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Ignite launches crowdfunding campaign for its next London programme

Business accelerator network Ignite has today (Friday) launched a new crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs that will give investors the chance to invest in the participants of the latest Ignite London programme.

Beginning at the end of September, Ignite London will be the tenth programme hosted by the angel-led accelerator network where up to ten startups will receive advice, support and mentoring from the firm’s angel and investor ecosystem.

Applications for the 12-week programme, which will be based out of the Ministry of Startups coworking space in Shoreditch, are now closed with the participating startups yet to be announced.

The first Ignite London, which ran earlier this year, attracted almost 500 applications and saw firms from London, Paris and Cardiff all benefitting from investment.

Participants included Muslim fashion platform Amaliah and tenancy deposit platform Reposit, which recently closed a £400k seed round, all benefitted from backing and advice as part of the programme.

Now, the accelerator is giving investors the chance to back the new cohort of startups after a significantly oversubscribed crowdfunding campaign early in the year.

Tristan Watson, Chief Executive Officer at the Newcastle-headquartered group, explained that after overwhelming interest from investors and interested parties, Ignite decided to give the public a chance to invest in this latest cohort.

He told Bdaily: “We ran our first Seedrs campaign at the beginning of 2016, giving the wider public their chance to invest in a group of high growth technology companies alongside Ignite.

“The campaign was a huge success, we were not only oversubscribed on the investment but a number of the backers who got involved through Seedrs have continued to help the companies either through further investment or introductions.

“With the next Ignite London programme starting at the end of the September we’d been contacted by a number of the original investors to see whether we’d be running another campaign, so after consulting with Seedrs we decided to open it up to the public again.”

The campaign is looking to raise between £288,000 and £320,000 depending on whether the accelerator takes on nine or ten businesses and, at the time of writing, has already raised over 40% of that target following early access.

Further explaining the thinking behind the crowdfunding campaign, Tristan added: “It’s a great way for people to back some really exciting early stage tech companies, and also for the teams we work with to get exposure to a really wide network of smart people.”