Deal focus

Nick Holzherr, finalist on BBC1’s The Apprentice this year, has launched a £14,500 funding bid for Whisk, the online shopping business, on peoplefund.it

Elizabeth Emanuel, best known for designing Diana, Princess of Wales’s wedding dress, is attempting to raise £1.5m from Angels to fund her new design business.

The future is bright for the media sector, particularly for companies with a strong digital dimension. Linda Sullivan, a director at Cavendish Corporate Finance, shares her insight into achieving the best value when selling your media business.

Universal Fuels, one of the fastest growing oil suppliers in the UK, raised £100,000 through the crowdfunding siteCrowdcube. The deal makes founder Oliver Morgan, aged 20, the youngest entrepreneur in the world to successfully raise investment through equity-based crowdfunding.

Student entrepreneurs with bright ideas are being encouraged at Lancaster University, where two new products are being developed for the mass market by undergraduates.

Some of the UKs leading animators, caricaturists and voice artists are looking to gain the funding required to launch a new satirical app from crowd funding website Crowdcube

Fans of Darlington Football Club have taken the future of their much-loved team into their own hands by aiming to be the first sports club in the World to use a crowdfunding website to raise funds.

Oxford Investment Opportunity Network (OION), Europe’s leading technology business angel network, is to participate in the Business Angel Co-investment Fund announced in the Autumn Statement that will provide £50 million to invest in high growth companies alongside business angels.

Business start-ups in the South West of England have a new opportunity to obtain angel investment in the form of Horatio Investments, the new £20m privately backed investment vehicle based in Glastonbury, Somerset.

As small business owners bed down for another winter of inactivity, discerning entrepreneurs are seizing the opportunity to expand, while their competitors are sleeping. This coupled with high-net worth investors getting very low return on their investment is a great time for business angel network, Beer & Partners, to announce the date of their biannual Investment Fair in London.