Seed Haus, a Scotland-based pre-seed tech accelerator, has announced the launch of a £300,000 angel-backed fund to support early-stage startups.
Based in Edinburgh, the fund will launch in Q2, and will seek to invest in 10 startups over the next year, injecting, on average £18,000 in exchange for 8% equity.
Seed Haus will also provide support in terms of infrastructure, mentorship and a suite of software and professional service assistance.
“I believe we need to take a fresh approach to funding the ideas that could become scalable startups. Edinburgh is erupting with innovation and the ecosystem is ripe for Seed Haus to make a real difference,” said chairman Robin Knox.
The launch comes at an important time for Scotland’s digital economy, as the number of registered small enterprises continues to rise, while the 84,000 people working digital technologies generates over £5bn in gross value added (GVA) terms.
“The Scottish tech scene definitely needs greater investment but we are keen to encourage our startups to engage with investors based across the UK. The recent acquisition of Skyscanner will mean that we now have a suite of new angel investors added to the ecosystem and we need to emulate this going forward whilst simultaneously encouraging founders to engage with London-based investors and think more globally,” said Calum Forsyth, the CEO.
Seed Haus has been set up using the proceeds of Knox’s previous venture, Intelligentpos, which was sold to iZettle last year for an undisclosed sum.
Knox hopes that the accelerator will provide early stage companies with the support he didn’t have when he was bootstrapping Intelligentpos:
“When your business is just starting out, you have the least access to support, it seems like the system is only set up to help businesses that make it into high growth, almost when you don’t need the help any more. Doesn’t that seem odd?”
Startups will receive £30,000 but will then have to pay £12,000 to cover the cost of the programme and rent.