Fuel Ventures leads a £300k pre-seed round in Naytal

Naytal closes a £300k pre-seed round, led by Fuel Ventures, to support the go-to-market launch of their online clinic for women.

Introducing Naytal

Women’s healthcare needs and expectations have evolved, but the healthcare system that supports them is lagging behind.  Whilst women are more aware than ever before about the importance of taking care of their health, knowing where to turn to get timely advice and support from someone who knows what they’re talking about is a challenge at best… impossible at worst.

Naytal is set to change this, with the launch of their online clinic for women.  Their mission is to reinvent women's healthcare for the digital age, delivering affordable specialist services that empower every women to care for their own health, on their own terms. Naytal provides instant access to the UK's leading women's health experts for support through pregnancy, birth and beyond.

How does Naytal work?

One-to-one care

Naytal provides access to the UK’s leading women’s health experts, who have a wealth of experience caring for women. Whether it's a quick response to a question, advice about a specific issue or ongoing support that's needed, Naytal allows you to find the right specialist to support your needs.

Instant, convenient virtual consultations

Naytal is an online clinic, providing affordable, virtual access to the UK's leading women’s health experts at a time that suits everyone - from the comfort of your home.

Access to expert advice you can trust

The information that women are bombarded with online can often be overwhelming and lead to more confusion. Naytal's work is grounded in evidence based medicine and they only work with the leading women's health experts, who are fully qualified in their field of expertise. All of the content Naytal provides comes directly from them.

Meet the team

Leila Thabet is a seasoned B2C and marketing leader, who specialises in building brands for the digital age. Having previously launched and scaled a creative agency in the US, her extensive international experience has seen her work with some of the world's most recognised brands, including ASOS, Sky, Unilever, Adidas and Tesco. Inspired by her own reproductive health experiences, she has applied her ability to deliver consumer-centric digital solutions into solving the issues that surround women's health.

Lara Russell-Jones is a big-four trained strategy and operations specialist with a wealth of experience working across the public, private and non-profit sectors. Her career has focused on helping her clients solve complex problems, identifying market gaps and developing solutions to unmet customer needs. It was becoming a mum that highlighted to her the huge underserved market that is women's health – an unmet need that she is passionate to address.

Check them out at https://naytal.uk/ 🚀

If you are an entrepreneur looking for investment, please apply here or email your deck to alice@fuel.ventures or reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Fuel Ventures leads a £1.17m pre-seed round in HolidayFox

The round was led by the SEIS Fund at Fuel Ventures, to help HolidayFox rapidly scale across the UK and Europe. The round included participation from Michael and Xochi Birch (Bebo), Redbus (Simon Franks, ex-Lovefilm), the Atomico Angel Fund, D Global Ventures, Shaan Puri and Cathexis Ventures, as well as a number of angels from Monzo, Talentful, Deliveroo, Ski Famille and Blockfi.

What is HolidayFox?

HolidayFox is a double-sided online marketplace to list, discover, and book campsites. HolidayFox enables any campsite in the world to fully manage its online presence, oversee availability, accept bookings online and receive payments. Consumers can browse HolidayFox to find and book a campsite based on location and personal interests. From a grass tent pitch, through to a wooden treehouse, HolidayFox has something for everyone.

During his time as CTO of Wimdu (Airbnb competitor), co-founder Jason Green, realised that camping holidays are underserved by existing tech solutions. With over ten years of experience scaling tech businesses, founders Jason Green and Richard Hooker have launched HolidayFox and are ready to rapidly scale across Europe.

Connecting Campsites to the Internet

The UK camping market is worth $2.2bn, and $15bn across Europe. However, online booking is available at only 28% of camping and caravan sites in Europe, compared to 79% of hotels. Finding and booking campsites can be a painful process. Many are offline, hard to find, and difficult to book.

HolidayFox is on a mission to help British and European campsite owners elevate their online presence by making bookings and camping holiday planning a whole lot easier. Using their system, campsite owners can manage their personal page, add new photos, take bookings, oversee cancellations and offer additional extras like firewood, food, fire pits and all sorts of other exciting things.

Meet the founders

Jason Green is an expert in scaling tech businesses, with over 15 years of experience working at a number of successful tech startups. Jason is the former CTO of Excalibur Group (Wowcher, Living Social, Secret Sales), Dawanda (now Etsy), Wimdu (Airbnb competitor), Brainly and Checkatrade. As a serial CTO, Jason ran product, design, development and data teams. As a camping enthusiast, Jason seeks to combine his experience in traveltech and scaling startups to help the camping sector adapt to the digital era.

Richard Hooker has a background in enabling tech businesses to develop scalable tech products. Richard worked as a senior solutions engineer at Funding Circle and Not On The High Street, building scalable tech for two businesses that went on to gain unicorn status. As the CTO of HolidayFox, Richard has applied his knowledge in scalable tech to design a solution that will grow rapidly across Europe.

A Post-Covid Comeback for Traveltech

HolidayFox was founded during the Covid-19 pandemic. HolidayFox strategically launched in the UK in March 2021, as the national lockdown came to an end. Camping’s popularity has reached an all time high, with people eager to spend more time outdoors. HolidayFox makes it easier for holidaymakers to find and book camping trips and outdoor activities across the UK.

Book your next camping holiday at https://www.holidayfox.com/ 🦊

If you are an entrepreneur looking for investment, please apply here or email your deck to alice@fuel.ventures.

Fuel Ventures leads a £115k pre-seed round in Hibana

The round was led by the SEIS Fund at Fuel Venture, to support Hibana’s go-to-market launch.

What is Hibana?

Independent brands are on the rise, due to their inspiring backstories and personal feel to customers. However, they are not always easy to discover online. Independent brands often lose out to bigger brands with larger ad budgets, and prohibitively high fees on other marketplaces that only accommodate established brands with high margins.

Hibana is the first story-led marketplace, solely dedicated to independent brands. Hibana puts independent brands and their powerful stories at the forefront.

Peter Dakin and Nick O’Quinn started Hibana during the COVID-19 pandemic to replicate the joys of browsing and discovering brands in real life. At Hibana, they seek to bring customers a curated collection of independent brands across a wide range of product categories. Hibana already has over 75 brands live on their platform.

Meet the brands

Since soft launching in February, Hibana now hosts over 75 brands. Hibana is home to independent brands that have been hand-picked for their authenticity, purpose and shared vision for sustainable consumption.

From Nemi Teas who provides employment to refugees to give them job readiness skills, to Fable Yoga who’s yoga mats are made from natural rubber, to Hiut Denim Co. whose mission it is to revive local denim craftsmanship and bring jeans manufacturing back to the Welsh town of Cardigan, Hibana supports brands that do good for people and the planet.

Meet the founders

Peter Dakin is a successful entrepreneur, having previously established Think Blue, a profitable tech reseller company that partnered with the likes of Hewlett Packard and Samsung. In under 3 years, Peter scaled Think Blue to a £3m turnover national provider. After four years at Think Blue, Peter decided to exit, sell his shares and pursue something completely new. Having always been inspired by independent brands, including maintaining a blog during his twenties celebrating independent culture in his home city of Nottingham, Peter set out to build Hibana – a business that celebrates the very best of them.

Nick O’Quinn is a brand strategist. Nick was the former Strategy Director at Creature London, an independent advertising agency. Nick has extensive experience using audience insight and creativity to grow brands, including Mastercard, British Red Cross and Mr. Kipling. After a career of helping big businesses, Nick has shifted his focus to supporting small independent brands across the UK to help them tell their stories at Hibana.

Covid-19 and the boom in E-commerce

Hibana was founded during the covid-19 pandemic. As conscious consumers, Peter and Nick found it hard to shop for independent brands online after high street shops closed due to the coronavirus. The pandemic has accelerated the shift towards a more digital world, and has significantly increased the number of consumers that use e-commerce. Hibana provides a place for consumers to discover and buy from independent brands online.

Check them out at https://hibana.co.uk/ ⚡️

If you are an entrepreneur looking for investment, please apply here or email your deck to alice@fuel.ventures or reach out to me on LinkedIn.

3, 2, 1, Liftoff!

Fuel Ventures launches a new SEIS fund for early seed stage companies, with access to follow-on investment from its flagship EIS funds.

Since 2014, Fuel Ventures has invested over £50m of EIS funding in 41 early-stage companies – and now, we're launching our SEIS fund to support startups from the beginning of their journey.  

Why now?

The SEIS Fund follows the proven track record of Fuel Venture’s Scale Up and Follow-On funds. Last year alone, we deployed £20m into 14 exceptional companies. Our portfolio companies continued to excel, including Moteefe, which recently closed a round at a 26x valuation uplift, and OnBuy, which is currently one of the fastest growing e-commerce platforms in the UK having grown 600% YoY. We are now giving investors the opportunity to invest in our new SEIS Fund.

What is SEIS?

The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) is a government initiative that encourages innovation by granting investors generous tax breaks when investing in very early-stage companies. This includes up to 50% income tax relief, capital gains tax exemption on all profits from shares sold after three years, loss relief, and inheritance tax relief. At Fuel Ventures, we believe that our SEIS Fund will allow us to identify and invest in the future sector pioneers.  

Fuelling growth

The SEIS scheme is a great incentive for investors to support early-stage companies at a time in their business journey where finance options are limited. The £150,000 of SEIS allowance provides companies with vital growth capital, enabling them to hire talent, acquire customers, and establish themselves as key players in their industries. Our SEIS Fund provides promising startups with fuel to get off the ground.  

Access to our follow-on funds

Beyond capital, Fuel Ventures provides each of its portfolio companies with expert advice, access to strategic partnerships, and guidance for future fundraising rounds. We are a market leading early-stage investor, with well-established EIS funds. This means we have the capacity to provide our SEIS portfolio companies with much needed follow-on capital, saving founders months spent on fundraising and supporting growth from the early seed stage to series A.  

What makes Fuel Ventures winners? 

Fuel Ventures is dedicated to supporting the most exciting, up-and-coming tech startups. The team is led by Mark Pearson, a former entrepreneur who successfully exited his own tech company (MyVoucherCodes). We take a personal approach to investing, and our winning portfolio is testament to our success. If you wish to find out more about our SEIS Fund, we welcome you to connect with us and to be a part of our journey going forwards.

Are you an early-stage company looking for funding? Apply now.

Further reading:

• https://www.enterprise-ip.com/investments/seis/calculator-seis/ 
• https://medium.com/@SimskiT/the-magic-of-seis-and-eis-48c7d16b57ec  
• https://smallbusiness.co.uk/5-reasons-why-seis-eis-is-the-best-funding-route-for-tech-startups-2548344/ 
• https://www.information-age.com/uk-unicorns-boost-year-ahead-123487510/

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