Encore, a booking platform for musicians, has raised slightly over £560,000 in Seed funding from Entrepreneur First and a series of angel investors.
Andrew J Scott, founding partner of 7percent Ventures and an investor in Magic Pony; Andrew Gault, an investor in Oculus VR; John Taysom, an early investor in Yahoo; and Charlie Songhurst, formerly head of corporate strategy at Microsoft all invested in the round.
A graduate of pre-seed investment programme and investor Entrepreneur First, Encore also drew support from Harry Briggs, a partner at BGF Ventures and Andy Phillipps, the co-founder of ActiveHotels (sold to Priceline).
James McAulay, co-founder and CEO, spoke to Tech City News about the difficulties he faced when trying to raise the funds.
“Unfortunately, Brexit happened exactly halfway through our fundraising campaign, and within three days of the result I had received emails from two investors who had suddenly gone cold and decided not to invest.
“At one point, we were advised to stop raising midway through the round (in July) and simply close £250,000, but I was determined to hit our target. I am so glad we persevered,” he said.
McAulay explained that the prime motivation behind the fundraise was the desire to grow Encore’s team.
He commented: “We have a clear vision of what we want to achieve with Encore, and this investment enables us to further develop the Encore website and mobile apps. We have plenty of improvements on the horizon designed to make booking musicians easier than ever before, and to help our musicians make more money doing what they love.
“We want to bring live music to as many private events as possible, and this investment will help us spread the word about the magic and simplicity of our bookings service,” said McAulay.
This round of funding brings the startups’ total amount raised to just under $1m.