I'm thrilled to announce we've raised a $4.2m seed, led by Project A Ventures, with participation from Moonfire Ventures, helloworld.vc and a group of legendary angels including Matt Clifford (EF, Chairman, Advanced Research and Invention Agency), Errol Damelin (co-founder, Wonga), Ian Hogarth (ex-CEO, SongKick), Harry Briggs (Partner, OMERS Ventures) and follow-on investors Ben Holmes (ex-Index Ventures) and TrueSight Ventures.
Now, you're probably asking yourself questions like...
"Why would this really smart group of people back Claimer?"
"What's the 'big play' here?"
Technological innovation will help save the world
This might sound like i've been drinking too much Elon Musk flavoured kool-aid, but it's true. Bear with me.
Advancements in technology have made the human experience astronomically better since the industrial revolution.
But the world is up against massive global challenges this century, and the research & development required to develop technology to push us forward is risky, expensive, and takes time to work out.
Venture capital has been a big financier of technological innovation in recent decades, but this isn't enough. VC needs to make a return, so much of it has a low risk tolerance to unproven technology.
But government incentives, to the tune of $1tn globally, actually rewards these risky bets whether they make a return or not. That's more than all the venture capital deployed in the U.S. and Europe combined.
Government incentives are amazing, but very broken
The way they're setup and utilised is deeply fragmented and complex.
As a result, whole unregulated industries of accountants and consultants has spawned to capitalise on this complexity, aggressively competing with each other to advise businesses on how to identify and apply for the incentives they're eligible for.
Being unregulated, accountants and consultants vary wildly in their competency, are hugely inefficient, and charge eye-watering fees.
It's total madness, and an unnecessary overhead for the world's innovators.
An example: the problem with UK R&D tax relief
The economics just don't make sense to have a service that's easy, reliable, and inexpensive.
❌ Ease: claims require a great deal of specific information. This means tons of back and forth with calls, spreadsheets, and Word templates. There are a few mostly DIY platforms that exist, but these still require hours of data entry.
❌ Reliability: the majority of accountants and R&D specialists lack the necessary technical and tax specialisation to produce correct R&D claims, inadvertently leaving their startups and scaleup clients exposed to penalties and and drawn-out enquiries down the line, a significant risk from this year.
❌ Expense: The few specialists that can produce correct R&D claims need to employ expensive tax specialists and experienced engineers to produce claims, so must charge high fees.
Enter Claimer
Our vision is bold: to accelerate innovation globally by reinventing access to government incentives.
Starting with R&D tax credits in the UK, Claimer is making the experience 10x easier, more reliable, and less expensive.
Are you organising the R&D claim for your company? Claimer needs just 10 minutes of your time, with zero data entry. It's a game changer.
To date we've maximised the claims of 350+ venture scale startups like Nested, Otta, Hubble, and Unmind. £millions person-hours and fees saved. And that's with zero claim rejections or reductions.
But how?
Ironically this is only made possible by the R&D work our talented team has done over more than a year.
Our technology leverages a company's internal and cloud data to hugely reduce data entry and back and forth. The same tech also helps ensure our in-house expert team only does valuable work.
But we've only just got started.
This funding will support our growth in the UK market, and in the near future, other markets.
In the long term, Claimer will unblock the flow of billions of dollars of capital from government schemes into the bank accounts of startups and scaleups - the companies building our future - giving them predictable, fast, and reliable access to much-needed funding.
Extending a big thank you to all of our supporters, customers, investors, partners, and evangelists. You know who you are. 🙌
Exciting times ahead!
If you'd like to stay up to date with the latest government incentives news and developments, plus how Claimer is making them more accessible for startups and scaleups, drop your email below!👇
P.S. If our mission resonates, and you think you can help us, please reach out!
