Howard Perkins

Established in 2010 to help match private investors with young entrepreneurial companies looking for early-stage business funding, Equity Gap is an Edinburgh-based business angel syndicate with 150 active members. Equity Gap's current membership includes many captains of industry, business leaders, academics and entrepreneurs from Scotland and beyond, a number of whom are ex-pats or former residents, all eager to support early stage companies in Scotland. Those young entrepreneurial businesses are often pre-revenue, but with a validated product or service that has undergone a pre-investment commercialisation process. Ideally the investment should be eligible for SEIS/EIS advance assurance and preferably the business should be based in Scotland or willing to relocate. Equity Gap typically invests a minimum of £100,000 and maximum of £500,000 at initial or seed investment stage, with additional match funding from Scottish Enterprise. However, it regularly coinvests alongside other business angel syndicates, SE, VCs and the Scottish National Investment Bank to make more sizeable investments into scale-up opportunities across a wide range of sectors in Scotland. Winners of the UKBAA's 'Most Active Investor in the Regions' award in 2019, Equity Gap members have invested in over 40 companies, leveraging more than £125m in total investment into our growing portfolio.