Digesting 2020

In many ways there were two sides to 2020. On the one-side, there has been a monumental personal loss to so many families, we’ve all been taking the strain mentally due to our daily lives being uprooted, even if we have yet to admit it to ourselves, and many good businesses have been torn apart by COVID. 

But though searching for positives might seem futile, there have been some, and they are noteworthy.

Change = business opportunity

When people have a problem that needs solving, that is often when there is an opportunity for a new business to emerge. 

When life is stable, people incur major problems relatively infrequently; most people’s problems have been solved, and there are less opportunities for businesses to be created.

When COVID happened, simultaneously putting the population at risk, disrupting the supply chain and dampening demand for many products and services, suddenly there were a lot of problems that needed solving.

For prospective entrepreneurs this is actually a good thing – people needed to:

  1. Keep safe whilst out and about during Covid
  2. Communicate effectively with their team whilst WFH
  3. Make childcare work when nurseries and schools were closed.

These new problems and others are creating opportunities for the businesses of tomorrow to emerge. 

Talent 

This might sounds counterintuitive, but in the good times it’s hard to create a great business. Why? A lot of the top talent gets sucked into corporates, and consumers are less inclined to change their behaviour, because, well, they don’t need to. 

Economic shocks mix things up – Thomas Vosper was made redundant at the beginning of the COVID crisis, he’s recently completed an investment round for an innovative new retail concept that he since started – you can read about it in his recent blog

Efficiency

And whilst COVID undoubtedly has caused huge disruptions, some companies in some industries were quickly able to shift into the ‘new normal’. 

Working from home was something that was alway going to happen, probably in a decade or so. When COVID happened, almost everyone had to do it, straight away. 

But this had a few benefits that weren’t necessarily foreseen, people by way of being forced to do it – actually became good at using video calls. 

Meetings where people would have travelled across town and back, and set up 1 hour meeting to justify the time, suddenly became more efficient half hour Zoom calls. A huge time and efficiency saving. 

Investor Outlook 

When the pandemic first hit, there were signs that investors were being more cautious – some had taken hits on their portfolio and dropped back on the number of the investments that they made, and pushed harder on valuations.

However, investors have adjusted to the new normal, for each in person meeting they have given up, there are many more Zoom and virtual meeting that they are taking. 

Lockdown enforced many people to become savers, as there were so few opportunities to go out and spend money.  Investment activity has rapidly obtained new momentum.

The upshot is that we are fortunate to just had our record ever month at Angel Investment Network, and feel well placed and optimistic to enter 2021, despite the continued uncertainty. We’re mindful that it remains a challenging time for many.

Wishing you a happy festive season, even if it’s not what you hoped for, we hope that you at least get the quality downtime that you deserve. 

See you in 2021.

Edtech startup BibliU raises more than £600,000 with support from Angel Investment Network

Edtech startup BibliU recently raised more than £600,000 as part of a Series A extension funding round, supported by AIN. The raise received widespread media coverage across the business, startup and education press.

London-based BibliU is a digital education platform that provides students with digital access to their textbooks and libraries across all their devices. The campaign funding round, an addition to its £6.5m Series A, was in response to a surge in demand due to COVID 19.  Completed in eight weeks, the funds will be used for new technical hires to support demand from Universities. The startup is scaling rapidly with 60+ new pilots across the globe. 

Founded in 2014, the company now has over 100 university customers including Oxford, Imperial, University of Phoenix and Coventry University. The company has digitised content from more than 2,000 publishers including: Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Oxford University Press. The content is licensed directly to universities, who can then provide access to students and include the costs in their existing tuition fees. 

According to David Sherwood, CEO and co-founder of BibliU: “BibliU has seen rapid growth across the globe over the last few months, and we believe COVID has pulled the transition to digital learning forward by at least 5 years. We have always existed to assist universities with this transition, by providing an unmatched student experience in a cost-effective way. BibliU is the perfect intersection for universities that are looking to create a seamless distance-learning experience, and do so in a way that introduces operational efficiencies to their workflows. We’re thrilled that AIN was able to assist us in this rapid extension to our Series A, and are excited to see where this round takes us.”

According to Sam Louis from Angel Investment Network, who led the raise: “BibliU sits at a fantastic intersection of traditional learning structures and digital evolution. The business has broad reaching applications, a strong business model and most importantly, it delivers real value to its users. EdTech is a tough area to gain real traction and I think what BibliU has stands apart from many of the others which is why we’ve seen such great uptake from investors. The COVID lockdowns have now accelerated adoption of digital learning and hopefully this will lead the way for more sustained growth in the EdTEch space and of BibliU.”

If you would like to see what other companies are up to on Angel Investment Network, or are interested in raising funding yourself, you can find your local network here