Thursday February 14th 2019

Thursday February 14th 2019

PA recruitment - bars & nightclubs - investment app - aerospace components
- VIP concierge app - property management – restaurant group -

gold payments card

London x 7 :: Yorkshire

Joss Search £3.7m | Novus Leisure | Moneybox | Produmax | Velocity Black £12m | Air Agents | Fulham Shore £55m | Glint

News about 8 UK growth companies and/or accelerators + turnover in the GRID marketplace 8th – 14th July 2018:

JOSS SEARCH: PA recruitment - London
I had to answer to a hire calling, says Sivan Joss | Liam Kelly, The Sunday Times. July 8 2018
DZ profile: Joss Search & Selection Ltd
Business: recruitment agency placing personal assistants and other support staff into jobs, mainly at private equity firms. …has placed more than 5,000 staff
Launched: 2010
Location: Mayfair, central London
Founder: Sivan Joss, 33, who owns 100% of Joss Search
Staff: 15
Financials: pre-tax profits of £565,000 on £3.7m sales Last year …expects £1m+ profits this year.

NOVUS LEISURE: bars & nightclubs - London
Tiger Tiger owner for sale | Sabah Meddings, The Sunday Times. July 8 2018
DZ profile: Novus Leisure Limited
Business: owns 41 bars and nightclubs including brands such as Balls Brothers, Tank and Paddle - which serves pizza and craft beer - and Tiger Tiger, which has six clubs in London, Cardiff, Leeds and Manchester. Novus, whose London properties also include the Hays Galleria shopping centre and the Jewel Piccadilly bar, has been shifting its focus towards restaurants as the market for late-night clubbing has declined.
Launched: 2009
Location: London
Staff: chief executive, former Stonegate pubs Toby Smith.
Investment: was briefly listed on the London Stock Exchange under the name Urbium and taken private in 2005 in a £113m management buyout. BARCLAYS and ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND took control through a debt-for-equity swap in 2009. In 2012, the private equity firms LGV CAPITAL and HUTTON COLLINS bought the group for £100m and in 2015, the business was again seized by its lender — HAYFIN CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, which had provided the debt for LGV and Hutton Collins.
News: Hayfin has hired SAPIENT CORPORATE FINANCE to find a buyer.

MONEYBOX: investment app - London
Micro-investment app Moneybox nets a £14m series B fundraising round, led by Alibaba and Treatwell backer Eight | Emily Nicolle, City A.M. 9 July 2018
DZ profile: Digital Moneybox Limited (Moneybox)
Business: Spare change investment app which connects to a user’s bank account and automatically rounds up their payments, investing the spare change into an ISA of their choice with three different risk appetites from funds run by VANGUARD, HENDERSON and BLACKROCK. Users can also make extra deposits into their Moneybox ISA, with more than 80 per cent of Moneybox users setting up weekly deposits and 15 per cent utilising its pay-day boost feature. NB similar so-called round up features coming out in recent months from MONZO, STARLING BANK and REVOLUT.
Launched: 2015
Location: Southbank, London
Founder: Ben Stanway and Charlie Mortimer
Staff: 30
Investment: has just closed a £14m series B fundraising round, led by Alibaba investor EIGHT ROADS, bringing total amount raised to date to £21.3m. Existing investors OXFORD CAPITAL PARTNERS and SAMOS INVESTMENTS, among others, also participated. Eight Roads has previously invested in MADE.COM, NOTONTHEHIGHSTREET.COM and TREATWELL.
News:
1. the new cash will be used to fund new products and to expand the team to 60 staff ….will pursue building out a Sipp or pensions product, better financial planning tools and more brand deals via its premium Moneybox Plus service.
2. The app has previously teamed up with flower delivery company BLOOM & WILD, which Stanway also founded, and meal-kit startup GOUSTO, whereby each company made a one-off £15 investment into the user’s account on their first time using the service.

PRODUMAX: aerospace components - Yorkshire
The UK’s productivity problem: the curse of the ‘accidental manager’ | Andrew Hill, FT. July 9, 2018
DZ profile: Produmax Limited 
Business: engineering aerospace components for leading aircraft manufacturers. Has just finished building a second factory and is preparing to fill it with machines with help from the UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. The AMRC hosts experiments by SMEs, including letting managers and workers use virtual reality equipment to test computer-generated layouts of tools and machines before they plunge into ambitious capital investment plans.
Launched: 1966
Location: Shipley, West Yorkshire
Founders: husband-and-wife owners Mandy, finance director, and Jeremy Ridyard
Staff: 75
Financials: productivity has risen 38 per cent over the past three years and its return on total assets has doubled.
News: Produmax uses unorthodox motivational tools in the factory - floor arrows marked “Engineering Superheroes this way”, image of a caped superhero over the shop floor, a “thermometer” monitoring growth in turnover and pork pies as part of an incentive plan.

VELOCITY BLACK: VIP concierge app - London
Zia Yusuf at Velocity Black profile: the workaholic who smoothes the way for the rich and famous | Mark Shapland, The Evening Standard. 10 July 2018
DZ profile: Velocity Mobile Limited (Velocity Black) 
Business: Digital hospitality platform / online concierge service. Velocity’s membership is in the “thousands” and its clientele includes Elsa Hosk, Rita Ora and Ellie Goulding. Membership is by invitation only and costs £2400 a year and a one-time initiation fee of £600. Options include booking restaurants, the most frequently used service, as well as holidays, massages, renting a fighter jet or swimming with orca whales in Norway. Velocity Black looks after the bookings from start to finish, freeing time for its members. The average spend per transaction is $1800 and the average member does 42 bookings per year.
Launched: 2014
Location: London
Founders: schoolfriends Zia Yusuf, 31 - previously an executive director at Goldman Sachs - and Alex Macdonald.
Financials: turned over £12m in the last financial year
Investment: 2015 - $16m Series A; 2016 -$22.5m Series B led by DIG Investments. Also: the founder of Starwood Hotels Group, Barry Sternlicht, and John Paul, one of the largest concierge companies in the world. Past investors include: BLACKPINE PRIVATE EQUITY PARTNERS, Thomas Glocer, FORCE OVER MASS CAPITAL, CRYSTAL STREAM CAPITAL, Paul Mears, Theo Osborne, CHRYSTAL CAPITAL, SEIER CAPITAL, Alex Macdonald.
News: Yusuf believes too much technology is focused on people’s hobbies indoors - Uber Eats, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Playstation and Xbox - while his app encourages his clients to go out and explore. ‘Uber for Experiences’

AIR AGENTS: property management - London
Dragons' Den star Tej Lalvani buys stake in Airbnb management firm | Joanna Bourke, The Evening Standard. 13 July 2018
DZ profile: The Air Agents Ltd.
Business: fast-growing London Airbnb property management company which takes pictures of properties, cleans them and manages them for landlords. The new funding will allow Londoners to more than double the 650 homes on their books by the end of the year.
Launched: 2015
Location: London
Founders: Mark Hudson and Fran Milson
Investment: sold stakes to Dragons’ Den stars Touker Suleyman (14%) in 2017 and Tej Lalvani (7.5%) - chief executive of vitamins business VITABIOTICS - in 2018. Stars on the programme typically invest £20,000 to £50,000 each time.

FULHAM SHORE: restaurant group - London
Meet David Page: The Franco Manca man shrugging off sour taste in casual dining | Joanna Bourke, The Evening Standard. 13 July 2018
DZ profile: The Fulham Shore Plc
Business: 59 restaurants including the Franco Manca and The Real Greek chains
Launched: 2012
Location: London
Founder: David Page, 66, chairman. Ex-PIZZA EXPRESS shareholder and chief executive before co-founding CLAPHAM HOUSE, WHICH owned chains such as GOURMET BURGER KITCHEN. It was sold to NANDO’S for £30m in 2010. His next venture, Fulham Shore, bought majority stakes in Franco Manca and The Real Greek and floated in 2014. Friend of Tim Martin, the chairman of pubs chain JD WETHERSPOON.
Financials: The City is expecting annual sales up a by a third to £55m, although Page warned in March that expansion will take its toll on profits.
Investment: AIM-listed.

GLINT: gold payments card - London
Going for gold: London fintech Glint is heading to the US and Japan, and will be raising £15m to do it | Emily Nicolle, City A.M. 12 July 2018
DZ profile: Glint Pay Services Ltd (Glint)
Business: startup that lets you spend and save in physical gold - offers its users a pre-paid Mastercard with which they can buy fractions of gold bars and then spend them in real-time at the point of sale, wherever they are in the world at the interbank rate.
Launched: 2017
Location: offices in London and Boulder, Colorado, USA
Founders: Jason Cozens and Ben Davies
Staff: looking to double its staff numbers over the next year
Investment: Existing investors NEC CAPITAL PARTNERS and the TOKYO COMMODITY EXCHANGE. Is looking to raise a £15m Series A – with a small portion through a crowdfunding round. Also, according to CrunchBase: VENTURE LABO INVESTMENT CO. LTD, BRAY CAPITAL, Hugh Patrick Sloane, Haruko Fukuda, Oliver Bolitho and Lord Flight.
News: target of launching in the US and Japan by the end of 2018. Davies said that Glint has been able to "significantly de-risk" its business through making distribution partnerships in all three territories. ….which in the US will reach around 40m people per month.