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A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder. At the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential.
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. The start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
Seed money, also known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor puts capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term seed suggests that this is a very early investment, meant to support the business until it can generate cash of its own, or until it is ready for further investments. Seed money options include friends and family funding, seed venture capital funds, angel funding, and crowdfunding.
The Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) is a series of UK tax reliefs launched in 1994 in succession to the Business Expansion Scheme. It is designed to encourage investments in small unquoted companies carrying on a qualifying trade in the United Kingdom.
Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California which specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. As of 2022, the firm had approximately US$85 billion in assets under management.
Social venture capital is a form of investment funding that is usually funded by a group of social venture capitalists or an impact investor to provide seed-funding investment, usually in a for-profit social enterprise, in return to achieve an outsized gain in financial return while delivering social impact to the world. There are various organizations, such as Venture Philanthropy (VP) companies and nonprofit organizations, that deploy a simple venture capital strategy model to fund nonprofit events, social enterprises, or activities that deliver a high social impact or a strong social causes for their existence. There are also regionally focused organizations that target a specific region of the world, to help build and support the local community in a social cause.
Techstars is a pre-seed investor that provides access to capital, mentorship, and other support for early-stage entrepreneurs. It was founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colorado. As of January 2024, the company had accepted over 4,100 companies into its accelerator programs with a combined market capitalization of $106bn USD. Techstars operates accelerator programs in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
Lightspeed Venture Partners is an American venture capital firm focusing on early-stage investments in the enterprise, consumer, and health sectors. Lightspeed has ten offices globally.
Chris Dixon is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and previously worked at eBay. He is also the co-founder and former CEO of Hunch. He was #1 on the Midas List in 2022. Dixon is known as a cryptocurrency and Web3 evangelist.
500 Global is an early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator founded in 2010 by Dave McClure and Christine Tsai. The fund admitted a first "class" of twelve startups to its incubator office in Mountain View, California in February 2011. They expanded to a second class of 21 in June 2011 and a third class of 34 in October 2011.
Stripe, Inc. is an Irish-American multinational financial services and software as a service (SaaS) company dual-headquartered in South San Francisco, California, United States and Dublin, Ireland. The company primarily offers payment-processing software and application programming interfaces for e-commerce websites and mobile applications.
Research and Development (R&D) Tax Credits are a UK tax incentive designed to encourage companies to invest in R&D. Companies can reduce their tax bill or claim payable cash credits as a proportion of their R&D expenditure.
The Research and Development Expenditure Credit (RDEC), introduced in 2013, is a UK tax incentive designed to encourage large companies to invest in R&D in the UK. Companies can reduce their tax bill or claim payable cash credits as a proportion of their R&D expenditure.
Technology Tax Relief is the generic name for the programme of tax incentives implemented in the UK to incentivise companies to invest in high-value-add R&D and IP commercialisation.
Angels Den is the Europe's first and largest online investment platform that connects businesses with angel investors. It was founded in 2008 and is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Mercia Fund Management, which is now known as Mercia Fund Managers or Mercia is part of Mercia Technologies PLC. It is a UK-based venture capital fund manager. The company provides venture capital to businesses focused on innovative technologies. Mercia offers investment under the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) and the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS), both investment-based tax-reliefs, operating one of the largest such combined funds in the United Kingdom. Startups in which Mercia has invested have gone on to earn awards for their innovations. Allinea Software was a 2011 Red Herring Global 100 winner and Molecular Solar earned the 2011 Lord Stafford Innovation in Development award. In April 2021, Mercia co-authored a report on UK-India Energy Opportunities with think tank Bridge India and law firm Howard Kennedy.
SyndicateRoom is a UK venture capital fund, headquartered in Cambridge, founded by Gonçalo de Vasconcelos and Tom Britton in September 2013. The company is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Entrepreneur First is an international talent investor, which supports individuals in building technology companies. Founded in 2011 by Matt Clifford and Alice Bentinck, the company has offices in Toronto, London, Berlin, Paris, Singapore, and Bangalore.
SFC Capital is an investment fund manager and network of business angels founded in 2012 by Stephen Page, the CEO of the company. It manages the SFC Angel Fund which invests in small companies qualifying for the SEIS and EIS investment schemes in the UK.
Venture capital in Poland is a segment of the private equity market that finances early-stage high-risk companies based in Poland, with the potential for fast growth. As of March 2019, there is a total of 130 active VC firms in Poland, including local offices of international VC firms, and VC firms with mainly Polish management teams. Between 2009–2019, these entities have invested locally in over 750 companies, which gives an average of around 9 companies per portfolio. The Polish venture market accounts for 3% of the entire European ecosystem of VC investments, mainly in the digital space.
References
- ↑ "Venture capital schemes: apply to use the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme". HM Revenue & Customs. 16 June 2017. Retrieved 17 June 2018.
- ↑ "Startup Investing – Importance of EIS and SEIS". Legal Foundations. 25 February 2024. Retrieved 25 February 2024.
- ↑ "Distilling a new way to run a whisky business". Financial Times. Retrieved 10 October 2021.