Recruitment firm sets up equity crowdfunding platform for tech startups

Executive recruitment firm Intramezzo has launched an equity crowdfunding platform.

Stakeholderz will aim to help early stage UK tech firms secure investment by leveraging Intramezzo’s own network and database, bringing together ventures, senior executive talent and a base of experienced investors.

The newly formed Stakeholderz Venture Committee will screen selected UK tech ventures, asses their suitability to the platform and match approved businesses with an ‘investing director’, who will support their fundraising within the Stakeholderz investor community.

Swansea-based Vortex IoT, which designs and builds IoT solutions for use in industrial and harsh environmental settings, is the first company to go live on Stakeholderz. It has a funding target of £500k.

The platform is supported by the London-based Microsoft for Startups business accelerator.

Warwick Hill, managing director of Microsoft For Startups, said: “We like the Stakeholderz approach and see the platform as a way of helping our incubated companies attract both the senior skills and the extra funding they need to see them into the scale-up phase.

“Microsoft is particularly interested in the Stakeholderz ‘investing directors’ programme because of its unique approach to bringing investing chair appointments as well as upskilling executives teams with investor talents.”

He added: “This allows us to scale our companies and to bring technical transformation, faster.”

Intramezzo founding director Dermot Hill had the original idea to establish a crowdfunding platform.

Dermot, CEO of Stakeholderz, said: “Investors want high-quality, legitimate investment opportunities which have been thoroughly scrutinised, bringing-in lead investing directors with ‘skin in the game’ adds an extra level of confidence for investors.

“Stakeholderz finds exceptional lead investors with domain expertise to work with the CEOs during the fund raising.”

He added: “The profile of the lead investors and their experience in bringing in investments removes a lot of the time-consuming fund-raising activity from the CEO.”