Sam Simpson

You're seeking that all-important funding to catapult you to the next level.

YET despite how motivated you are and how good your business idea is, you may still struggle to…

▫️ Get funding because of the advance assurance needed
▫️ Afford the production of expensive legal paperwork
▫️ Know-how to find those elusive investors.

Simplifying and accelerating the early-stage investment legal journey, FounderCatalyst is the ONLY affordable fixed price method of funding round legals for start-ups.

WHO WE HELP
Pre-incorporation to start-ups in England & Wales that want expert AND affordable help with SEIS & EIS and the legal process and documentation required to complete their funding journey. 

3 WAYS WE HELP
1. Apply for SEIS & EIS advance assurance
2. Produce all legal funding round paperwork and manage investor engagement
3. Introduce start-ups to possible sources of funding.

Enjoy the relief all of the legal paperwork you need in as little as 30 minutes and your investor engagement managed through the process.  

PROOF WE HELP
✅  Complete fixed price service per funding round just £1,495 +vat
✅  99% success rate for advance assurance
✅  Legal paperwork produced in just 30 minutes.

YOUR NEXT STEP
Haven’t yet got your funding legals sorted and you’re determined to give your start-up the best and most affordable chance of success?

Book a chat at https://calendly.com/sam-fc/meet

Thanks for viewing my profile.

Sam

"Founders seeking to raise equity finance - use this service! It’s simple to use, reliable & secure, & provides unrivalled value for money. You're in complete control of your fundraising process & timescales." Jules & Charlie, Founders, The Nue Co

FREE RESOURCES
Because we’re here to help start-ups, we offer the following for free:

✅  SEIS/EIS advance assurance submission
✅  Customised Term Sheet
✅  Template Forecast Models
✅  Founder Collaboration Agreements

Visit: foundercatalyst.com to find out more and access the freebies.

SPECIALITIES: Start-up, Startup, Start Up Funding, Funding Round, Funding, Investment, Investor, Investor Engagement, Angel Investor, SEIS, EIS

Co-Founder and CCO

Forge Technologies is a digital IT services business focusing on three technology pillars; Future workplace, Cloud optimisation and Network transformation. Forge has no legacy infrastructure that it needs to deliver returns against; no costly office space, external investors or banking covenants and unencumbered from legacy working practices that have to be turned on their head to adapt to new working practices.

Within Forge Technologies, I am responsible for all aspects of commercial and back office services.

The most anticipated day of the year is here – “The Deal 2026” has been released by our friends at Beauhurst.  Hat tip to Henry Whorwood and team

Here are the headline UK funding trends at a glance.

2025 vs 2024:
📉⁠ ⁠Deal numbers down by 7.87%
📈 ⁠Total capital raised up by 3.43% (£800m more deployed)
⬆️ ⁠Average deal size up by 12.6%
🥇⁠ ⁠First-time fundraises up by 23.6%

Overall summary: Fewer deals but more capital per deal and more new companies entering the market.

Stage trends:
👉 ⁠Seed and Venture: Deal counts have softened compared with recent peaks, but remain above pre-2020 levels.
🐢⁠ ⁠Venture: Shows the clearest slowdown in activity.
📈⁠ ⁠Growth: Average deal size dropped (from ~£25.9m to ~£18.6m), indicating more caution in later-stage rounds.
💰Average seed valuation has softened notably, from £2.45m in 2023 to £2.04m in 2025. Though the % drop is not as crazy as growth (down from £27.2m in 2021 to £18.6m in 2025)

Sector trends:
🤖⁠ ⁠AI leads in both number of deals and total capital raised.
☁️⁠ ⁠Cloud computing ranks among the lowest by deal volume and capital raised.

Takeaway:  The fundraising market has become more selective, there are fewer rounds but larger average cheques, more first-time founders raising and strong concentration in AI.

Want to know more? Link in the comments?

Want to know how FounderCatalyst (the most cost effective, fastest growing and highest rated fund raising platform in the UK) can support your funding round?  Drop me a message 👏

Serial Entrepreneur, Board Advisor ▫️ Founder at FounderCatalyst, the ONLY affordable fixed price method of funding round legals for start-ups ▫️ CCO at Forge Technologies

💡 Planning your fundraise for the end of the UK tax year but not sure where to start?  Let’s fix that! 

🚀 Fundraising & S/EIS

I’m excited to be teaming up with Manchester Digital for a live session where I’ll be breaking down how founders can approach fundraising with confidence.

In this practical, no-fluff webinar, I’ll walk you through the full funding landscape - from grants and debt to equity - and help you understand which route is right for your business. I’ll also demystify SEIS and share insider tips to help you get the most out of this powerful scheme.

You’ll learn:
✔️ Funding options: Grants vs Debt vs Equity
✔️ Understanding equity types: Angels, VCs, and Crowdfunding
✔️ The benefits of SEIS for founders and investors
✔️ Advance assurance: why it matters and how to get it
✔️ SEIS myths, secrets, and practical tips
✔️ Live Q&A + useful resources

🗓️ Tuesday, 21 January 2026

🕛 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM (UK Time)

💻 Online Webinar

👉 Save your spot now: https://lnkd.in/eJcsti_f

#Fundraising #SEIS #EIS #StartupFunding #FounderCatalyst #StartupWebinar #InvestorReady

On Friday 23rd January at midday, we are starting the first in a series of 6 webinars to kickoff the 2026 fundraising season. You can expect a practical, founder-focused session designed to help you turn early traction into a business investors want to back.

Hosted by myself (FounderCatalyst) and Hatty Fawcett from Focused For Business in this no-fluff hour we’ll go back to basics and help you assess your investor readiness, strengthen your foundations, and avoid the common mistakes that stop founders from raising early-stage capital:

✅ What investors actually look for in early-stage startups
✅ How to position your story and metrics to attract serious investor interest
✅ The most common gaps that derail fundraising (and how to fix them early) 
✅ How SEIS/EIS can make your round more attractive to UK investors, and why it pays to get Advance Assurance in place early

Secure your FREE spot here: https://luma.com/iqm7b745

Very proud that FounderCatalyst supported Saleem Yaqub and the Shoutt team with their recent close of >£500k from SFC Capital and others.

The unique FounderCatalyst model meant that Shoutt paid a fixed fee of just £1,495+vat - less than a third of the price of the (more expensive, lower Trustpilot rated) "market leader".  

Thinking of fundraising?  Lets talk 🤙

Co-Founder @ Shoutt | Freelance smarter with AI

Today we announced our £525k pre-seed round with SFC Capital and angels.

But this didn’t start with a pitch deck or a funding round.

Multiple pivots. And countless hours spent manually checking hundreds of websites and sifting through thousands of opportunities to understand the market and train our models. 

Shoutt is an always-on AI agent that finds and delivers highly relevant gigs to freelancers from across the web. 

Jonathan Eadie and I come from different backgrounds, tech and non-tech, and that combination has turned out to be one of our biggest advantages. Different lenses. Better decisions.

A few key learnings:
• Neither of us could have done this alone. Great companies are built in partnership
• Your first hires matter more than almost anything else (character over CV) 
• Persistence compounds, every failure gets you one step closer

Freelancers deserve independence, freedom, and tools that work for them. Not being reliant on a few big players that extract value, waste time, or flood them with junk.

A huge thanks to everyone who backed us early, challenged us, and believed in us.

We’re excited to continue to push the frontier of applied AI in helping freelancers globally with their independence, success and freedom. 🚀

Full details in comments below.

🚨 Free 60-min Session | Funding Options for Growth

Raising funds but not sure which route makes the most sense right now?

Join me (FounderCatalyst) and the awesome Ciaran Burke from Swoop for a high-impact session on how grants, growth-friendly debt, and equity investment can support your next stage of growth.

You’ll learn:
 ✔️ Which option fits your business right now
 ✔️ Key pros/cons of grants vs debt vs equity
 ✔️ What to prepare before you raise
 ✔️ Live Q&A

👉 Save your spot: https://lnkd.in/eWtmeerh

#Fundraising #StartupFunding #Grants #DebtFinance

🚨 Less than 1 week to go!

If you’re planning to offer equity, make sure your option scheme is set up properly from day one. I’m running a practical session on EMI and unapproved option schemes, with clear steps and real-world guidance.

Join us for:
✔️ Scheme setup
✔️ EMI valuations
✔️ Vesting design
✔️ Compliance essentials
✔️ Live Q&A
👉 Save your place: https://lnkd.in/e3bYKA5H

#EquityIncentives #EMI #StartupEquity #FounderCatalyst #EmployeeOptions

Teaching High Growth Potential Companies How to Raise Millions | Founder of FundingHero | Author of The Startup Fundraising MBA | x2 High Growth Exits | 20 Acquisitions | Millions Raised  

I don’t just teach founders how to raise investment — I show them how to raise to scale up to exit and make Angels or VCs desperate to invest in you! 

As a former CFO with two back-to-back exits for hundreds of millions, I’ve got the scars, the spreadsheets, and the “why is this so hard?” moments to prove it.

Now I spend my time helping ambitious, early-stage companies and spin-outs avoid the most common (and most expensive) fundraising mistakes. Whether it’s building a financial story investors actually understand, figuring out how much to raise without sweating buckets, or just finding where to start, I’m here for the reality check people need to make you investable, not just the nice fluffy words and back slapping.

🧠 I wrote The Startup Fundraising MBA to share the practical, no-fluff, simple to follow framework I call The 6 Pillars of Fundraising — a roadmap that’s helped thousands of founders learn how to become investor-ready and raise with confidence.

🚀 I also run FundingHero, our game-changing investment readiness platform that’s demystifying the overwhelming process of raising investment. We license our CPD-accredited e-learning and cohort management tools to incubators and accelerators and our clients into some of the top universities, councils, and growth hubs across the UK, helping them deliver high-impact founder support without burning out their teams. We like to say: less hand-holding, more founder wins to get funded faster.

I work closely with accelerators, enterprise educators, and startup support programmes — because brilliant founders are everywhere and lack quality strategic financial support. They just need the right roadmap.

If you’re an enterprise educator supporting early-stage businesses and need a masterclass or e-learning tool to enhance your support, or if you’re a founder wondering where to start for your first or second major funding round — feel free to connect. No pitch decks required.

Jim Shirley

“Take the leap and do it straight away because it will be life-changing for you.”

Wise words from Scott Garrett  Raising EIS for VitaVoice, Founder of VitaVoice.

For Scott, the real value was learning directly from people who have been there before. Understanding how investors think. How to communicate clearly. And how to approach fundraising with confidence rather than hesitation.

Wishing Scott and the VitaVoice team continued momentum as they take the next steps in their growth journey.

🚀 Cohort 5 is now open

Designed For:
• Companies With A Product In Market And Traction 🎯
• University Spinouts Including Pre-Revenue Teams 🤩
• Raising Angel, VC or Debt £250k to £3m+ 💰
• Companies Who Want CFO Level Support 😎

Only 8 spaces available
Applications close 6 March, kick off 20th March 2026 🚀 🙌🚀

#HealthTech #FounderJourney #FundraisingSupport #MidlandsInnovation

Author ✍️ The Startup Fundraising MBA | Helping Founders Successfully Fundraise & Scale | Founder FundingHero.co.uk

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