Notice

Competition guidance for regional angel investment accelerator pilot: finding group partners

Updated 2 November 2018

This notice was withdrawn on 13 February 2019

This competition is no longer open for applications. Search current funding opportunities.

1. Dates and deadlines

Competition opens	29 October 2018
Competition briefing event in Birmingham	7 November 2019
Final date for registration	Midday 2 January 2019
Deadline for submission of the full application and appendices	Midday 9 January 2019
Invitations to interview	29 January 2019
Planned date presentations to Investment Advisory Board (IAB)	6 Febuary 2019
Decision to applicants	By end of 22 Febuary 2019
Confirmation of allocation	By 12 March 2019

Please read the full competition scope before you apply.

2. How to apply

Register: you will receive an email acknowledgement of your registration followed by a second email up to 48 hours later. The second email will contain a username and password for our secure upload facility along with a unique application number and form.

Application: once you have received your unique username and password, you can sign in to the secure website. You are then able to access the legal agreement and draft investment manual for this competition from the public download area.

Submit your documents: once you have completed the application form, you will need to submit it to your FTP site using your unique application number for this competition. You can also submit appendices to accompany questions 2 and 4 as PDF documents, labelled correctly according to the appendices guidance in this document.

Assessment and interview: once the scope and eligibility checks have been completed, all applications that are both eligible and in scope will be assessed by Innovate UK’s Investment Advisory Board (IAB). The IAB will confirm a shortlist of applicants who will be invited to present to them. Shortlisted applicants will receive feedback from the IAB before their interview.

Notification: we will notify the lead organisation of the outcome of the application by the date stated in the timeline, using the email address provided in the application form.

Feedback: approximately one week after you have received your notification email, we will give feedback to all assessed applications. The lead applicant can access and download the feedback by signing into the secure FTP site where you uploaded your application documents. It is the responsibility of the lead to communicate the feedback with the rest of the consortium, if applicable. No additional feedback can be provided and there will be no further discussion on the application.

Confirmation of allocation: following notification we will conduct a post decision negotiation with the preferred candidate for each zone. There is a requirement to complete negotiations by 12 March 2019 where with the signing of the legal agreement there will be a confirmation of the grant allocation.

3. The application form

This section explains the structure of the application form and offers guidance on what to answer in each question.

The structure is as follows:

• Angel Investor Partner (AIP) details
• eligibility
• AIP description – public use
• question 1: Partnership investment focus
• question 2: Angel investor investment capacity and interest
• question 3: Raising awareness and engaging with businesses
• question 4: Managing the process and tracking the portfolio
• question 5: Added value of your partnership
• question 6: Impact on the investor partnership programme

Please make sure that you upload the final version of your application by the deadline. It is the lead organisation’s responsibility to ensure that you do not upload a blank or incomplete application form. Follow these steps:

• you can only use the application form provided. It contains specific information including a unique reference number for your project
• the application form contains specific fields. It is important that you complete each field and submit a fully completed form. Incomplete forms will be considered ineligible and won’t be sent for assessment
• the application form must not be altered, converted or saved as a different version of Microsoft Word
• the space provided in each field of the form is fixed. You must restrict your responses in each of the fields to the space provided. The typeface, font size and colour are predetermined and cannot be changed. Illustrations, graphics and hyperlinks cannot be included in the application form.
• the light grey shaded fields are completed automatically from other information entered on the form, such as the total columns of a table. These cannot be overwritten
• you should be able to see your total answer to the question when looking at the application form in print view. Any text that cannot be seen in this view or when the form is printed will not be assessed

As part of our objective to stimulate and support UK innovation, we have established a close network of Affinity Partners. This list is made up of organisations that can help Innovate UK fund and support innovative businesses. Our joint aim is to speed up sustainable economic growth for the UK.

In some cases, we may share the public description of the AIP with other potential funding bodies, for example Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), Wales and Northern Ireland. These bodies may wish to contact you about providing funding or other support for your proposal.

Field	Guidance
Competition name	This field will show the full name of the Innovate UK competition to which the form applies. You do not need to enter anything here
Document ID	This field is completed automatically
Applicant number	This field is completed automatically and is the reference that you should use on all correspondence (this is the 6 digit number after the dash)
Application details
Region	Please select from the drop down list
(Lead ) organisation name	Enter the full registered name of the (lead) organisation for the project. If you are not in a consortium application, these will be your organisation details. Please note that the lead organisation will be the main point of contact between Innovate UK and the AIP.
(Lead) organisation contact details	Enter the full name, postcode, email address and telephone number of the main point of contact between Innovate UK and the AIP

AIP details

Please describe in general details the investment focus of your angel networks and/or groups and how you engage with companies seeking investment. For each of the angel networks or groups indicate any fees that companies might pay, including success fees.

Eligibility

Describe how you fit the eligibility criteria described in the competition brief.

Public description of the AIP (not scored)

AIPs are asked to provide a description of their investment interests and how they operate. They should also provide a brief description of each of the angel groups involved in the process and an overall illustration of their deal capacity. They should understand that we will use this description to brief potential SME applicants looking for investment. We may also use this description for promoting the Investor Partnerships programme if they become an Investor Partner on this competition

4. Competition questions

All questions apply to all project partners and are scored out of 10 marks.

Question 1. Partnership investment focus

Based on the information provided in the scope section of the brief, indicate in which zone you will focus your activities in terms of geographical coverage. Outline also any focus in terms of sector or technology (or both). You should provide a summary of the geographical coverage and sector focus currently provided by each collaborating angel group.

Indicate how you will be able to mobilise local angel investors and generate sufficient investments into relevant businesses carrying out suitable innovation projects to fully allocate the grant funding alongside equity investment within 2 years.

Question 2. Angel investor investment capacity and interest

Provide information on your angel investors’ existing investment capacity and interests. Demonstrate existing interest in early stage, disruptive technology businesses. Indicate how the additional grant funding will be used to encourage both existing and new local investors to consider investing in early stage, disruptive technology companies.

Identify any successes in facilitating effective syndication opportunities and any consistent co-funding relationships.

Identify any track record of companies going on to raise further funding.

In a separate appendix named ‘AppendixQ2-(application number)’ you can submit in PDF format up to 10 pages to provide additional information on historic and anticipated investment raised and investor activity, describing your existing and anticipated portfolio, performance track record, concentration and other significant risks.

Question 3. Raising awareness and engaging with businesses

Indicate your:

• strategy for raising awareness about the opportunity amongst both the local angel investor and local entrepreneurial community
• strategy to work with both investors and potential investee companies to identify suitable projects for grant funding by Innovate UK from the allocation, alongside private investment from your angel groups and other associated investors

Question 4. Capability and capacity for managing the process and tracking the portfolio

Provide details of the existing and proposed team members who will be responsible for managing the AIP and delivering the programme.

Provide historic and forecast financial information about the legal entity that will act as AIP, showing that it will have the financial capacity to take on and manage an allocation of funding on behalf of Innovate UK.

Describe your processes for:

• identifying potential applicant companies with suitable innovation projects for grant funding
• managing the allocation of grant awards to successful applicants
• identifying potential investors to commit equity investment to successful applicant businesses alongside grant funding for their projects
• tracking and reporting on both successful and unsuccessful applicants for project grant funding and for equity investment

In a separate appendix named ‘AppendixQ4a-(application number)’ you can submit in PDF format up to 2 pages to provide CVs of team members to be involved in managing the AIP and delivering the programme.

In a separate appendix named ‘AppendixQ4b-(application number)’ you can submit in PDF format up to 20 pages to provide additional financial information, including historic and forecast balance sheet, profit and loss or income and expenditure, and cash flow statements.

In a separate appendix named ‘AppendixQ4c-(application number)’ you must submit a schedule of fixed charges for the 3 years of deployment of the pilot. You will agree to this as part of schedule 2 of the allocation agreement, ‘AIP management and operational charges’. This appendix must be in PDF format and can be up to 2 pages long.

Question 5. Added value of your partnership

Indicate how you will:

• encourage your existing investors in your region to consider and commit to investment at an earlier stage of development of innovative businesses and in a broader range of sectors and technologies
• encourage new investors in your region into your network to consider and commit to investment in innovative businesses
• link to other relevant local and national initiatives for stimulating investment
• increase diversity (for example in terms of gender or ethnicity) among your active investors and the companies seeking investment

Question 6. Impact on the investor partnership programme

Show how you will:

• have an impact on your network and group in a positive way, such as increasing the number, speed and diversity of investments
• enable companies to scale more quickly and stimulate companies’ willingness to access equity funding at very early stage
• enable your investors to change the nature of their standard investment strategy, such as investing at an earlier stage or in a wider technology portfolio
• provide the foundations for a legacy of increased local angel capacity and interest for investing in early stage, disruptive technology companies

5. Project appendices

You can only include appendices in support of questions 2 and 4 as described in the guidance for those questions. Submission of any additional appendices or documentation not described in this document will result in your application being judged as ineligible and not assessed. Applications submitted with appendices that have incorrect content or do not follow the naming convention will be ineligible and not sent for assessment.

In order that assessors can open and read the appendices, each appendix must:

• conform to the maximum length specifications stated for each question
• be submitted in portable document format (PDF)
• be legible at 100% magnification
• display prominently the ‘application number’ as in the filename of the application form, for example ‘AppendixQ2-(application number eg.123456)’

Please do not submit appendices longer than the specified lengths. Assessors are instructed only to read appendices to the lengths specified in the guidance.