Crowdcube surpasses £500m in pledged investments

More than £500 million (€556 million) has been made in pledged investments on Crowdcube, a leading British online crowdfunding platform that has also been used by a large number of Irish start-ups to raise finance.

Crowdcube said the investments have resulted in more than 700 successful fundraising rounds for scaling companies since 2011. These include high-profile investments in fintech unicorn Revolut, mobile-only bank Monzo and fast-growing craft beer company BrewDog.

Among the Irish companies that have raised money via the platform are Buymie, HouseMyDog, Lightly Technologies and See.Sense. Two Irish companies, Coinaphoto and Exceedence, are currently running campaigns on the site to raise £500,000 and £250,000 respectively.

The majority of pledged investment made via Crowdcube's platform comes from high-net-worth and sophisticated investors, who typically invest larger sums. However, a growing number of venture-capital firms have participated in raises of late, including Balderton, Index Ventures and Dublin-listed Draper Esprit.

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Crowdcube has 570,000 investors from more than 100 countries. More than 13 per cent of investments made so far this year have come from outside Britain.

Last year, more than €95 million was raised via the platform and Crowdcube expects to exceed this figure by some margin in 2018.