SeedLegals announces Future Fund support

The fastest and easiest way to do your Future Fund application

Companies applying for UK government Future Fund match-funding can now use SeedLegals to get their company investment-ready, complete all the necessary pre-application checks and approvals, and get their application into the Future Fund queue immediately and cost-effectively.

The UK government has done an excellent job, in a short amount of time, to design and implement a slick online application process for Future Fund investment.

But, the government portal is only a part of the full process, with companies still needing to obtain shareholder approvals and investor consents, get board approvals, do KYC/AML checks on their investors, and more. And that’s after working out if the company qualifies, finds matching investors, explains the deal terms to them, and gets them on board.

SeedLegals has at short notice enhanced its legal funding automation platform to support all these provisions, and more.

SeedLegals also solves another key problem for companies looking for Future Fund investment, which is that the government has created a workflow that requires the lead investor to do the application. That is going to surprise most companies, many will not have a suitable ‘lead’ investor who is able to do this. Plus these days it’s companies who lead on funding rounds, not investors, the concept of asking an investor to do this is alien to both the company and the investor.

So, SeedLegals has created an alternate workflow that allows the company to lead on each of the steps, then designate an investor as a lead investor and provide them with a single application checklist ready for them to copy and paste into the Future Fund portal. This alone can save a company weeks of delay trying to have an investor sort those details themselves.

Separately, an additional Future Fund requirement is that an SRA-regulated law firm acts for the investors, and also holds the investor and the Future Fund money until the documentation is completed and all investor funds have been received. SeedLegals has partnered with leading law firms to provide this part of the service, giving companies a seamless, integrated, end-to-end Future Fund application process.

Thanks to SeedLegals’ online platform, SeedLegals support team and partner law firm lawyers are able to log in to check the application details in real time. And of course everything can be e-signed by investors from home, even from their phones.

SeedLegals is providing the entire application process for a fixed fee of

• £3000 for investments up to £300K
• £4000 for investments of £300K to £1M
• £5000 for investments of £1M to £5M

All amounts exclude VAT, and the investments include both the investor and Future Fund amounts.

When Future Fund was announced we were the first to point out its shortcomings, the reality is that without support for SEIS/EIS investment, along with the £250K existing investment requirement, it’s going to be something that only around 25% of early-stage startups will be able to take advantage of. But for those, our goal is to be the fastest, most reliable and most cost effective way for them to get that government match-funding. Plus, by using SeedLegals, when that convertible loan is ready to convert in a subsequent funding round, everything will be beautifully set up, giving the company a big head-start on their next round.

To apply to Future Fund, sign up on SeedLegals, create your company, then click to create a Future Fund application. The wizard will take you through each step, with the SeedLegals support team available on web chat and Zoom to help every step of the way.