A novel way to invest in small businesses

If you’re keen to bypass the traditional financial industry, you are increasingly spoilt for choice. The latest entrant to the market aims to raise money for start-ups. Merryn Somerset Webb examines whether you should get involved.

If you're keen to find ways to bypass the traditional financial industry with your money, you are increasingly spoilt for choice. We've written here many times about the various websites you can use to exchange currency (CurrencyFair.com), take out personal loans and save money (Zopa.com) and lend to small businesses (Thincats.com). But the latest entrant to the market takes things a little further.

Seedrs.com, which launched this month, is designed to raise money via ordinary investors for start-ups. Entrepreneurs stick a pitch up on the site. Investors then browse for the ones they think are interesting and invest anything from £10. If the start-up gets pledges for all the money it thinks it needs, Seedrs will do the due diligence on the firm, buy the shares on behalf of the investors and then act as middleman while everyone waits for the firm to be sold, pay a dividend or go bust.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.