Company Overview:
Syndicate Room was founded in 2013 as an online investment platform facilitating direct EIS investments into highly-vetted startups.
By focusing on investor and industry needs, it has developed an enviable track record and has helped raise £250m in investment across multiple equity products to build a portfolio of over 190 companies. Syndicate Room has raised over £12m for its venture capital funds to date.
Syndicate Room has now launched a new breed of data driven EIS fund – Access EIS.
Key Personnel:
Graham Schwikkard, CEO
Graham studied at the University of Cambridge’s business school (the Cambridge Judge Business School), where he completed his MBA with distinction, and gained awards for his studies. In addition, Graham holds a degree in Genetics.
Tom Britton, Executive Director & Co-founder
Tom sits on the board UK Business Angel Association and the advisory board of City Ventures. His investment commentary has appeared in City AM, Forbes, and The Twenty Minute VC.
Francesca O’Brien, Head of Clients and Investments
Fran has overseen more than 200 early-stage funding round transactions – leading the sales, legal and deal analysis teams. She is a frequent panel speaker and presenter, and her investment commentary has appeared in The Telegraph, The Times and City AM.
USPs:
New to the market this year, Access EIS tracks performance data of over 500 active startup investors.
It then selects and co-invests with some of the best performing “super angels” with the aim of replicating their collective success.
Access EIS aims to diversify your investment across at least 50 super-angel-backed startups to minimise risk and capture as many potential blockbusters as possible.
You will be co-investing alongside super angels that have invested in many of the UK’s recent success stories. These include Horizon Discovery (£221m market cap), Magic Pony Technologies (sold to Twitter for a reported $150m) as well as household names like Secret Escapes, Bloom & Wild and Simba Sleep.
As an EIS fund, eligible investors could benefit from generous tax relief on their investment into Access EIS.
Syndicate Room’s online dashboard aims to make light work of EIS paperwork with easily downloadable summaries that can simply be attached to your HMRC self assessment tax return.
Investment Strategy
1. There is no magic bullet to predict startup success. There are simply too many random variables involved to consistently pick future “blockbusters” based on information available at seed stage.
2. Diversification is more powerful than you might think. Not only does it manage risk, it also maximises chances of investing in future blockbuster companies.
3. The startup market grows consistently in value at 28% per year.* The more you diversify, the closer your portfolio should get to this growth rate.
4. Blockbuster companies tend to have been funded by well-networked investors whose performance beats the market. Accessing these deals is vital to generate returns in a startup portfolio.
5. Take advantage of EIS tax relief. If you are an eligible investor, you could receive up to 61.5% of your investment back through tax relief.
Based on these five principles, the optimum strategy for startup investing is to access the deals of investors who regularly beat the market, and to diversify as much as possible across their collective portfolios.
Access EIS has identified and built relationships with some of the UK’s best-performing super angels – successful investors with a demonstrable track record of investing in blockbuster companies. It then invests with them across their startup portfolios.
The fund is open to investors on SyndicateRoom.com
