In the next instalment in our series of exclusive interviews with industry experts, Tom Britton, Co-Founder of SyndicateRoom, provides his insight on the biggest growth opportunities and most common risks for investors, and discusses his company’s approach to investing.
1.) What tax-efficient schemes does your company work with, and how do you offer a unique/compelling approach for advisers?
The Access EIS fund is the most diversified and accessible EIS fund on the market. Our data-driven approach creates investors a portfolio of ~50 underlying investments, each co-invested with one of the UK’s top-performing angel investors.
2.) How active are you in providing education to advisers on the types of clients that are suitable for these types of investments, as well as any changes in regulation or nuances in the existing rules?’
We provide several guides that focus on the Enterprise Investment Scheme, tax reliefs, risks, and more broadly on investing in startups.
3.) Where and in which types of companies are you seeing the biggest growth opportunities?
2023 was the year of AI investments. 2024 has started in a similar way but saturation of the market and an increased focus on impact from our angel investors is seeing continued increases in Greentech and Healthtech startups raising capital.
4.) What do you see as the biggest risks for investors?
There are a number of macroeconomic factors at play that have led to a decrease in capital in the market for startups. In one way this is a positive as valuations have remained lower than in previous years but it does mean that raising follow on funding rounds has become harder and we’ve seen more failures in the portfolio over the last 12 months than we had seen in the three years prior to that. Given interest rates remain high, conflicts around the world don’t appear to be resolving, and there are several major elections on the cards for later this year, we don’t think there will be a large increase in capital available which will likely mean the level of portfolio failures remains higher than previous years.
5.) Should advisers be worried about a lack of diversification, and why?
Generally yes as it leads to portfolio underperformance. That is why we’ve designed this fund to remove bias from decision-making and build a large, diversified portfolio of ~50 companies.
