Participated · Series C · Jul 2022

Founded in 2018 by Rob Jolly and Dannan O’Meachair, Onto is a London-based electric car subscription service. Its monthly subscription is all-inclusive of insurance, breakdown cover and free public charging at over 11,000 UK charging points. The service offers a wide range of electric cars, including models from Renault, Peugeot, Volkswagen, Audi and Tesla. Subscription prices start from £399 per month with no deposit and month-to-month flexibility to swap cars or end the subscription. With over 7,000 electric cars, Onto is the largest electric car fleet in the UK and is described as Europe’s leading electric car subscription service. The company plans to continue expanding its UK fleet with the latest electric car models. Onto offers an all-inclusive electric car subscription that lets motorists access EVs on a monthly basis. The subscription includes insurance, servicing and maintenance, 750 miles per month, and free public charging at more than 12,500 points via partners Shell Recharge, BP Pulse, InstaVolt and Tesla Supercharger. The company currently offers 18 models with subscriptions starting from £489 per month. In 2020 Onto launched Onto for Business; more than 100 companies now have over 600 vehicles via that subscription. Onto was founded in 2017 by Rob Jolly and Dannan O'Meachair and is based in London, UK. The company raised $60M in equity in a Series C to consolidate UK leadership and support expansion into Europe, beginning with Germany. Onto operates an all-inclusive electric vehicle subscription service in the U.K., offering home delivery, insurance, servicing and access to charging via partners such as BP Pulse, Tesla Supercharger, InstaVolt and Shell Recharge. The company currently rents out 12 EV models across partnerships with 10 car brands and runs a fleet of about 3,000 vehicles. Onto says it plans to double its fleet size every three to six months and will use new vehicles as collateral for financing. The business aims to expand within the U.K. and enter new markets, potentially including Sweden, per investor commentary. Pricing varies across the fleet (roughly £330–£1,299 per month depending on model) and Onto says it is very nearly profitable. The service is positioned as an alternative to ownership, bundling taxes, insurance and maintenance into a single subscription fee.

Participated · Series A · Jun 2021

Nodes & Links is an AI enterprise platform that provides schedule management and project delivery tools across construction, energy, aerospace and defense. The platform automates progress tracking, change control, trend analysis and delay navigation, identifying root causes of delays so teams can address them and prevent recurrence. By automating administrative work such as report generation—where teams typically lose four days every two weeks—the product gives project teams more time to act on insights. Customers like AECOM say the platform unlocks tailored predictive insights, enabling finer plan adjustments and closer monitoring during execution, leading to healthier, more efficient and greener outcomes. Financially, Nodes & Links has raised $12M in a Series B funding round led by ETF Partners. The company plans to use the new capital to expand operations and scale across the US. Nodes & Links builds Aegis, a scheduling platform that determines when and in what order materials and assembly should be delivered for large-scale infrastructure projects. Its software is used by contractors including Balfour Beatty, Costain and BAM Nuttal and the company says Aegis has delivered millions in cost savings by getting materials and assembly organized correctly. The product competes with incumbent infrastructure software such as Oracle Primavera and with manual tools like Excel. The company argues that most major projects run over time and budget — citing an Oxford survey finding only 8% are delivered on time and on budget — and that better scheduling can materially reduce costs and environmental impact. Nodes & Links frames its approach as expanding the workforce to include machines so humans can focus on higher-value creative tasks. The new funding will be used to accelerate adoption of the platform. Nodes & Links is a London-based startup with a software laboratory in Cyprus that applies complexity science to project management. The company develops software designed to help organisations control and manage complex projects, which the article cites as accounting for more than 4% of global GDP. Founded in 2018, Nodes & Links says its software has been deployed to de-risk the maintenance plan for a UK-based nuclear reactor and to improve baseline estimates for a billion-pound infrastructure project. The firm also reports improving upon the industry-standard critical path method by over 2,800% in the aerospace domain. The startup has raised £1.4 million in a funding round led by ADV with participation from Seedcamp and Entrepreneur First.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2020

Altitude Angel, founded in 2014 by CEO Richard Parker, develops UTM software to enable safe integration of crewed and uncrewed aircraft. Its core product, ARROW, is a tower-network UTM platform designed to support long-distance automated drone flights. ARROW underpins Project Skyway, a 165-mile drone corridor across Reading, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Cambridge, Coventry and Rugby, and the company powers UTM/U-Space solutions for ANSPs and aviation authorities including LVNL and Avinor. The company plans to roll out ARROW to support commercial and retail use cases such as drone deliveries, infrastructure inspections, emergency search-and-rescue, and agricultural and architectural applications. Altitude Angel says collaboration with BT Group will accelerate deployment by providing connection and network infrastructure, commercial assistance, and distribution, and BT will take a seat on the company's board. The article cites a market projection of £45B by 2030 for the broader market the company targets. Altitude Angel Limited announced it received $9.8 million in funding from Seraphim Capital, Accelerated Digital Ventures Limited, Frequentis AG and Octopus Ventures Ltd. The transaction closed on December 25, 2020. The company amended the terms of the transaction and completed a final closing in which it raised $5.3 million led by new investor Octopus Ventures Ltd. In total the round amounted to $9.8 million. Zoë Chambers of Octopus Ventures will join Altitude Angel's board of directors. Altitude Angel is an aviation technology company founded in December 2014 in Reading, UK, that builds global-scale solutions for integrating autonomous drones into airspace. Its core product is the GuardianUTM cloud platform supporting both U-Space and Unmanned Aircraft Traffic Management (UTM), delivering services to drone operators, manufacturers and software developers. The platform also provides digital communications services to aviation stakeholders, national drone registration solutions and integrated identification services for protected airspace management with governments, regulatory bodies and ANSPs. The company’s geospatial database covers more than 80 countries. Altitude Angel raised USD $4.5m in Series A funding led by Seraphim Space Fund, with participation from Accelerated Digital Ventures and Frequentis AG. It intends to use the funds to expand GuardianUTM into new territories and grow its on-the-ground commercial and engineering presence with new offices in Europe and North America.

Participated · Series A · Sep 2020

B-Secur has developed a patented software technique that uses an individual’s electrocardiogram (ECG) to enable secure identification while simultaneously providing health and wellness insights. The company embeds medical-grade ECG recording into consumer devices such as smartwatches, cars and clothing and is already selling to some of the world’s largest technology companies. B-Secur has been granted FDA clearance for its technology and has signed its first contract with a US-based medical device manufacturer. It employs over 45 scientists and engineers and has offices in Belfast’s Innovation Centre, Catalyst. The company intends to use new funding to cement traction in the wearable space, accelerate entry into the medical device market, and hire additional staff in Belfast and the US. B-Secur has developed a software technique that uses an individual’s unique heartbeat pattern (ECG) to securely identify users and deliver health and wellness insights. The company embeds this technology into smartwatches, cars and clothing and is already selling to some of the world’s largest technology companies. B-Secur has signed significant contracts with international customers in recent months. The company intends to use the new funds to expand its business reach. Led by CEO Alan Foreman, B-Secur is based in Belfast with offices in Belfast’s Innovation Centre, Catalyst, and employs over 35 scientists and engineers. It plans to hire additional staff in Belfast and engineering staff in customer regions including the US and China. Led by CEO Alan Foreman, B-Secur provides software solutions that use ECG/EKG biometrics for user authentication and to deliver health and wellness metrics. The company leverages the unique electrical signal of an individual's heartbeat (ECG) as a means of personal authentication and physiological monitoring. It launched the Heartkey brand at CES to combine unique user identification with medical-grade heart rate, stress and fatigue monitoring. Heartkey is being positioned for everyday applications such as in-vehicle monitoring and real-time health monitoring in the home, and for embedding in wearables. B-Secur is partnering with motoring manufacturers, global wearable and fitness tracker firms, and semiconductor manufacturers to integrate Heartkey into multiple technologies. The company employs more than 35 staff at its Belfast headquarters and recently closed a funding round to support expansion of its business reach. B-Secur develops a patented biometric technology that uses an individual’s unique heartbeat pattern (ECG) to authenticate identity. The company positions ECG as an internal biometric to reduce hacking and spoofing risks and improve security and convenience. Led by CEO Alan Foreman, B-Secur serves customers across automotive, financial services, access control, smart cities and buildings, and healthcare. Its semiconductor industry work is at the core of its technology development process. The company operates in the UK, Ireland and the US. B-Secur recently raised £3.5M to support growth and continued investment in science and engineering in Northern Ireland and beyond.

Participated · Series A · Apr 2020

Lingumi offers AI-driven English language lessons targeted at toddlers and pre-schoolers, with its first course designed for two-year-olds. Lessons are built around social learning and include interactive speaking tasks, teacher videos and games. The company reports children learn vocabulary up to six times faster on its platform and that it is 95% cheaper than live courses. Lingumi is used by more than 100,000 families globally, with 40% of active users playing lessons daily and over 1.5 million English lessons delivered in China in the past six months. Founder and CEO Toby Mather and the team emphasize personalized curricula empowered by AI and an asynchronous teaching model. The company plans to expand its technology and marketing teams in London, Cardiff, Singapore and Shenzhen using the new funding. Lingumi offers a digital-first language-learning platform for pre-school children, delivering a single daily lesson of around 20 minutes through an app and upselling simple physical products like Play Cubes and Jumbo Word Cards. The product is built around a curriculum focused on natural spoken English and designed for co-learning with parents or caregivers, with the app deliberately limiting screen time. The company pivoted from a connected-toy concept to a pure digital subscription model in mid-2018 after families requested more curriculum, and now sells the physical items separately. Lingumi leverages child-level data to personalize learning trajectories and emphasizes accessibility for middle- and working-class families. The startup reports about 10,000 users across more than 40 countries, with primary focus in Western Europe, Taiwan and growing activity in China, including pilots for kindergarten deployments. Founded by CEO Toby Mather and CTO Adit Trivedi after pairing at Entrepreneur First in late 2015, the company is based in London and Cardiff and plans to use new funding to expand its digital and physical product ecosystem and enter new markets. Lingumi is an education-technology startup that builds games and a connected toy, Lingumi Play, to teach foreign languages to toddlers. Lingumi Play pairs foam cubes with an iOS/Android app using augmented reality to introduce language concepts without requiring screen interaction. The company has developed the Lingumi Method, a curriculum for children aged two and up, and supports six languages including Mandarin and Spanish with a primary focus on English. The method was developed alongside academics worldwide, including William O'Grady, and the company plans to expand the curriculum and train teachers to use the method alongside digital resources. Lingumi launched foam toys across Europe earlier in the year with a particular focus on Germany after beginning with paper prototypes. The founders are Toby Mather (an Oxford graduate) and CTO Adit Trivedi, and the company is a member of Entrepreneur First's 5th cohort. The startup cites market data that worldwide English-language-learning spending tops $150 billion and grows ~25% annually.