Oxford Early Investments: Current Investment Opportunities

Founded by a highly experienced team, Company A is an Enterprise Software Product Company, looking to raise £120K for 20% in the business, and expecting to return its investors 30 to 40 times their money back within 5 Years.

What makes our product unique? Targeted at Government Bodies and Global Companies, it is the only Product specifically designed to analyse the impact of business changes onto their underlying their IT landscape.

Why is this important? Because for those complex organizations, most key processes are now wrapped up in IT assets, so much so that their systems have literally BECOME their business. As a result, any business change programme such as for instance, integrating a merger or a complying with new regulations, profoundly affects IT.

NOW, understanding WHAT needs to change in IT, in order to execute a change in the business, can take months of people’s time—in situations that are often time critical—incurring costs of millions of pounds and exposing the business to unacceptable levels of distraction and risk.

What our Software does? It helps producing the required strategic answers in hours rather than months.

Our product will sell at £100K per Enterprise License. We are looking to generate £15M of revenue in Y5 with 35% of PBT.

Our Go-To-Market model is mainly based on channels, involving a close collaboration with Systems Integrators and major consultancies, as well as viral spread. In Y5 we expect AEL to be valued in the region of £40M and to be an attractive acquisition for a large number of Enterprise Software vendors.

Company B has developed the first zero emission biomass boiler capable of producing high quality steam for industrial use. The process uses sugar as a fuel and is driven by our patent pending process, which results in the net absorption of CO2. The process generates 5 separate revenue streams –carbon as coke, electricity, Renewable Obligation Certificates, water and carbon credits

A one million ton (fuel) per annum facility the size of a large house, would generate 46 gigawatt hours of electricity and offset 1% of the UK’s carbon footprint, guaranteeing a leading place for the UK in tackling climate change as we export the technology. Our business model estimates a profit across the revenue streams of £80/ton of sugar processed. An initial £75k seed money was used to successfully develop the first prototype and provided proof of principle validated by Oxford University. With this prototype we overcame the primary challenges of containment and control.

The design work for the second generation prototype has been completed and we are currently looking to raise £125K for construction and testing of this prototype. A further £75K is required for expanding the team to manage the business and the construction of the commercial facility.

Company C is a high growth medical device/biotechnology company using hyaluronic acid (HA) technology to develop several new products in key markets including: reproductive health, dermal fillers, urology, wound care and women’s health.

The company is focussed on getting their first 2 products (personal lubricants) to market while developing a new crosslinking technology to create a “product pipeline”. The patent pending formulas have demonstrated positive clinical trials in fertility and womens health giving Company C an advantage over competing products in head to head trials. Besides have product ready to hit the market Company C has recently received a SMART grant in Scotland for their patent pending new crosslinking technology. This has a wide area of medical benefits of which Company C has already signed a co-development deal with a major European medical company for a new wrinkle filler.

The company is looking for a second round of investment to take their products onto the market immediately which has received positive customer feedback including a letter of intent from Boots. Company C’s management team is internationally recognized including CEO who is listed as a global industry leader and expert by the "Society of Industry Leaders" which is part of the Standard and Poors Index of New York.

Company A's intra-nasal device is a single use drug delivery device. It is particularly suitable for drugs that cannot be administered orally. Advantages include dose accuracy, pain-free administration, easy self-administration, low production cost, no requirement for refrigeration and the avoidance of cross infection from needle-stick injury.

There is an experienced management team and an established technical team including engineers, pharmacist, chemical analyst and a biophysicist. Advisory contacts have been formed with business, academia and specialist technical consultancies.

It is intended to move quickly to prove the technical and commercial value of the technology for drug delivery and to focus on routes to early revenues. The company will continue to operate as a near-virtual organisation during the next 18-months. Following successful technical validation the subsequent development phase will be a three-year commercial validation programme.

• The only third generation nasal delivery device (non-topical / absorbed into bloodstream)
• Compact, easy to use, without the need for patient coordination
• First patents granted in UK, USA and Europe / Second patent submitted
• £785k sought from private investors and grants for technical validation
• Income expected from co-development deals from year 3
• Exit by trade sale envisaged year 5/6 with a value in region of £18m, a 13x multiple.
• A lead investor who has undertaken due diligence
• A prospect of matching Regional Development Agency funding

In the last three years Corporate clients such as Thales, British Airways, Haymarket Publishing Group, British American Tobacco and GCPD (a large government organisation) have all been Company E's clients for whom they have implemented customised collaboration tools (3rd party). We've understood client needs and opportunities for improving offerings to this burgeoning sector. Companies always want custom solutions and the current crop of tools are not easy to customise. With the company's background in developing and marketing new technology they’ve built their own platform which will make customisation much easier and with a much reduced cost of ownership.

Product A is currently on trial with 2 clients (Oxford Innovation and Thales). Version 1.0 is due for commercial release in April 2009.

In terms of market opportunity Forrester Research have predicted a global enterprise market of $4.6 billion by 2013 for collaborative software technologies. Product A will address this market and also extend the market to SMEs and smaller organisations who need to collaborate either internally or with their stakeholders.

Funding for the trials has come from a Commercialise Fund Loan of £60K (administered by Finance South East). Funding is now required for on-going product development and for a major sales and marketing push to capitalize on the V1.0 launch. Revenue by end of FY2011/12 is projected at £4m and an exit via a trade sale in 2013 is envisaged.