Salam all! This is the master thread for all startup and venture capital related investments!
Post anything in here that has to do with investing in young, high growth technology companies.
As you guys know, at Islamic Finance Guru we also run IFG.VC - an angel syndicate where we invest into startups. You can find out more on our Halal investment comparison tool.
A great place to start is to have a look at our startup section on IFG where you can read on startup investments: https://www.islamicfinanceguru.com/topics/startups/
Did you know that Muslim Entrepreneurs are almost 50% underrepresented amongst UK startups?
This was an initial study we conducted when we launched IFG.VC where we reviewed close to 1000 recent funding deals. It lays at the core of our mission to encourage more Muslim and BME founders to get into entrepreneurship and build the next billion dollar companies. This was the data we needed to back our claims, and we’ve never looked back since.
80% of our portfolio companies at IFG.VC come from BME backgrounds without us losing out on the quality of the startup. It also shows when you have a diverse investor group, naturally the companies we invest in will also come from diverse backgrounds - and that matters. The best startup companies are the outliers, not the mainstream.
The UK has one of the most active startup ecosystems!
There’s around 170 venture capital firms deploying roughly £6 billion every year into startups.
And it’s paid of as well. The UK has 25 ‘unicorns’ (private businesses valued at over $1 billion). That’s the highest in Europe, and third highest in the world (just behind the US and China)!
London is known as a startup ‘hub’, but the rest of the country is also very active. Notably Manchester, Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford.
@Maltalib you should share your own personal story on here in the startup world. Think it’ll be fascinating for folks to hear about your journey revolutionising the Malawi farming industry of all things, then the Barclays accelerator and then IFG zindabad lol.
