In case you missed it: November 2023

Catch up on the latest news from SeedLegals. This month, we’ve launched our new service for investors: with Syndicate, it’s easy for a group to invest in companies raising on SeedLegals. We’ve also made SeedLegals Flex easier to buy, prepared our R&D tax credits service for when the schemes merge, announced who’s judging the Startup Awards, and more.

Read on to find out more about these updates and what’s coming soon.

Contents

🆕 What’s new

• We’ve updated our T&Cs
• Find out who’s judging the SeedLegals Awards and buy your ticket now
• We’re ready for the R&D tax credit schemes to merge
• Specify that a SeedFAST can convert in a Rollup
• Fundraising is more flexible and affordable
• Invest as a group with SeedLegals Syndicate
• France: Create a Terms of Use policy

🔜 Coming soon

• Re-use the terms from a previous SeedFAST
• Take investment in any currency

📣 Have your say

🆕 What’s new

We’ve updated our T&Cs

We’ve recently launched our new services Rollup and Syndicate so we’ve updated our UK Terms of Service to include these.

Find out who’s judging the SeedLegals Awards and buy your ticket now

This month you’ve been submitting nominations for the first-ever SeedLegals Startup Awards. Our inbox has been in meltdown with over 1,000 nominations across the 16 awards categories – our judges will be kept busy in the next few months! In fact, we’ve just announced our judging panel of respected leaders in the UK startup ecosystem:

• Perdie Alder, Co-Founder and CCO, Hotbed
• Roderick Beer, Managing Director, UK Business Angels Association
• Marc Cohen, Sole Partner, Unbundled VC
• Margaret Anne Coyle, Co-Founder and CEO, Hotbed
• Anna Gordon, Senior Business Development Manager, UKI Partnerships and Hubspot for Startups
• Molly Johnson-Jones, CEO and Co-Founder, Flexa
• Hannah Seal, Partner, Index Ventures
• Kofi Siaw, Vice President, HSBC Innovation Banking
• Olivia Sibony, Co-Founder, Impact Amplified
• Reshma Sohoni, Founder Partner, SeedCamp
• Fred Sonaya, Co-Founder and Partner, Haatch
• Hugo Tilmouth, CEO, ChargedUp

The Awards recognise the outstanding contributions of founders, startups and investors who drive entrepreneurship in the UK. The event is sponsored by HSBC, with support from Innovation Broking, SMB and more.

Want to join in? The awards evening takes place on 22 February 2024 at Battersea Arts Centre, London and is open to all. To sign up for what promises to be a lively evening of networking and celebrating, book a ticket now for just £70.

We’re ready for the R&D tax credit schemes to merge

In the Autumn Statement, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt confirmed that the proposed changes to the R&D tax credits schemes would go ahead. Our team has been working behind the scenes to be ready for the changes.

Quick summary: the RDEC and SME R&D tax credits schemes will merge to create one new scheme for all companies, regardless of size. Under the new scheme, the tax credit loss-making companies receive will be taxed at 19% rather than the corporation tax main rate of 25%.

Wondering if your company is eligible for R&D tax credits? Or ready to make a claim? Book a free call with our experts.

Specify that a SeedFAST can convert in a Rollup

When you create a SeedFAST, you’ll now see the option to include wording that says your company intends that the SeedFAST will convert in a Rollup in your funding round.

Why is this helpful? Rollups allow you to combine multiple investors in one entry on your cap table, to streamline comms and speed up gaining shareholder approval. When you add the Rollup wording to a SeedFAST, your investor knows the SeedFAST will convert in a Rollup in your round, rather than you having to negotiate it with them later.

Of course, your investor can opt not to be in a rollup. Just like any of the terms in your agreement, you’ll need to discuss it with them.

It doesn’t cost anything to add Rollup to a SeedFAST, you’ll only pay for our Rollup service when you do your funding round.

Fundraising is more flexible and affordable

We recently launched SeedLegals Flex to help simplify your fundraising costs even more 🥳

With Flex, you can create an unlimited number of SeedFASTs, funding rounds and Instant Investment top-ups for one fixed fee that’s calculated based on our lowest rate for the entire amount raised. You then have 18 months to use your Flex credits to raise any way you like.

Find out how Flex works in our post: SeedLegals Flex: raise an unlimited number of investments for one fixed price

You can now buy Flex easily on SeedLegals – just register or log in to get started.

Invest as a group with SeedLegals Syndicate

With the new SeedLegals Syndicate service, groups of angel investors can invest together in companies fundraising on SeedLegals.

Lead investors can use SeedLegals Syndicate to generate and share the legal documents to create a syndicate before they invest together in a startup on SeedLegals. There’s no need to go through the costly process of creating an SPV (special purpose vehicle) for the deal, a syndicate can invest as a group using the SeedLegals nominee company.

For lead investors and their syndicate members, the entire process of investing is much faster and far more straightforward with SeedLegals Syndicate. If you have potential investors thinking about bringing in other investors, make sure you let them know.

France: Create a Terms of Use policy

SeedLegals members in France can now create a Terms of Use policy, known as conditions générales de vente (CGV) and conditions générales d’utilisation (CGU).

The CGV-CGU document sets out the terms and conditions for the sale of your products and/or services, such as price, shipping, guarantees, return and exchange, for the use of your website.

It takes just a few minutes to create this policy for your company:

• log in then go to Policies
• click Document: Conditions générales de vente et d’utilisation
• answer the questions et voilà

🔜 Coming soon

As usual, our team is hard at work on many different projects. Here’s a snippet of what’s coming soon:

Re-use the terms from a previous SeedFAST

When you create a SeedFAST (or in France, a BSAir), wouldn’t it be handy if you could recycle the terms you used on a previous SeedFAST you created? Soon that will be possible, saving you even more time when you take a one-off investment.

You’ll be able to re-use the terms from a previous SeedFAST agreement, and then edit them as required for the new investment.

Take investment in any currency

Soon, SeedLegals users in the UK will be able to take investments in any currency using any of our funding services. We’ll calculate the equivalent investment amount in pounds (GBP) and determine the exact number of shares to issue according to whichever currency your investor pays in.

📣 Have your say

Got an idea for us? Is there something we can do better? We love to hear your feedback – good, bad and ugly. Let us know by email: [email protected]

If you aren’t already a SeedLegals member, head over to our Pricing page to find the right membership for your company.