Excitement and anticipation is building for the upcoming Dorset Business Angels (DBA) pitch event which takes place on Monday 24th June. 5 businesses will take to the floor, in a bid to impress the savvy entrepreneurs and seek investment to allow ambitious business growth and expansion. Investors are being encouraged to attend the evening, which includes a pre pitch drinks and networking reception, pitches and dinner.
Dorset’s first gin distillery leading the UK’s gin renaissance
First to pitch to the Angels will be a hugely successful Dorset gin brand, well-known to many in the region. The Bournemouth based business sold its first bottle of their award-winning Dorset Dry Gin in April 2015, just one year after the business’s founder left his successful career as a chartered surveyor in London, with ambitious plans to launch Dorset’s first gin distillery. In just 4 years they have become a nationally recognised brand, leading the UK’s gin renaissance. They have a growing team of 9 staff who distil and bottle over 1,000 bottles a week, supplying to leading brands such as Waitrose, Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Ocado.
The business is hungry to scale up to the next stage, keen to capitalise on their brand value and move into the national supermarket supply chain, begin exporting and up-scale their facilities and premises to a much larger scale world-class standard visitor distillery. They are seeking equity funding of £400,000 at a £4m valuation.
‘Netflix of fitness’
The next business seeking investment will be a company which describes itself as the ‘Netflix of fitness’ and promotes fitness Apps and online training programmes. In revenue, with an establish and rapidly expanding cloud-based fitness platform, it offers personal home fitness workouts for the body as well as mental health content.
A financial services compliance technology solution A business in the compliance software surveillance tech sectorhas developed a patented technology platform to capture, analyse, store, and archive for near instant retrieval any communication type – electronic, audio, or market data – in real-time, securely from the source. With the sharp increase in regulatory requirements in financial services, evolving regulation is driving the need for an all-encompassing compliance technology solution.
Identifying burn-out in the workplace
A business founded in the wellness sector in January 2018 has developed a predictive model for large corporates aimed at identifying ‘burn-out’ in the workplace. The model is currently being assessed by a multi-national organisation in a research pilot study that is looking for ‘burn-out trends in 6000 employees based in the UK and North America. Discussions are also underway with other potential commercial and academic partners.
Replacing ‘red-button’ alert pendants
A ’Care in the Home’ company has developed technology that replaces the old ‘red-button’ alert pendants used by the elderly, to report an accident in the home. This system is designed to shorten fall discovery times from hours to just minutes and provides ongoing fall prevention by using AI algorithms. Don McQueen, Chairman of Dorset Business Angels advised, “We welcome potential investors to come along, network and maybe discover an exciting, new investor proposition! Even if someone has not invested before you would be made very welcome at our event.”
The evening will include a brief guest presentation from the inspiring Head of Talbot Heath School in Bournemouth, Anghard Holloway. Angharad will be updating the Angels on the School’s ‘Think Big’ vision for the future, combining creativity with technology and will advise on the School’s ongoing STEAM vision.
DBA was formed in 2013 with the aim to bring investors and entrepreneurs together to accelerate the growth of early stage businesses. DBA provides quality, private equity investment opportunities to local high net worth (HNW) and sophisticated investors (SI). Four times a year companies are invited to attend an event at which they pitch their business to the savvy Angels in a Dragon’s Den type scenario. Angel investment might come from a single investor or it could be 2 or 3 Angels pooling funds together to support a company. Any investments are in the form of an equity investment and not a debtor’s loan. Investments are made across all sectors.
To book a place at the DBA Pitch Event visit www.dorsetbusinessangels.co.uk/Pitch-Evening.aspx