Investment process

Investment criteria

The Cass Entrepreneurship Fund is looking for highly talented management teams with a clear vision for their business and the drive to meet the challenges of early-stage business development.

Initial investments range from £50,000 to £500,000, depending on the stage of the development, structure and financing requirement of the investee company.  The Fund may act as a sole investor or as a co-investor with other institutions, funds or private angel investors.  A level of funds will be retained for follow-on funding, which will be considered on a case by case basis.

Backing entrepreneurs from the beginning of their journey

The Fund will consider investment opportunities for both start-up and early stage companies including:

The Fund has a services sector focus, but portfolio companies may operate across a broad range of sub-sectors including financial, business, technology and support services.  The businesses that the Fund backs are headquarted in the UK.

Investment Process

The Fund has a small, adaptable investment team and are not bound by some of the bureaucracy you may find with more institutional funders.

Submit an application form to us, or simply send us a business plan which covers these questions, and we will take the discussions forward from there.

There is a formal investment process and you should expect a level of commercial and financial due diligence as well as standard legal documentation.  We do, however, approach this in a way which is thorough but cost-effective for investments of this nature.

Once an investment has been finalised we look for a close relationship with the investee company and will appoint a non-executive director and/or an observer to the Board. The investee company will be expected to provide monthly commercial and financial updates to the Investment Team, and to implement a formal board structure if one is not already in place.

Completed applications should be sent to pcce@city.ac.uk