/seller engagement and 2) Account Planning with a native Salesforce integration which allows sales teams to operationalize account plans and provide customer insights. In May 2023, the firm 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18990">
 launched AccountGPT,
 </a>
 an AI-driven enhancement to its account planning application that leverages generative AI and large language models (LLMs) to automate sections of account plans, including market research, by extracting data from publicly available sources such as company websites and earnings reports.&nbsp;
 
 
 Further, the company claimed to have around 70 patents combined (secured and in progress) for its AI-based intelligent matching of customer data and profiles. The platform claimed its AI system has been trained on 1.1 billion sales activities and over USD 239 billion in closed deals. The company planned to deploy its platform outside of the sales realm and into verticals such as real estate, financial services, and recruitment, which already account for a small share of use cases.
 
 
 In October 2020, the company acquired ClosePlan, a sales intelligence app, to further strengthen its AI sales solution. ClosePlan offers sales playbooks, deal scoring, and account planning solutions. 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In July 2022, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11924">
 partnered with integrated solution provider Oracle,
 </a>
 to use AI-powered sales automation tool &quot;Oracle Fusion Sales&quot; to support its sales process.
 
 
 Funding and financials 
 
 
 People.ai raised USD 100 million in a Series D funding round at a post-money valuation of USD 1.1 billion in August 2021. The round was co-led by new investors Akkadian Ventures and Mubadala Capital. The fresh funds are expected to be allocated to product development through investments in its SmartData platform, and to expand into new industry segments and geographies. The company also revealed that its customer base grew 260% over the 12 months preceding the funding, likely leading to its unicorn valuation. 
 
</div>

People.ai

<div>
 
 Yesware is an email based campaign automation platform for customer engagement. The software offers prospecting tools such as  follow up templates and the ability to schedule meetings through email. The platform includes a native customer relationship management (CRM) integration with Salesforce. In 2013, the company acquired Attachments.me, an email file-sharing startup.  The acquisition was motivated by its complementary backend email technology which added attachment tracking capabilities to Yesware’s platform. The acquisition effectively led to the establishment of a physical office in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Yesware reported a large customer base at the time.
 
 
 As of November 2020, Yesware served around 800,000 total users across 10,000 companies including Yelp, Financial Times, Zendesk, and Cloudflare. The company reported positive cash flow for the first time in Q2 2018 with 60,000 active users.
 
 
 In 
 October
 2022, the company was acquired by 
 Vendasta, a Canadian eCommerce solution provider, to integrate the solution into Vendasta's platform. 
 
</div>

Yesware (acquired by Vendasta)

<div>
 
 Revenue.io (formerly RingDNA) is a sales intelligence platform that offers sales playbooks, multichannel outreach, performance insights, and customer relationship management (CRM) integrations. In addition, the platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) to transform conversational data between customers and sales reps into actionable insights on sales rep performance which can be used in building buyer profiles. Revenue.io’s AI-based guided selling features integrate with its sales playbook to create a list of priority leads and then recommends the best way to reach out to a potential buyer.  
 
 
 Revenue.io released its conversation AI solution in November 2019 based on data from more than 130 million sales conversations. This allowed the platform to add sales coaching features to its platform.
 
 
 Guided selling capabilities were introduced in September 2020 and made accessible through its Salesforce CRM integration.
 
 
 The company’s most recent funding round was an October 2018 Series B for USD 30 million led by Goldman Sachs. The funds were allocated for product development and recruitment. Revenue.io’s customers include Hewlett Packard, Amazon Web Services, Autodesk, SAP Concur, Lyft, and Twilio.
 
</div>

Revenue.io

Sales engagement platforms use personalization to enhance the effectiveness of sales outreach

AI/ML solutions automate and streamline sales processes by providing insights

Sales workflow automation platforms provide solutions for distributed sales teams

Tools for discovering & building customer and company databases to generate sales leads.

Tools for discovering & analyzing customer interactions for improving customer success.

Cognism

Sales Engagement Platforms

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