Peek Home, the preferred online home design startup by ‘Love It or List It’, attracts £370,000 of investment from Northstar Ventures and Angels. Roland and Jaemi Glancy, a married couple from Cullercoats, first started helping their friends to visualise the potential for their homes with sketch designs and 3D models in their evenings and weekends. Word spread quickly through their children’s school WhatsApp group and what started as a hobby quickly became a successful business, Peek Home has now secured investment to accelerate their growth and continue innovating in the home design space. Pee ..read more

onHand, the employee volunteering & sustainability platform, has announced a pre-series A funding round of £3.25M to help companies everywhere do more good. Led by 24Haymarket, the round is backed by the North East Innovation Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund which is managed by Northstar Ventures, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and a number of impact investors including Shazam co-founder, Dhiraj Mukherjee. Named ‘Uber for volunteering’ by IBM, onHand helps engage employees with on-demand social impact and sustainability initiatives, with tracked CO2e reduc ..read more

Serial entrepreneur Kevin Beales has launched his latest tech business in the North East, MySalesCoach. MySalesCoach, the first company to offer virtual access to expert one to one sales coaching to sales teams as a subscription service, has secured investment of over half a million pounds shortly after launching. With £250,000 from the North East Innovation Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund and managed by Northstar Ventures, and additional funding from Angel investors including prominent and tech company CEOs, the funding will support MySalesCoach to scale up and expan ..read more

BelleVie Care, an innovative home care provider working to modernise and improve adult home care across the North East, is proud to announce that it has received £2.1m in seed and grant funding from a group of ambitious, purpose-led investors who share its mission. BelleVie’s Wellbeing Support Teams provide high-quality, award-winning care across Hexham, Prudhoe, Blyth, Cramlington and Morpeth, with the startup company expanding its operations across the rest of Northumberland and into Tyne-and-wear. The £1.6mn seed funding round, led by Skagen Conscience Capital, will enable the company to sc ..read more

On Thursday 17 November, Northstar Ventures, in partnership with Northern Accelerator, a collaboration between the North East’s universities, hosted a breakfast event in London to showcase the next decade’s £30 billion of investable opportunities in the North East of England. Working alongside NewcastleGateshead Initiative (NGI) and key players, this event provided the opportunity for the region to profile its strengths collectively, in a bid to secure private sector investment. Held at Aviva’s London Head Office, regional stakeholders, leading industry figures, and universities gathered to sh ..read more

VRAI, a Gateshead-based company that creates data driven VR simulation training, has secured £3 million in funding. Led by Northstar Ventures, this latest investment includes funding from the North East Innovation Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund. The investment will see the company bring its data driven VR simulation technology to the offshore wind industry, to boost jobs in the region, and to grow its existing business in aerospace, defence and security. VRAI also has a big focus on research and development, with strong links with Durham University’s Energy Institut ..read more

Biotech disrupter CellRev, which aims to revolutionise the way cells are grown, has raised a further £1.75million from a group of investors, to accelerate research & development and strengthen their commercial team as they prepare to take their bioreactor technologies to market. This funding follows a seed investment of £1.2m in January 2021, which involved the North East Innovation Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and the Northern Accelerator Seed Investment Fund (NASIF), both managed by Northstar Ventures. Leo Groenewegen CEO of CellRev said: “I am d ..read more

xbim, a leading Newcastle based tech business, has secured £500,000 from the North East Innovation Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and managed by Northstar Ventures. Although xbim was founded in 2016, Director Steve Lockley began the development of the company’s leading product xbim Toolkit in 2012 during a career break after leaving NBS. The xbim Toolkit is the leading Open Source, OpenBIM software library, and provides a framework for developers to create their own BIM (Building Information Modelling) solutions for private and commercial purposes. Used by th ..read more

  Talent exists in all forms whether hard or soft skills, and no matter gender, age, sexual orientation, socio-economic status or ethnicity and we are committed to diversity within our portfolio. As a VC we know our remit is to invest in the most innovative solutions, play an advisory role in scaling each tech company and exit to make a return, but diversity is central to our success. How are we prioritising Gender Diversity? We’ve been good at championing diversity as signatories of Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and Investing in Women Code (IIWC), in our partnership with Fu ..read more

We’re delighted to be partnering with Business Doctors and the North East Satellite Applications Centre of Excellence to run a new free workshop designed to help North East business owners exploit opportunities in the growing UK space sector. Seven out of 10 companies in this £15 billion income UK Space Sector are SMEs and our half day Launch Pad Seminar can help you identify and evaluate any opportunities for growth for your business in this sector. We’ve had a number of businesses take part in the first Launch Pad Seminar. Gary Thompson of Jagdesign took part and said, “When running a busine ..read more