How to Invest in Companies That Enterprise Ireland Invests In
If you are an ordinary private individual with anything from €100 to €100,000 available to invest in high growth Irish companies, how can you gain access to these types of investment opportunities?
Spark Crowdfunding has a solution.
In February 2021, Pitchbook, a leading Venture Capital (VC) and Private Equity Investment Platform, reported that Enterprise Ireland ranked first in the world of venture capital investors by deal count, a fantastic achievement by the Irish organisation.
One of the ways by which Enterprise Ireland invests in Irish Start-ups is through its High Potential Start-up programme. This programme typically sees Enterprise Ireland invest alongside other investors that the Start-Up is required to identify. In fact, it is usually a condition of the Enterprise Ireland investment that the Start-Up must bring to the table a matching amount of investment to that which Enterprise Ireland is investing.
So, for example, if Enterprise Ireland is investing €250,000, the founder of the Start-up is required to find investors also willing to invest €250,000 in the business. This is known as ‘matched funding’.
Very often, these early-stage companies do not have access to investors who can help provide this €250,000 that can unlock the €250,000 from Enterprise Ireland. There are many ways in which they can secure these funds, but, increasingly, Irish Start-ups are turning to Spark Crowdfunding to gain access to a large database of private investors who can help.
Over the past two years, 16 Enterprise Ireland funded companies have successfully raised investment funding on the Spark Crowdfunding platform, for the first time giving small and medium-sized Irish investors access to a broad variety of new and exciting investment opportunities.
But, in addition to gaining access to investment opportunities favoured by Enterprise Ireland, what are the other benefits for Irish investors that Spark Crowdfunding can offer?
7 Benefits for Irish Investors
1. Pay No Commission to Invest
Investors pay no commission when investing with Spark Crowdfunding. 100% of your investment goes into purchasing the shares. Only the company raising investment funds pays any commission.
2. Receive a 40% Tax Rebate on the Investment
Almost all of the investment opportunities on the Spark Crowdfunding platform are EIIS qualifying companies. This means that Irish investors can reclaim 40% of the value of their investment in the form of a tax refund. In other words, if you invest €1,000 in a campaign, you receive a tax rebate of €400, which means your maximum loss is €600.
3. Unlimited Upside Potential
While the EIIS tax rebate limits your loss to 60% of your investment on the downside, there is no limit to the upside potential of your investment. As an ordinary shareholder in the company you continue to benefit for as long as the share price continues to rise – there is no cap on how much you can make.
4. Small Minimum Investment amount
As part of our mission to make investment opportunities accessible to investors of all sizes, we have put a minimum investment amount of just €100 on campaigns on the Spark Crowdfunding platform. You could say we are trying to democratise Dragons’ Den!
5. Build your own Private Portfolio of Shares
With a very low minimum investment size and no commission to pay on investing, Spark Crowdfunding makes it very easy for private investors to build their own portfolio of shares across a wide variety of companies, from tech to retail and everything in between. Moreover, every company that raises funds on the Spark Crowdfunding platform is required to provide its shareholders with a Quarterly update on how the business is performing, so you will receive regular progress reports from the founders.
6. Free to Join
There are no fees to join Spark Crowdfunding, nor do we charge maintenance fees to operate an account. We don’t hold Client Funds and you only ever transfer funds when you wish to make an investment.
7. Invitations to Investor Webinars
As a valued member of Spark Crowdfunding, you will receive regular invitations to attend our Investor Webinars and ask questions of the promoters looking to raise new funds.
Join thousands of other Irish investors and get with the crowd!
If it’s good enough for the largest Venture Capitalist in the world by deal count ……………………!
Click here to join Spark Crowdfunding for free. It takes less than 2 minutes to register and receive regular notifications of new investment opportunities from as little as €100.