VentureFounders, UK-based online equity investment platform has stated that more than £40m has been invested in campaigns presented on the platform since it launched in late 2014.

VentureFounders participates in average funding round sizes of £1.8m, which also include investment from VCs and Angels, with a focus on funding the UK’s disruptive scale-up businesses. Since launch, investor confidence via the platform has been significant, with an average individual investment amount of around £15k and an average portfolio size of around £50k, with the majority of investors regularly repeat investing in VentureFounders opportunities.

Co-Founder and Managing Director, James Codling comments, “We designed VentureFounders to meet the needs of sophisticated investors who were interested in equity crowdfunding, but couldn’t access the sort of quality opportunities they thought had the most potential to succeed. We’ve worked hard to build up our network and ensure that smart UK scale-ups want us to back their growing business, alongside their institutional investors.

“85 per cent of our investment portfolio now has institutional backing, which has resonated well with our investor base, who want to know sufficient due diligence has been carried out on the businesses in which they invest.”

VentureFounders has seen higher than average success to date, with 87% of the investment opportunities put forward on the platform having had successful fundraising campaigns. Codling explains, “Our team of investment experts have an eye for investment opportunities. We carefully select and due diligence potential opportunities as part of our investment process, which is why we have seen success in reaching our fundraise targets when they go live on the platform.”

Codling has significant plans to grow the business in 2017 adding, “We now have a lot of momentum behind our business model and highly ambitious growth targets for this year. After a lot of groundwork to create an experience that caters for sophisticated investor, the wheels are in motion for us to now ramp up our operations and significantly increase the number of high class opportunities funding through the platform, and the volume of investment they receive.”

VentureFounders’ portfolio companies also continue to grow with the possibility of the platform’s first monetisation event happening in 2018. Codling concludes, “We are very excited by some of the updates we are receiving from our portfolio businesses and we have seen a significant uplift in the value of our underlying portfolio in 2016”.

VentureFounders plans to release an update on the performance of its portfolio companies in early Q2 2017.