• Netacea

  Led · Equity · Dec 2024

  Netacea provides a platform that detects and prevents bot attacks, warning customers when attacks are imminent and using AI-driven intent-based analytics. Its open-source BLADE framework maps every stage of an attack and is being adopted as a standard model by business security teams. The company is developing products and services to cover all stages of the attack process. Netacea plans to further extend its AI roadmap, expand its product range and continue growing. Founded in 2022 as a spin-out from Intechnica Holdings, the company is based in Manchester. It employs around 60 staff and counts some of the world’s largest online retailers and major brands among its clients. Netacea provides agentless bot detection and mitigation for websites, mobile apps and APIs, avoiding code insertion on customers' pages so protections remain hidden from attackers. The platform is focused on bot management as that segment is expected to outgrow traditional WAF solutions. Netacea has grown its U.S. presence in recent months and counts customers such as Shutterstock, ClearScore, William Hill and All Saints. Jeremy Gidlow is CEO and co‑founder. The company plans to use new capital to expand its presence in the U.K. and the U.S., where it sees significant growth opportunity. The raise is positioned against a Forrester‑cited market expansion in application security and bot management.

• Medherant

  Led · Equity · Apr 2023

  Medherant is a University of Warwick spin-out clinical-stage biotechnology company developing a testosterone replacement patch for women with menopausal symptoms. The patch is based on a proprietary adhesive developed by its scientists, designed to deliver the correct amount of hormone and to be changed twice a week. Led by CEO John Burt, the company plans to begin clinical trials later this year and to seek regulatory approval in the UK and internationally. Medherant raised £3M in funding from Mercia Asset Management and intends to use the proceeds to accelerate growth and research efforts. The company is focused on advancing through clinical stages and progressing its product toward regulatory review. Medherant Limited is a University of Warwick spinout developing an innovative transdermal drug-delivery patch platform, TEPI Patch®. Led by CEO Nigel Davis, the proprietary TEPI Patch® is designed to deliver higher doses of drugs through the skin to act locally or systemically. The company plans to move its ibuprofen TEPI Patch® into clinical development and commercialize it, and to initiate development of a lidocaine TEPI Patch®. It has an exclusive licence agreement with Bostik SA to use the firm’s novel pressure sensitive adhesive material in TEPI Patch® development. Medherant raised £3.8m in this funding round, with existing investor Mercia Technologies PLC investing £2.5m and now owning 32.4%. Mercia first invested in June 2015 through its managed funds. Medherant is a University of Warwick spinout that has developed a transdermal drug delivery system in the form of a patch. The company's core product is a transdermal patch for drug delivery. Mercia Technologies announced it had completed a new direct investment of £650,000 into Medherant. The investment was disclosed in a Stock Exchange announcement referenced by Mercia. Mercia described the placement as a direct investment. The article does not provide additional operational metrics or future plans.

• lettingaproperty.com

  Participated · Equity · Feb 2023

  lettingaproperty.com operates a SaaS rental platform that lets landlords subscribe to one of three paid plans and access ancillary services including rent payment assurance, legal protection and home emergency cover. The company reports a recurring revenue model with around £800,000 in ARR in 2022 and £1.1m turnover in FY22. It has c.20,000 registered landlords and manages roughly 1,500 properties across the UK, representing just over 0.1% of the UK private rented sector. The firm says it has seen 80% subscriber growth over the past two years and offers a range of landlord products and services alongside its platform. Management plans to scale by increasing market share toward a stated target of servicing 1.2% of the rental market (c.10,500 subscription clients) and to pursue future funding rounds to support that growth.

• HowNow

  Participated · Series A · Feb 2023

  HowNow is an AI-powered learning and knowledge management platform headquartered in London. The product helps businesses and teams upskill, share knowledge, and access relevant learning resources efficiently, creating a smarter, more accessible way to learn and improve productivity. The company partners with Pearson and has clients including TomTom, MoneyBox, Bausch & Lomb, UKTV, and Good Energy; it also works with Pearson to deliver the UK Government's Learning and Skills Platform. HowNow completed a £7.5M Series A in February 2023 and has total funding to date of over £10M. The majority of investment is being used to drive product development and continued AI integration. Co-founder & CEO Nelson Sivalingam has set a goal to upskill 10 million people by 2030. The UK's EdTech market was valued at approximately $6.73B in 2023 and is projected to grow at a CAGR exceeding 10% from 2023 to 2028. HowNow is a learning experience platform (LXP) that helps organisations onboard, upskill and support employees faster by connecting every employee with learning opportunities, skills and knowledge in the flow of work. Led by CEO and co-founder Nelson Sivalingam, the platform is used by over 100 organisations across more than 150 countries, including Depop, Vanmoof, Permutive, Checkout.com, Mercer, Telenor, Sanofi and Investec. The company provides tools to engage, retain and develop employees through integrated learning and skills features. HowNow intends to use new funding to expand internationally and grow its team. It plans to develop features that scale knowledge sharing, make it easier to measure impact, and better connect learning and skills into the overall employee experience. HowNow is an integrated workforce learning platform that aggregates and autonomously organises learning resources from internal sources, external content libraries, blogs, podcasts and peer-shared ‘nuggets’. The product uses a browser extension, integrations with Slack, Salesforce, HubSpot and more than 300 other apps, and machine learning to push contextually relevant content to employees. It builds user skill profiles from self-review, peer-review and real-time job‑market data, monitoring more than 20,000 job specifications and offering real-time analytics and built-in certification to identify skills gaps. Employees can access recommendations inside the applications they already use and convert colleague messages into stored learning nuggets. Customers include fast-growing companies like GymShark; HowNow says it has more than 500,000 users across over 125 businesses in 14 countries. The company sells via a per-user licence fee and has raised capital to date, including a recent $3M pre-series A.

• Dxcover

  Led · Series A · Feb 2023

  Dxcover develops the PANAROMIC™ Platform and MOSA-Dx™ multiomic spectral analysis approach to enable early detection of solid tumor cancers from minute liquid biopsy samples. The platform uses AI-driven analysis and reports results with a one-day turnaround, supported by data from over 9,000 patients and 250,000 spectra to tune sensitivity and specificity. Dxcover’s technology is globally patented and intended to provide rapid, clinician-actionable results to improve patient management. With the new $6.2M investment (bringing total funding to $21.4M since its 2019 spinout), the company will further advance its proprietary technologies and scale operations. Plans include expanding into new markets and indications, commercializing a Brain Cancer Liquid Biopsy across the UK and Europe, and establishing a US headquarters in Nashville following US incorporation in 2024. Recent senior leadership appointments (co-founders as CSO and CTO and a General Manager for UK/US sites) are aimed at accelerating commercialization and international growth. Dxcover develops a liquid biopsy platform that uses infrared spectroscopy of blood samples combined with AI algorithms to detect pan-omic biomarkers for early-stage cancers. The company has generated clinical data showing high-accuracy detection of Stage I and Stage II cancers and expanded its technology to eight cancers in 2022. The funding announced will accelerate development and commercialization of organ-specific tests, beginning with brain cancer and expanded colorectal cancer programs. Dxcover plans a multicenter study toward CE IVDR marking for its Brain Cancer test and will continue collaborative projects to broaden its pipeline. The company was formed in 2019 and is based in Scotland, United Kingdom, while expanding its network in Europe and the USA. Financially, Dxcover announced $11.9M in combined Series A and grant financing to support these activities. ClinSpec Diagnostics is a Glasgow spinout from the Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde. Led by CEO Mark Hegarty, the company develops a liquid-biopsy blood test for early cancer detection that combines infra-red light and artificial intelligence, based on research by Dr Matthew Baker. The technology is intended as a minimally invasive assay for early detection of cancer. ClinSpec has received grant funding from the Higgs EDGE Special Award and Innovate UK through the precision medicine accelerator fund. It completed seed funding in 2019 and subsequent financing tranches, and has raised £5.1m to date. Following the latest investment, Prof David Onions of Norcliffe Capital joined ClinSpec’s board of directors. ClinSpec Diagnostics develops a multi-cancer early detection test based on a simple blood assay, spun out from the University of Strathclyde. Led by CEO Mark Hegarty, the company has run studies on brain, prostate and pancreatic cancers. It intends to use the funding to progress its multi-cancer development program, complete a second brain cancer trial, and develop a multi-cancer algorithm covering the most common cancers. The company plans to hire five more employees to strengthen scientific and operations teams, bringing headcount to fourteen. ClinSpec was established in 2016 and has raised grant funding from the Higgs EDGE Special Award and Innovate UK alongside prior seed investment. ClinSpec Diagnostics is advancing a blood test that can provide accurate results in ten minutes and aims to improve brain cancer survival through earlier detection. The technology uses infra-red light combined with machine learning and is based on research by Dr Matthew J. Baker at the University of Strathclyde. The company has demonstrated the brain cancer test’s potential in a clinical study at Edinburgh’s Western Infirmary. ClinSpec plans to further develop its brain cancer test and begin work on tests for prostate and pancreatic cancer. Management is led by CEO Dr Mark Hegarty. The firm says the technology also has applications beyond medicine, including testing in the food, drug and oil industries. Financially, the company has secured multiple funding sources to support development and hiring plans.

No current team members are available.