Growth Capital
Equity finance provided by the Maven VCTs can help ambitious, earlier stage companies to accelerate growth and fulfil their future potential. Maven is a generalist investor and can support businesses active across a wide range of sectors including software, telecoms, manufacturing, technology, life sciences and healthcare.
Helping ambitious and innovative businesses to grow
As long term investors in growth companies, you will have the confidence knowing that you are working with an established private equity firm with a long term track record of supporting growth in the UK SME sector.
How we support your business
Active and ongoing support
Taking the decision to invest in your business is only the start of our journey of working together. Every one of our portfolio companies benefit from being able to call on our support and guidance as and when they require it.
Strategic Expertise
Many younger companies face similar challenges, such as how to scale their sales and marketing, optimise recruitment, raise further finance or enter new geographies and markets. Our investment and portfolio executives have first-hand experience in supporting and guiding our investee companies through these familiar challenges.
Long term outlook
We support growth and value creation in entrepreneurial companies, and we also understand that it can take time and several rounds of finance to optimise shareholder value. We can invest from late Seed stage to Series A and Series B and can continue to invest further capital as your business grows.
Flexible finance
We manage a diverse range of funds and can use a combination of these alongside bank debt and also we also have the ability to work with other investors. This comprehensive offering and degree of flexibility gives us the ability to structure a financial package that can maximise growth within your business.
Some of our growth investments


£2.5 million
Transaction size
With visits to the Bright Network platform doubling year on year and a trusted track record of proven ROI for 250+ top employers, we’re modernising the graduate recruitment industry. We’re very excited to bring the experience and expertise of Maven on board at this crucial stage to help us grow.
James Uffindell, CEO at Bright Network


£2 million
Transaction size
Maven’s investment in Guru Systems enables us to grow our team, accelerate our revenue growth and capitalise on the significant growth of low carbon heating in the UK and beyond. Our technology supports the digitalisation and decarbonisation of heat, allowing our clients to make their energy systems more transparent, lower cost and lower carbon.
Casey Cole, CEO at Guru


£2.5 million
Transaction size
This investment from Maven is a key milestone for us. Having proved our platform’s scalability, artificial intelligence and machine learning technology across a number of leading Tier-1 Mobile Operators in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, this funding will support our growth into other vertical markets.
Steve Preston, CEO at Cardinality


£3.25 million
Transaction size
Over the past two years, we’ve made huge leaps in our mission to be one of the leaders in web-based archiving and this funding milestone is central in supporting the next phase of our journey. This investment secures the next stage of our evolution and the team is truly proud of what we’ve achieved and where our vision will take us.
David Clee, CEO at MirrorWeb

£6.5 million
Transaction size
There is a vast amount of invaluable evidence, which is hard to access and is subsequently unused by companies working on new therapeutics. Our mission at Biorelate is to capture this untapped data and help them make sense of it. With this improved understanding we are empowering these companies to make better decisions and speed up the drug discovery process.
Dr Daniel Jamieson, founder and CEO of BioRelate


£5 million
Transaction size
This funding will enable us to build out our sales and marketing capabilities and accelerate expansion with a presence in the US which is a huge potential market for us. We will also continue scaling what we have already built with further product development and innovation – we have a clearly defined target market and products with the functionality to meet a very real business need.
Tom Dunlop, Co-founder and CEO at Summize


£2.5 million
Transaction size
Since our inception we have had backing from a number of small-medium sized investors, but this is the largest external investment we have ever had. Fundraising to this scale will have a significant impact on what we do next, enabling us to expand into new territories, support more organisations to make a real difference and invest heavily in our technology platform to ensure we’re always at the forefront of what we do.
Tony Wines, Turnkey CEO and Founder of Turnkey


£2.85 million
Transaction size
We are thrilled to announce this additional funding for Plyable and to be partnering with a highly experienced investment firm such as Maven as we start our next chapter of growth. We are excited to deploy the capital to the company’s ongoing technological development and expansion of our ecosystem, particularly in Europe and North America.
Martin Oughton, CEO at Plyable
Growth Capital criteria

Funding Requirement
We can invest from £1 million to £6 million in dynamic and innovative growth focused smaller UK companies.
.png?width=447&height=448&name=graph%20(1).png)
Stage of development
We support companies with annual revenues of at least £1 million and which are growing quickly. Typically each portfolio company will be under 10 years of age and will meet the eligibility criteria for VCT investment.

Management
We back strong and ambitious management teams with a clear growth strategy and aspirations to grow shareholder value.

Location
We prefer to invest in UK domiciled businesses.

Momentum
We target investment in companies which can demonstrate revenue traction in their market, evidenced by key growth metrics such as an expanding client base, progression in recurring revenues and new product development.

Sectors
We support businesses across many varied sectors, including software, telecoms, specialist manufacturing, technology, life sciences and healthcare.
Frequently asked questions
What is growth capital?
Growth capital is quite simply used to accelerate growth. It sits at the intersection of seed / earlier stage finance and private equity, providing an equity based funding solution for high potential businesses that want to accelerate their growth without giving up control.
Which type of company is growth capital suitable for?
It is principally aimed at businesses that are growing quickly but may not yet be profitable or able to attract conventional bank debt.
What is the finance used for?
Growth capital can be used to expand operations, hire new senior people, develop proprietary technology, accelerate operational improvements, or help access new markets.
How does growth capital differ from earlier rounds of funding?
Many fledgling or emerging businesses follow a similar route when fundraising, relying at the outset on friends and family for initial financial support before progressing to high net worth individuals or angel investors for seed funding. The process of fundraising changes markedly once a business reaches Series A financing and looks to secure its first institutional investment from an investor such as Maven.
What does an investor look for in a business seeking growth capital?
There are a number of characteristics any potential funder will look for when assessing a growth capital investment opportunity. These include:
- A strong management team
Growth can seem like both a marathon and a sprint at times, and any business was growing rapidly is likely to face various challenges or growing pains. Investors will seek to back people that display hunger, drive, innovation and resilience under pressure. - Differentiated Product
If you have a product or service already in the marketplace and have been able to attract a core group of early customers on limited start-up capital that is a key positive indicator for an investor. Alternatively, if you’re looking to develop a new product or strategy you need to demonstrate how it does things better than the competition, and that you understand any barriers to entry and how you will displace existing market players and create a defensible source of revenues. - Market opportunity
To be attractive to investors your business will usually operate in/or target a very large addressable market with high potential for sales growth, and where a product or service based competitive advantage can be developed. - Strong Business and Revenue Models
An investor will want to get a good understanding that a company can demonstrate revenue traction in their market, evidenced by key growth metrics. They may not always expect the business to be the finished article, but rather that it has the potential for high growth through a clear and credible business strategy. - Realistic growth plan and funding requirement
A credible plan which demonstrates an understanding of the market and how growth will be achieved. Investors will scrutinise pipeline information, key metrics and analyse the company’s competitive positioning to determine the likelihood of the plan being delivered. - Exit opportunity
At the outset of a new partnership an investor will want reasonable visibility that there will be exit options for all stakeholders when a decision is taken to sell. That means understanding whether the business will have strategic value to an acquirer and offer continuing growth potential beyond our investment horizon.
Why partner with Maven
As entrepreneurs ourselves, having developed and grown our own business, we understand what it takes to increase and ultimately realise shareholder value. We have backed hundreds of management teams, helping them achieve positive outcomes.