Manchester cyber security startup Ghost Shift has closed a £250,000 pre-seed round backed by four angel groups, unlocking a further £215,000 in matched funding from UK Research and Innovation. The grant means 46 per cent of the £465,000 total arrives without dilution.
Ghost Shift is headquartered in Manchester and works on what its founders call the information environment, which they regard as an operational domain in its own right. Tom Sefton-Collins is co-founder and chief executive.
The company's pre-seed round closed at £250,000. Manchester Angels took part alongside Cambridge Angels, Ante-Bellum Angels and Halceon.
Richard Fallon, chairman of Manchester Angels, led the investment for the network. He runs its cyber sub-group and previously founded Naimuri, the Manchester data intelligence business sold to QinetiQ in 2020.
The equity round triggered £215,000 of matched funding from UK Research and Innovation. That brings the capital available to the company to £465,000.
The split matters for the cap table. Grant funding carries no equity, so founders and angels are diluted only by the £250,000 of priced investment while the company has almost twice that sum to spend.
The valuation and the size of the stake sold were not disclosed. Individual cheque sizes from the four angel groups were also not given.
Sefton-Collins said the money would be used in two areas: building the operational capability and team needed to scale work the company already knows is effective, and funding the research and development behind future products. He said the tools available to organisations operating in the information environment had not kept pace with its importance.
The deal was announced on 10 October as one of two new investments by Manchester Angels. The other was its participation in the $600,000 pre-seed of London sales software company Doris Labs, led by Fuel Ventures.
Together the two take the network's portfolio to 22 deals. Manchester Angels has 45 active angels, all of them exited technology founders or operators, and reports an average total ticket of £220,000.
At £250,000, the Ghost Shift round sits close to that average. The syndicate also reaches beyond the North West, with Cambridge Angels investing alongside the Manchester network that led the deal.
David Levine is principal at Manchester Angels, whose members invest after a diligence process run by the angels themselves. The network focuses on technology businesses based in the North, with cyber security and intelligence among its specialist areas.
Ghost Shift has not said when it expects to raise again. No institutional venture investor was named in the pre-seed.
Original source: BusinessCloud — https://businesscloud.co.uk/news/manchester-angels-hits-22-investments-with-double-deal
