IUK Investment Accelerator Partnership

Rainbow Seed Fund and the Innovate UK Investment Accelerator

Rainbow is delighted to be a partner in the Innovate UK (IUK) Investment  Accelerator £8.5 million pilot which will fund feasibility studies in health and life sciences or infrastructure systems.

The Accelerator programme will provide an IUK grant and a venture capital investment simultaneously, of up to £150,000. The Accelerator timeline is:

  • The competition opens on 8 May 2017
  • Companies need to register before midday on 28 June 2017
  • Companies must apply before midday on 5 July 2017

The programme is open to companies which meet the criteria for both the IUK Accelerator and Rainbow Seed Fund’s investment criteria (this includes existing RSF portfolio companies):

  1. The criteria for the IUK Accelerator in health and life sciences or infrastructure systems are listed on the IUK website and summarised briefly at the foot of this page.
  1. Rainbow’s investment criteria are:
  • Projects and companies arise from world-class research carried out in our partner laboratories across the UK, including those at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (STFC), Babraham Institute (BBSRC) and Porton Down (Dstl).

OR

OR

  • UK companies engineering biology to heal us, feed us or fuel us and applying engineering and computer science principles to build new biological systems or redesign existing, natural biological systems.

We welcome qualifying companies to   for an initial discussion. You should do this well before the deadline for submitting your application. You can also contact the other investors in the programme who may have different investment criteria.

  • If we think there is likely to be a good fit with Rainbow Seed Fund, we will want to meet you and learn more about the project you would like funded. You might start writing your IUK submission in parallel. You do not have to be a fully formed company at this stage.
  • The Rainbow team will ask a lot of questions and want to understand more about your business from a technical and commercial perspective (and we will give you feedback).
  • If at the end of this stage, if you (including your team and any other shareholders) and Rainbow are mutually positive about the opportunity, you can apply to the IUK pilot (deadline 5th July; see IUK website for a comprehensive timeline) choosing Rainbow (and only Rainbow) as your preferred investor.
  • We will then work with you to agree the detailed terms of how we will invest the matching funds to support the project alongside an IUK grant.
  • If you meet the IUK quality threshold in their assessment process we will agree the detailed terms of how we invest the matching funds and any due diligence we need to conclude an investment: a limited company will need to exist at this point.
  • Rainbow is able to invest further funds after the project has concluded.

The key features of the Innovate UK Investment Accelerator are:

  • SME business-led applications
  • Single company only
  • Project duration of 3 to 12 months
  • The maximum project size is £150k
  • Grant funding proportion up to 70% of total eligible project costs for micro or small companies, 60% for a medium-sized company (those that employ less than 250 staff).

In each case the remaining match funding must be agreed with Rainbow or one of the listed investor partners and be new investment – i.e. additional to any existing match funding capability

Please contact us   for an initial discussion, ideally along with a two paragraph non-confidential summary of what you want the funding for and how you believe your plans fit into Rainbow’s investment criteria.