mtrx syndicate faq

How does it work?

  • Of course. It’s very straightforward:

    • You pay a one-off, lifetime membership fee of £1000 to join the syndicate

    • We aim to send you 3 - 4 investment opportunities each year

    • The mtrx founders invest themselves in every company presented, each one qualifies for SEIS/EIS tax relief in the UK

    • Our objective analysis is shared for your review and feedback

    • If you want to explore further you can join a pitch with the startup and/ or look at all the information provided by the startup

    • Syndicate investors can ask questions to learn more and share their perspectives

    • If you wish to invest, tell us how much you’d like to put in (min. £10k, max dependent on the amount allocated to us) - no obligation to invest

    • Everyone in the syndicate, including us, invests at the same share price

    • Post investment, we have a quiet drink / rest / wild night of celebration

    • We maintain a regular dialogue with the startups during and outside board meetings

    • You’ll get email updates now and again when we have a decent update for you, nothing heavy

    • If you want to know more, or have any questions, you can always drop us a line

    • Typically, there’ll be another investment round in 1-2 years which our syndicate members can again evaluate

    • You can choose again whether to invest, or not, of course

    • We help our portfolio with their commercial and growth challenges / opportunities to add value

    • We leverage the syndicate to offer their expertise to help the portfolio wherever appropriate

  • While it can be interesting to learn the language of investment, our memos will share information in plain language and we’re always happy to discuss in more detail our assumptions / findings if helpful

  • You got on that jargon pretty quick. Yes, our investments are all typically EIS eligible. You can find more detail here.

  • No. We don’t charge syndicate investors any management fees for e.g. sending updates on investments or facilitating new funding rounds. We only make money when you make money at exit. It’s that straightforward.

  • Exits are typically through a trade sale which of course means we are dependent upon an acquiror. The exits we have had have generally been after around 5 years, however some companies have been in our portfolio for longer and they continue to grow with the expectation to exit through a sale sometime in the future.

  • You must get your investment back first. With an EIS investment, you will get 30% back from HMRC, meaning you need to get the other 70% back from the investment. For any returns above that, you keep 90% of the profit, we keep the other 10% (+ VAT if applicable).

  • We want you to join mtrx syndicate with the right intentions. Like all investments there’s obviously risk (mitigated by EIS), so you need to be in it for the journey. And to us that means engaging with the deals and the portfolio, as well as the rest of the syndicate. You have a unique perspective based on your skills and background, so use it. Help us ask the right questions, find the right startups and nurture the right founders. We all want the investments to succeed, so we don’t just want to hit and hope.

    And be patient - startup investing is risky and not all investments will succeed, but hopefully across the portfolio we aim to have a decent chance of success - and learn a load along along the way too.

  • No. We have other roles and commitments, but what we learn from there we apply here. mtrx syndicate is a synergy of what we do in our day-to-day lives. For mtrx syndicate to thrive and be successful, we need to keep doing our other roles to be on top of our game.

  • Solid, important question. We’re very aware that the startup world has operators that aren’t necessarily above board. But we’re too old and busy with other things to get caught up in that. So we keep it straightforward. We will never ask the syndicate to invest in something we’re not investing in ourselves. We put our money where our investment memo is. The majority of our syndicate investors are people who have seen us operate in our day jobs/roles and trust our judgement.

  • We’re an angel syndicate made up of angel investors interested in a slightly more engaged and curated approach to investing, with a focus on quality, diligence and detail. You can also introduce us as a couple of great guys who like to find really interesting investment opportunities. Or just Matthew and Kash.

  • In 2016 we started life as Dot Matrix Group, partly due to our love of all things mathematical. Rebranding to mtrx syndicate is the natural next step in making our brand clearer.

Who are you?

I’m a start-up.
I have some questions.

  • In summary…

    • We find startups through a combination of our network / referrals and also being contacted directly

    • We like to spend time to get know startups to see how they execute over time

    • This means while we start conversations now, we might only be ready to invest in a future round

    • We’ll sign a ‘collaboration agreement’, with startups, covering a couple of main things…

    • First, we’ll charge the startup 6.5% (+VAT) for any investment we bring / introduce - if we do not bring any investment then there is no fee to pay

    • Second, we expect to be a board observer or member in order to stay abreast of things and keep our syndicate investors updated

    • We analyse all the information provided, ask more questions and really understand you, your space and the opportunity ahead

    • And assuming all’s well and we are ready to invest our own money, we’ll present you to the syndicate investors

    • Once you’ve wowed everyone, we’ll ask syndicate investors whether they’d like to invest

    • The typical investment from mtrx syndicate is between £100k - £500k depending on demand from our syndicate investors

    • Post investment we charge £100 (+VAT) per syndicate investor per year to help cover our ongoing admin costs

    • We aim to follow on in future rounds - this is usually a mix of some of the same syndicate investors reinvesting, and new syndicate investors joining the pack

    • We keep up to date with everything through board meetings and other discussions

    • We use the syndicate’s networks to help with challenges where we can

    • Whenever you need to communicate with the syndicate investors, Kash and Matthew will facilitate and round up votes etc, meaning you have to only deal with us rather than a large group of folks individually

    • We help you grow and make a wonderful mark on the world and help you plan for the exit with our deep corporate finance / M&A experience

    • We exit and celebrate (and maybe start talking about the next adventure…)

  • You get access to a large number of ready-to-go motivated angel investors without having to have a large number of repeat conversations. And since Matthew and Kash are highlighting you to the syndicate because they’re investing themselves, you are making the cut with a very discerning group of investors.

  • We would love to hear from you! Please write to us and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

If you have any questions, please get in touch. 

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