Manchester Angels Newsletter - April 2024

Hello there!

Welcome to our spring update. It might only be April but we’ve already made a number of investments and onboarded some new angels!

Table of Contents

• Save the date: Next Dinner 🍲

• Looking for Support - Marketing Lead

• New Investments

• Deal champions

• Membership - in with the new and out with the few!

• Portfolio

• Useful Links

Save the date: Next Dinner 🍲 

One of the highlights of being involved Manchester Angels is our quarterly dinner with great pitches, great (and robust!) discussion and some incredible food and wine.

Following the success of our February dinner, super excited to see you all back at Tattu restaurant in Manchester on May 2nd.

Please register here. With a number of new angels having joined recently we’re expecting to be full quickly.

Looking for Support - Marketing Lead

Are you interested in helping increase the profile of Manchester Angels to increase volume and quality of deal flow as well as recruit additional great angels?

We’re looking for someone within the network to get more involved in setting and driving the marketing strategy to include social media and event planning.

Please let myself or Richard Fallon know if you’re interested.

New Investments

• Firenze - Seb Jackson has invested into Firenze which democratises access to Lombard loans alongside leading fintech angels & A16Z, Lakestar, Atomico & Ada.

• MonumentTX - Our new HealthTech angels Mark Dearden and Jane Theaker have been joined by Mike Jeffies in a £45k ticket into Monument Therapeutics (via Cambridge Angels).

• Secure Choice- Suzanne Oliver has invested into Neuro-Diversity recruitment and passport platform ND Axon.

• GigPig - Chris Tottman, Richard Flint, Chris Meehan, Fraser Durris, Richard Flint, Richard Hamnett, Chris Cheney and myself have invested a total of £110k into music marketplace and gig booking business GigPig.

Deal champions

Having a deal champion is critical to getting a deal funded. We look to identify angels within the network who have a particular interest in a sector or opportunity and want to spend some time getting underneath the bonnet of a business with a view to potentially investing themselves and presenting the business to their fellow angels.

If you have time and want to get under the hood of some really interesting businesses, we’re looking for champions for the following:

• BuzzBees - All-in-One monthly leasing programme for businesses and resellers offering finance, insurance, recycling, support and in-life care of employee tools such as laptops, tablets, mobile phones etc.

• Arcube - building the future of loyalty programs, offering airlines value-add loyalty benefits to customers based on purchasing behaviours and at no extra cost.

• IMS Savvy - B2B SaaS for large number of airlines too small to join major Airline alliances like Oneworld so that they can deliver lucrative frequent flyer and other rewards programmes. Early MVP.

• Saba Technologies - empowers Middle Market Enterprises with affordable, on-demand working capital at scale by seamlessly integrating invoice financing into the CFO Tech Stack.

Please reply to this email if you’re interested in championing.

Membership - in with the new and out with the few!

We’ve welcomed a number of new angels over the past few months (to a total of 47). Particularly thrilled to welcome angels who have joined very recently:

• Dan Hibell (Tech Angel Investor and web3 gaming investor).

• Joely Irlam-Jones (PbD BioTech) .

• Jane Theaker (PbD BioTech).

• Chris Ashley (PeakAI).

• Sean Brown (Versori).

• Frazer Durris (Trigpoint Ventures).

Portfolio

Manchester Angels have participated in the following deals

• Molymem - newclass of functional and sustainable membranes that help address global water and wastewater challenges.

• Twine - expert freelance hiring platform.

• HACE - child labour index.

• Keaze - shared ownership proptech platform.

• Together - circular economy ecommerce platfrom where clothes designs are manufactured to order with a P2P swapping marketplace.

• MatZero - Solar powered heating mat for displaced persons.

• GigPig - Music marketplace and gig booking platform.

• Firenze - Democratised access to Lombard loans.

• MonumentTX - Therapeutics platform.

• Secure Choice/ND Axon- Neuro-Diversity recruitment and passport platform.

Useful Links