THE Archangels investment syndicate has underlined its belief in the potential for Scottish technology firms to achieve global success, after the value of deals it backed increased by 7% against a tough backdrop.
In the syndicate-led funding rounds, the companies raised a total of £10.2 million from investors last year, compared with £9.5m in 2012.
Archangels added one new company to its portfolio, after supporting a £500,000 fund-raising by Zonefox, which supplies software designed to prevent security breaches from inside a business.
The syndicate also helped around 12 existing portolio companies raise a total of £9.7m follow-on funding.
Chief executive John Waddell noted members had shown a strong appetite for deals, including later funding rounds that were intended to help investee companies get to a position of scale.
Archangels focuses on Scottish firms that offer technology for which it believes there could be global demand.
Mr Waddell noted the recent $3.2bn (£1.9bn) acquisition of the Nest smart thermostat business by Google highlighted the strong interest businesses with the right technologies could attract.
"We are seeing increasing activity in our early stage technology space and recent trade interest in our portfolio supports our strategy," said Mr Waddell.
Archangels is in talks about a potential exit from its investment in one portolio company. It expects to add a new company to its portfolio in coming weeks.
Syndicate members provided £5.2m of the total invested in 2013.
The Scottish Investment Bank provided £2.5m of the total funding. Mr Waddell said the support provided by the government-funded organisation allowed Archangels to do more than it would otherwise.
Venture Capital firms provided £2m funding last year. Other angels contributed £500,000.
In 2012 Members of Archangels provided £5.73m of the total £9.5m invested.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article