Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

The CREATE East of England Region Venture Capital Fund, celebrating its first anniversary, is proving a hit with funders and funded alike after making a dynamic start to life on the region’s technology scene.

Chief executive Boyd Mulvey revealed that the fund had offers into eight businesses. Four had already accepted. Each investment is worth £250k and around half involve co-operation with business angels.

“That’s a lot of deals in the pipeline and we have been enormously encouraged by the number and quality of proposals being brought to us,” said Mulvey.

The technology involved is very early stage and encompasses areas such as medical devices, software, biotech and innovative devices from an engineering standpoint, fine detail of which is temporarily under wraps.

CREATE raised £20m to get the first East of England investments underway last year and pledged to work towards a maximum final closing of £30m.

Mulvey said good progress was being made on the additional funding. A number of institutions had expressed interest in supporting the exercise but Mulvey said: “We don’t make assumptions until the cheques are signed.”

He said the level of co-operation between angel funders and VCs and the East of England Regional Venture Capital Fund was excellent.

Mulvey added that a number of funds had approached CREATE to see if they could work together on some broader initiatives backing innovative new businesses in the region, details of which needed to be firmed up.