Private equity clubs, angel networks and funds undertaking due diligence on potential investee paperwork is time-consuming, expensive and can delay deal closure. By utilising the FounderCatalyst ‘fund’ role, you dramatically reduce your due diligence overhead…for free.
We pride ourselves in producing quality legal documents which are fair and balanced for both investors and founders. Our principal documents are based on BVCA templates, which have been tailored by our Chief Legal Officer. That said, the core documents - the subscription and shareholders’ agreement and articles of association - can still be over 100 pages in total, so without our ‘fund’ solution due diligence could still be an expensive and time-consuming process.
The ‘fund’ functionality allows a founder or their advisors to invite you to the platform in a fund role. Although fund members may, in due course, become investors, initially the fund functionality allows funds, angel networks and private equity clubs to make an initial assessment of the investment opportunity and decide whether they, or their members, wish to proceed as an investor.
‘Fund’ functionality provides full access to a company’s Intelligent Data Room, plus a customised ‘fund term sheet’ which identifies any key settings or parameters in the round that should be highlighted to your members. This scrutinises dozens of drafting and commercial points within the documents and could include, for example, where a founder has requested specific customisation to their paperwork, or where certain investor rights or consents have been removed.
This feature allows you to fast-track due-diligence and focus negotiation on the terms that matter.
Founder defines round and invites the fund to the platform.
Fund undertakes accelerated due diligence.
Fund can see the impact of document changes dynamically.
Participating investors then close on the terms negotiated.
Reduce your legal due diligence / negotiation cycle dramatically by using the ‘fund term sheet’ to focus negotiation efforts on unusual terms.
You do not need to instruct a lawyer to review hundreds of pages of documents. There is no charge for signing up or using the fund feature.
Providing comfort that the deal on offer is balanced and fair using the ‘fund term sheet’.
The most cost-efficient efficient way of completing deal legals – more of your investment goes to the start-up rather than due diligence or legal fees.
At the end of the funding round, all founders and investors receive a full completion bible containing the definitive contents of the round's Intelligent Data Room, including signed documents.
Processing transactions faster allows you and your team to increase your responsiveness and the number of deals you can manage at any one time.
The platform will produce and automatically populate the following legal documents:
Initial Term Sheet
Founder Service Agreement
IP Assignment Letter
Subscription and Shareholders' Agreement
Articles of Association
Cap Table: one for before the investment, and one for after it
Final Term Sheet, summarising all key points agreed with confirmed investors
Resolutions for both shareholders and directors
Disclosure Letter (with the disclosure bundle also managed on the online platform)
Share Certificates.
The platform also creates the following documents:
All documents are generated and signed electronically, via the platform.
Some angel networks simply don’t have the time or in-house legal expertise to undertake detailed legal due diligence, and don’t have the budget to pay for external advice. By using the FounderCatalyst ‘fund’ role, you can instantly identify key legal aspects of the proposed deal terms that deviate from ‘market standard’ – allowing you to either alert your investing members, or to negotiate on their behalf.
Once a founder has defined a funding round on the FounderCatalyst platform, they can invite potential investors and funds to review their documentation. To streamline the fund review process, the platform provides you with a customised ‘fund term sheet’, which immediately highlights any unusual terms, meaning you do not necessarily need to review the full set of legal documents. This enables you to reduce deal timescales and accelerate the qualification, due diligence and completion processes.
You can then decide which items to negotiate and which to accept. As any changes a founder makes to the legal paperwork take place on the platform, your customised term sheet is updating dynamically and in real time. When all of the legal documents have been agreed and everyone is happy to proceed, the final documents are produced and stored in the round-specific Intelligent Data Room. Investors electronically sign all of the documents via the platform and founders are notified once all is completed.
We were referred to FounderCatalyst and told that they were good, but our advance assurance submission received a positive response from HMRC in 25 hours – that is better than good!
I am doing a funding round using another legal paperwork provider but hit an issue with our SEIS/EIS advance assurance being queried. I wasn’t entirely confident in the proposed response to HMRC and someone recommended I speak to the FC team. They helped me to improve my response and their support led to a positive response. Amazingly helpful and knowledgeable team, even for someone who wasn’t a customer. I've recommended them to colleagues already and will be switching to FC for our next round!
Founders always need external, expert support, and never more so than in the area of handling HMRC and SEIS/EIS. This is where the big learning curves come from, and you don’t want to get this wrong - it follows you for a long time. The team at FounderCatalyst are wonderfully human, knowledgable, accessible, experienced and focus on helping the Founder - the human.
FounderCatalyst could not have been more helpful and supportive throughout our SEIS process.They worked diligently to help us get advance assurance much faster than we thought was possible. They went above and beyond the basic advance assurance process, and played a crucial role in helping us to secure funding. I can not recommend FounderCatalyst enough.
This is the first time we have raised investment for Trove. It can be daunting to keep on top of all of the requirements and documentation. We are so happy to have the support of FounderCatalyst - their technology is user friendly for both founders and investors. Moreover the team are so responsive in supporting any questions. It is clear they understand founder needs having been successful entrepreneurs themselves. We would highly recommend FounderCatalyst and look forward to working together on future funding rounds.
We're a startup that has been 25 years in the making. I was definitely sceptical that we'd get EIS so hats off to you, FounderCatalyst. EIS Condition B...Who knew?!
I am a distiller of award-winning gins that are stocked in places like Harrods, but I know little about the funding paperwork and requirements. FC helped me to efficiently produce my funding paperwork in 2 days and I got SEIS advance assurance in less than two weeks.
It was a pleasure working with FounderCatalyst. As of the first meeting, Sam was very involved in the whole process and made it very easy for us to get us investor ready faster than we could have ever imagined. We can only recommend the service and are about to use his services soon again.
FounderCatalyst has been fantastic - use this service!! We recently raised via CrowdCube and FounderCatalyst was very efficient at sorting out the legal paperwork, which removed all the stress from us. We are a new start-up and they made the legal processes of funding rounds incredibly easy to navigate. They sorted out our advance assurance in record speed. The team is incredibly knowledgeable (not only legal experts but exited founders) and they also have a great community on WhatsApp with other founders.
I approached my first funding round as a naive, first time founder with more to learn than I realised. From day 1, the FounderCatalyst team gave their time, knowledge and guidance in abundance. All I can say is that I thank my lucky stars that our paths crossed - I consider myself incredibly fortunate. With FounderCatalyst, you know they genuinely care about the success of the people they work with. They have made the HMRC AA process for SEIS a breeze. They has helped perfect our pitch deck, sanity check our financials and get our ducks in a row for our funding round, as well as give us that all important optimism when things get bumpy. The FounderCatalyst platform gives me and our investors complete confidence in arranging legals. Thank you!
The whole experience from entering details and completing EIS advance assurance forms to signing the final legal documents was so simple and intuitive.
FounderCatalyst has proved an outstanding solution for our fundraising efforts. Being new to the entrepreneur world and indeed that of raising investment, the FounderCatalyst platform takes all the headaches (and cost) out of the legal and admin side of the raise, so I could focus on communicating with our investors. The support received from the team was second to none and the instant build paperwork and cap table forecasting made the whole process incredibly organised and clear. While I may not be a fundraising novice anymore, I wouldn't hesitate to use FounderCatalyst again when the time comes for a future investment round.
Founders seeking to raise equity finance - use this service! It is simple to use, reliable and secure, and provides unrivalled value for money. You're in complete control of your fundraising process and timescales.
The FounderCatalyst team turned my advance assurance application around in just 2 working days and we had a positive response back from HMRC within a week. Their assistance with preparing my Investors Deck and forecast model was invaluable. We highly recommend using FounderCatalyst to other founders!
Our experience using FounderCatalyst was quick and easy. FounderCatalyst have turned the onerous task of raising funds into an easy process for not only ourselves, but our investors too. I would recommend FC to anyone raising their seed round.
FounderCatalyst were incredible in helping us close our SEIS round ahead of a tight deadline. They offered great 1-1 support through the entire S/EIS Advance Assurance and fundraise process. I couldn’t recommend Sam and the team more highly to any founders raising investment!
FounderCatalyst was recommended to us by a trusted friend to help with our SEIS/EIS advance assurance before we opened our first investment round - and this was done at speed driven by the expertise of their team. The platform and team provided all the core information, legal documents and support needed to work with investors and the digital platform for investors to engage - and as a new startup this has been essential and has removed a lot of stress and worry in an area of the business new to us. Throughout the fundraising, FounderCatalyst has been there with endless support. I would fully recommend the FounderCatalyst service as a core part of your fundraising plans and process.
The process was incredibly easy, and it makes sense why this service exists for start-ups. I would highly recommend FounderCatalyst to anyone considering raising money and needing SEIS/EIS advanced assurance. Whilst it’s unnecessary because the platform is so slick and automated, Sam and the team are friendly and always available to help if investors have any questions. 10/10 service!!
I had no idea about SEIS/EIS and the team clearly explained the process and took the hassle away by managing it end to end. They turned our deck and financial plan into an SEIS/EIS submission in less than a day and managed to get HMRC approval within two days enabling me to focus on my fundraise.
I had little knowledge of the legal processes of raising investment. Our CCO recommended FounderCatalyst and we have both been very glad we chose this route. The FounderCatalyst team led us through the system personally and the online portal, including electronic document signing, was fantastic.
The whole experience of raising investment with FounderCatalyst has been exceptional. Having been a founder before and as Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Bath and SetSquared, I've experienced either first or second hand most ways of managing investment rounds, through crowd platforms to employing teams of expensive lawyers and advisors. I'd heard about FounderCatalyst and had always been intrigued. So, when it came time to raise our Seed round for Earswitch we thought it time to try them out. The system, simplicity and support made the whole process a doddle and we're now about to start our 4th round on the platform. Very highly recommended!
Prior to working with FounderCatalyst, we had conducted the legalities of our first funding round via accountants and lawyers and found a real disconnect between the two. We reached out to FounderCatalyst for round 2 and couldn’t be happier with the service. They are on hand to personally deal with any requests or questions - there is a real accountability of the full process and depth of knowledge that you’re able to leverage. We would not go elsewhere for another round.
The intricacies of an equity raise are really niche and difficult to manage. Specifically, the legals that underpin the entire process aren't the sexiest part but are probably the most important. The team at FounderCatalyst ensured that everything was managed seamlessly with Seedrs. I felt in safe hands throughout the raise knowing that they were in the background, lining everything up from a legal perspective.
The best investment we made was using FounderCatalyst for the legal work. It's really good value, the platform was easy to use and we had amazing support throughout from their CEO, Sam Simpson. I would absolutely recommend it to all founders!
The FounderCatalyst team were on hand every step of the way during the funding round. Unlimited support and entirely responsive. This really helped us closed the funding round swiftly.
The FounderCatalyst platform streamlined our fundraising process, and the team helped us navigate a number of complexities to complete our funding round swiftly. We are now using the amazing ‘agile’ funding feature to top up the previous round over the next few months as and when
I turned to Sam at FounderCatalyst after being misguided by his competitors about eligibility for SEIS as an investor. I have spent three weeks emailing HMRC and my legal team and could not get a straight answer. Sam gave me a definitive explanation the following day. From now on I will be using FounderCatalyst for all my equity funding legal needs!
FounderCatalyst's services and support has been instrumental in guiding us through the intricacies of SEIS/EIS advance assurance and our legal paperwork, including clarifying the legal jargon. This has significantly contributed to our early stage growth.
All I can say is ‘WOW!’, the FounderCatalyst team provided copious assistance to prepare my SEIS and EIS advance assurance submission. HMRC replied the very next day with our advance assurance
FounderCatalyst has been absolutely superb in helping me navigate the SEIS/EIS advance assurance process. My business certainly was not vanilla in its application process, but they took the time to brainstorm the best way to conduct our application. The team always act in a very timely manner, with a knowledgeable understanding of the process. Certainly would recommend the FounderCatalyst to any start-up!
I consider myself fortunate to be introduced to FounderCatalyst prior to our fundraise in October 2022. Having never raised funds before, working with FounderCatalyst was a perfect fit, the in-house expertise on SEIS/EIS was worth the fee alone coupled with the excellent easy-to-use platform and on-tap advice was great. In addition, a 'bonus' feature is being part of the Founder Catalyst group on WhatsApp which is a thriving community of fellow founders that share knowledge, experience, and general advice. A great platform, a great team, and a great community, highly recommended.
FounderCatalyst were first class from start to finish. The help provided in navigating the minefield of SEIS/EIS advance assurance and fundraising legal documentation has been invaluable. They never tired of answered my questions enabling a smooth process for us founders and our investors in as far afield as Australia. I cannot recommend them highly enough.
FounderCatalyst provided outstanding & much needed support for the ReBorn business, throughout our launch period. In particular, we secured both SEIS & EIS approval - successfully, speedily and more cost effectively thanks to their input. Thoroughly recommended.
We incorporated in 2000 and started trading almost immediately. We recently started looking to expand our business into new territories and needed an equity investment to facilitate that. Unfortunately, attracting angel investment in the UK is very hard without offering SEIS or EIS. We thought the ship had sailed until FounderCatalyst mentioned a little-known EIS provision known as Condition B. Long story short, the FounderCatalyst team successfully secured EIS advance assurance and we are now raising using that scheme.
Our EIS time limit had expired and were looking for funding outside the EIS scheme. FounderCatalyst were really interested in the challenge and it was clear from our early conversations that they knew the intricacies of the various options. They identified KIC as a potential alternative for us and provided clear instructions and hands-on support with our KIC advance assurance submission. We received advance assurance within two weeks of our submission. I have no hesitation in recommending them to others.
We have used FounderCatalyst to close two funding rounds, their whole team has been incredibly helpful. The SEIS advance assurance process was incredibly slick and the funding dashboard makes it easy to track which documents investors have signed. Their customer service has been unmatched with support every step of the way to answer any questions. Finally, our raise cost less than a 3rd of the price of their competition - amazing value!
Our fundraising was anything BUT straightforward. Without the help from the team from FounderCatalyst, it very well might not have happened at all. There are other very good providers like this in the market, but none of them give the care and community that FC does. As the various wobbles and pitfalls came for us, it became clear we were in good hands. I not only recommend, I implore.
FounderCatalyst helped with a set of 13x individual queries from HMRC on a advance assurance submission we originally completed ourselves. They wrote a professional response letter answering the queries and HMRC replied with confirmation of advance assurance in just a few hours.
Agile is sliiiick!
Swift is an understatement: I joined the FounderCatalyst platform at 5pm and 4 hours later my pitch deck & forecast had been reviewed and my SEIS advance assurance was with HMRC.
FounderCatalyst have been excellent in supporting us with our first round of fundraising. The specialist knowledge of the team is exceptional, and the customer service is second to none. It has made what can normally be a painful process, simple. I would highly recommend to any fellow founders.
We met FounderCatalyst through the Startup 2 Standup Community, and were immediately impressed with their proactive approach to supporting founders. Their guidance from the very start with the advance assurance submission to closing our initial tranche has been truly invaluable, combined with the auto-documentation and flexibility the platform gives you at every stage in the round, makes FC the best choice for pre-seed startups.
FounderCatalyst was an excellent choice, we were delighted with the platform throughout our funding round. From term sheet, legals, due diligence to data room, the process was faultless, keeping deal momentum and presenting a professional interface to our investors.
A big thank you to the FounderCatalyst team for all their help, particularly in light of literally moments before submitting for our SEIS advance assurance, HMRC totally changed the submission format and method. Their team didn’t miss a beat and sorted everything. We received our confirmation of advance assurance in less than a week. Delighted is an understatement!
I sent FounderCatalyst my pitch deck and forecast model. They gave me feedback and then prepared a pack to submit to HMRC for EIS advance assurance. I was amazed that HMRC responded with confirmation of advance assurance before 9:15 the next working day!
I've got a background in law, so I'm comfortable with the mechanics of a funding round. The FounderCatalyst service is unique though - they give you personal support and use their experience to guide you through the key decisions - something only exited founders and angels investors can provide.
FounderCatalyst is simply brilliant. Not only is the platform powerful & user-friendly; the team have a huge amount of real-world experience and go the extra mile to make your round a success. You'd be mad not to use it!
FounderCatalyst has created an impressively efficient and cost effective way of managing funding rounds.
Thank you to FounderCatalyst for making Investment easy and guiding us through all the legal steps required and answering all our queries so quickly. If you are a founder looking for SEIS and EIS approval, looking to understand where to find investors, or simply need support with the legal side of investment FounderCatalyst are the team to talk too.
As a first-time founder, the process of raising equity investment can seem like a complex puzzle. The FounderCatalyst platform has guided me through the process of generating investment documents, collecting signatures from investors, tracking funds and closing the round. When I needed that extra help solving the puzzle, the team were just an email away addressing queries with patience. Furthermore, they also simplified the mystical ritual of the S/EIS advance assurance application to make our investment opportunity shine even brighter.
