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London and New York based business, A Million Ads has secured a £250,000 loan from the Greater London Investment Fund (GLIF) backed by the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS).

Acclaimed producer, strategist and engineer, Steve Dunlop, founded his London based dynamic digital audio and video advertising business in 2015, and established the New York branch in 2018. 

A Million Ads are the personalisation experts for audio and video advertising. The company uses contextual data to create personalised ads with more context and more relevance to better connect with consumers.

This innovative platform for producers and creatives, allows them to build millions of versions of an ad quickly and easily. The platform leverages information known about consumers, the brand and campaign to influence the content of the ad, such as the music, voice-over, or sound effects.

The business works with music streaming, internet radio and podcasting services around the world, and has produced more than 960 campaigns to date globally, for world-leading brands such as eBay, Adidas, McDonald’s, British Gas and Sky.

Steve Dunlop, Founder and CEO of A Million Ads commented: “I am passionate about story-telling and bringing tales to life. Tech and creativity may not sound like a natural fit, but for our clients, using A Million Ads technology allows their creativity to flourish, ensuring their brands come alive. The result - telling an engaging and compelling story which effectively communicates their message. This loan has come at a great time to support our business as we have a growing in-house team, consisting of creative, engineering and sales. Thanks to both GLIF and David at The FSE Group who are helping us drive the business forward whilst shaping and strengthening it in line with our future plans.”

David Booth, Senior Fund Manager for The FSE Group, who manage the £55 million GLIF debt fund on behalf of Funding London, commented: “It was great working with Steve and his senior team at A Million Ads. Our aim is to offer support for ambitious high growth businesses and A Million Ads is certainly proof of that as they pioneer change in the digital marketplace. We look forward to being part of their exciting future.”

Maggie Rodriguez-Piza, CEO at Funding London, adds: “We are delighted to welcome ‘A Million Ads’ to the GLIF portfolio. We could see immediately a big ambition to grow the business and a need for capital to facilitate this. By working with Steve and his team, we’ve been able to make the loan to support the team's vision for the year ahead.”

GLIF is a £100m initiative to help address the SME finance gap in Greater London, promoting economic growth through enterprise and an inclusive and sustainable economy. £55m of debt funding is available, via loans between £100,000 and £1m, to early-stage and established SMEs looking to scale-up and realise their growth ambitions. GLIF is financed through the European Investment Bank (EIB), European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), London Waste & recycling Board (LWARB) and Funding London’s Legacies.

The Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) is managed by the British Business Bank on behalf of, and with the financial backing of, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and industrial Strategy (BEIS). Deadline for CBILS applications has been extended to 30 November for UK businesses.

EXM Insight, the next-generation solution for portfolio monitoring and value creation for the Private Equity industry, has successfully completed a £400,000 funding round with a £200,000 investment from the Enterprise M3 Growth Fund, managed by The FSE Group.

Juan Manrique the founder of Hydra and Manfredi Bargioni the COO, executed a spin-out of EXM-Insight from Hydra in 2019 to deliver this innovative digital solution for the Private Equity Industry. It is designed to help Private Equity general partners to define, communicate and control the execution of their business strategy around the concept of “Value Creation Drivers”. With a unique technology to extract financial data directly from companies’ accounting systems, EXM also ensures the timeliness and integrity of data contributing to the monthly and quarterly reports of the funds.

Currently, there are no other businesses operating in the marketplace that can offer a similar digitised product solution to that of EXM-Insight. Operating off any device, this solution has many benefits for Private Equity managers who have continually sought to digitise the core of their operational toolkit, in the knowledge that the greater the standardisation of processes across a portfolio, the greater the visibility, control and potential to drive higher efficiencies, profits and exit valuations.

 Juan Manrique, Founder of EXM Insight, commented, “Value creation is a vital aspect of managing a Private Equity portfolio and EXM offers the digital solution to align all stakeholders and accelerate the process of creating value. All the while providing accurate, timely financial and operations data to make real-time decisions, ultimately supporting portfolio managers to achieve greater profitability and growth. We were really pleased to be able to secure funding from The FSE Group, working closely with Paul to ensure that we can continue to grow the business by offering the best agile software solution for this industry.”

Paul Lyristis, Senior Fund Manager, at The FSE Group, which manages the Enterprise M3 Growth Fund on behalf of the LEP adds: “EXM-Insight offer a great solution for Private Equity investors to drive and monitor value creation for their portfolio companies.  Insight has been designed from scratch as a bespoke solution for Private Equity; we believe that there is no other comparable product in the market. Working with Juan and his team was a real pleasure and we look forward to watching the business continue to grow and to alter the way that PE investors look at their portfolios."

Kathy Slack OBE, Enterprise M3 CEO said: “I’m delighted that we’ve been able to invest in EXM-Insight through the Enterprise M3 Growth Fund; encouraging innovation is at the heart of everything we do. The digitisation of our economy is becoming increasingly important to businesses so to see a company innovate and create a bespoke financial product unlike anything else on the market is fantastic and something that our area can be rightly proud of.”

For more information about EXM Insight, visit  https://www.exm.cloud or contact Sacha Holmes tel: +44 203 884 8890

Situated in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, Eyewear Direct was founded in 2018 by Brett Waugh. Brett’s vision was clear: to design, manufacture and distribute quality eyewear at competitive prices, be that Sunglasses, Optical Frames or Safety Glasses.

The Eyewear Direct team scour the world for inspiration, visiting trade shows in London, Paris, Milan and New York, enabling them to bring the most current designs to the factory, ensuring their customers are the first to wear the latest look.

Their impressive brand portfolio consists of Ashton Riley, HOOK LDN, Rédélé, and Sunwise. Optical frames and safety glasses are available from Specsavers and independent opticians throughout the UK, whilst sunglasses can be purchased from several high street retailers such as John Lewis, Debenhams, Crew Clothing, Saltrock, Claire’s and M&M Direct. They are also available from high-end, popular British mail order and online clothing retailer, Boden.

Brett Waugh, Founder of Eyewear Direct commented: “As the business continues to grow, our GLIF loan will help us invest in our team, enabling us to create 7 new positions with a primary focus on business development and relationship management. We are also looking to strengthen our marketing function with PR and advertising to support the industry events which we attend. This loan will create exciting opportunities for us and for London.”

David Booth, Senior Fund Manager for The FSE Group, who managed the £55 million GLIF debt fund on behalf of Funding London, commented: “It was a pleasure to work with Brett and support his business expansion plans. The business demonstrates strong commercial traction in an exciting market, as well as growth in his London team. GLIF helps to support innovative growth companies with the potential to impact on the local economy. We look forward to the next stage of Brett’s journey.”

Maggie Rodriguez-Piza, CEO at Funding London, adds: “Enabling the pursuit of opportunities for ambitious London based businesses is the focus of our 'Greater London Investment Fund' (GLIF). We are therefore, delighted to support Brett and his team by providing the capital required for the Eyewear Direct expansion.

GLIF is a £100m initiative to help address the SME finance gap in Greater London, promoting economic growth through enterprise and an inclusive and sustainable economy. £55m of debt funding is available, via loans between £100,000 and £1m, to early-stage and established SMEs looking to scale-up and realise their growth ambitions. GLIF is financed through the European Investment Bank (EIB), European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), London Waste & recycling Board (LWARB) and Funding London’s Legacies.

Codices brings both the players and their own a-game in a landslide month.

While the pandemic may have bogged down this summer for the wider population, August 2020 speaks as a testament that Codices Interactive is merely hitting its stride as a startup.

To start off the month, the company saw its largest event to date, working with Digital Extremes to bring TennoCon 2020 to life online. Building off of Codices’ current product Quiz Kit, the teams produced TennoTrivia, a Warframe-themed quiz section for the event, aimed at keeping their audience involved and interacting in what would have been a one-way streaming event otherwise. In the hour-long show, there were over 92,000 emails collected and prizes given out, to participants from 47 countries, many of whom wouldn’t have been able to attend the physical event. The game was a roaring success, with over 300,000 players in total being involved in answering questions, making Quiz Kit officially one of the top 10 most concurrently played games on Twitch so far this year.

This record comes just after Codices saw its first million users in a month. But, after the success of TennoCon and reaching almost a third of a million players in one day the company is set to break their own records again.

Codices also managed to score a win at the Digital TV Group’s first ever TV Transformers Showcase. The new showcase aimed to bring to light tech companies that aim to innovate the way we use and interact with television, and they beat 7 other pitching businesses, being voted in by both the audience and the judging panel.

For more information about Codices visit: https://www.codices.io/

Since establishment in 2002, The FSE Group has been operating at the heart of the SME community, serving eligible businesses who are unable to source funding from conventional or even alternative funding channels, helping them to realise their growth ambitions. This challenge has never fallen into greater focus than in these current exceptional times.

It may be that your business had to pause temporarily due to COVID-19 and you may now be thinking about gradually returning to work, re-introducing employees back to the workplace, re-establishing supplier relationships and re-commencing contracts whilst adjusting to business as (un)usual.

In the “here and now” cashflow and financial concerns could seem more prevalent than before and it might be that your business could benefit from a short-term cash injection, but you may not be sure of any remaining options available to you.

One of the products within The FSE Group’s portfolio, offered in certain regions of the UK for which your SME could be eligible is the East of England Regional Trade Finance Loan Scheme.

This scheme is available to eligible SMEs who are established as a limited company and have a material part of its operations located within Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk or Suffolk. Loan amounts range from £50,000 - £250,000 and are repayable over 3 – 12 months.

You could be eligible for this scheme if you have a short-term trade funding requirement that may include the following criteria:

• Working capital for specific new contracts/orders: enabling SMEs to fulfil particular orders or contracts which would otherwise have been unattainable due to the working capital cycles involved (e.g. up-front supplier payments, delivery timescales, client payment terms)
• Short term irregular invoicing patterns from specific contracts/projects
• Up-front tooling requirements for identifiable medium-term contracts or export activity
• Cash-backing for performance bonds/guarantees: temporary credit enhancement to enable banks to support SMEs in the tendering and delivery of significant/strategic contracts