The Enterprise Investment Scheme
Introduced in 1994 by the UK government, the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) is a tax-efficient investment to incentivize investment into smaller UK companies.
It is designed to help smaller, but high-growth potential companies raise capital by offering tax relief to investors who invest in such companies by buying their shares.
This creates a win-win situation both for smaller companies as they can generate finances to fund their growth and investors who can invest up to £1,000,000 per person per year in qualifying companies.
TrendScout – Unicorn Hunters
TrendScout specializes in government initiatives of the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS). We provide valuable and tax-efficient ideas for investors to consider by helping them invest via EIS into nascent tech companies with highly disruptive technology that have the potential to be the next tech unicorn 5 or 10 years down the line.
The London-based firm acts as a conduit for investors, who wish to invest in high-growth start-ups that are technologically minded and focused on high-growth areas such as aviation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and renewable energy, among others.
We are on the cusp of another technological boom. TrendScout continuously hunts for tech startups with exciting technologies that will likely go mainstream in the not-too-distant future and change the world, just like Google, Amazon, and Alibaba did.
We start from a large pool of 50 to 60 companies and then narrow it down to early-stage technology companies with high growth prospects that possess all the potential to be the next text unicorn. We serve as a bridge between investors and companies in their early stages seeking investment in a range of promising and ambitious technologies, including AI, aviation, blockchain, regenerative medicine, machine learning, robotics, augmented reality, etc.
How to catch a Unicorn?
The term Unicorn was coined in 2013 by Aileen Lee, the investor and founder of Cowboy Ventures, and refers to a privately-held company founded in or after 2003 and has a value above $1billion.
Tech unicorns with high market capitalization have received much media coverage in recent times. These IT-based (software mostly, but also hardware) companies have taken the world by storm by fulfilling an unthought-of demand through innovative technology. A whopping 87% of the unicorn products are software, 7% are hardware, and the rest 6% are other products and services.
These tech companies with high market capitalization primarily owe their growth to the precipitous rise of internet-enabled handheld devices like smartphones and tablets and the ease of connectivity they bring. Tech unicorns depend on a strong and favourable business environment and fast expansion to spread their wings. Unicorns can be disruptive for other sectors and firms as they work on the principle of being the first to disrupt and then capture a larger market share through consistency in innovation.
Tech unicorns work because they offer products or services that simplify consumers’ lives. For example, Uber changed the way people book cabs by allowing taxi booking on the tap of a phone, while Airbnb made sharing possible over the internet.
Unicorns primarily rely on venture capitalists or institutional funding to take off. TrendScout brings all its expertise and resources into play to identify ambitious EIS-approved ventures that have the potential to grow on to become larger and highly successful. We invest your money in companies that may not have value today, but we anticipate we possess the potential to revolutionize the world in another decade or so.
Disruptive Technology
Disruptive technology is, by its very nature, unpredictable but we can make an educated guess of the revolutionary technology that is likely to come by looking around at the R&D work being done around the globe and hence see clues as to what technological revolutions are in the making. AI and ML, Cryptocurrency, Internet of Things (IoT), big data, renewable energy, robotics, driverless vehicles, automation, vertical lifting jets, clean fuel, regenerative medicine, etc.—the possibilities are endless.
This is the next generation stuff and TrendScout is at the forefront of it. With a management team led by young and dynamic CEO Ilayda Taze, we have the vision, creativity, tools and experience to identify the next Uber, AirBnb and Dropbox for you.
