Growth Capital

It is principally aimed at businesses that are growing quickly but may not yet be profitable or able to attract conventional bank debt.

Growth capital can be used to expand operations, hire new senior people, develop proprietary technology, accelerate operational improvements, or help access new markets.

Many fledgling or emerging businesses follow a similar route when fundraising, relying at the outset on friends and family for initial financial support before progressing to high net worth individuals or angel investors for seed funding. The process of fundraising changes markedly once a business reaches Series A financing and looks to secure its first institutional investment from an investor such as Maven.

There are a number of characteristics any potential funder will look for when assessing a growth capital investment opportunity. These include:

• A strong management team
  Growth can seem like both a marathon and a sprint at times, and any business was growing rapidly is likely to face various challenges or growing pains. Investors will seek to back people that display hunger, drive, innovation and resilience under pressure.
• Differentiated Product
  If you have a product or service already in the marketplace and have been able to attract a core group of early customers on limited start-up capital that is a key positive indicator for an investor. Alternatively, if you’re looking to develop a new product or strategy you need to demonstrate how it does things better than the competition, and that you understand any barriers to entry and how you will displace existing market players and create a defensible source of revenues.
• Market opportunity
  To be attractive to investors your business will usually operate in/or target a very large addressable market with high potential for sales growth, and where a product or service based competitive advantage can be developed.
• Strong Business and Revenue Models
  An investor will want to get a good understanding that a company can demonstrate revenue traction in their market, evidenced by key growth metrics. They may not always expect the business to be the finished article, but rather that it has the potential for high growth through a clear and credible business strategy.
• Realistic growth plan and funding requirement
  A credible plan which demonstrates an understanding of the market and how growth will be achieved. Investors will scrutinise pipeline information, key metrics and analyse the company’s competitive positioning to determine the likelihood of the plan being delivered.
• Exit opportunity
  At the outset of a new partnership an investor will want reasonable visibility that there will be exit options for all stakeholders when a decision is taken to sell. That means understanding whether the business will have strategic value to an acquirer and offer continuing growth potential beyond our investment horizon.

As entrepreneurs ourselves, having developed and grown our own business, we understand what it takes to increase and ultimately realise shareholder value. We have backed hundreds of management teams, helping them achieve positive outcomes.

To us, small businesses are a big deal. We are passionate about helping our portfolio companies transition into larger and more valuable enterprises, and, as one of the UK's most active investors in high growth businesses, we have helped hundreds of ambitious owners, entrepreneurs and leaders do just that.