Technology entrepreneur Toby White has secured a six-figure investment to launch a new SaaS business that is set to revolutionise the communications industry.
MarketMate’s ambition is to turn the current methodology of content creation and distribution within social media on its head; making it faster, easier and more accurate to impact marketing spaces that have business targets. A subscription based product, MarketMate makes it simple and easy for users to manage their budgets as well as their messaging.
23 year old Toby will launch MarketMate in early January 2020 from Barclays Eagles Lab in Cardiff with the backing of lead angel investor Deri Green and Angels Invest Wales.
As the latest lead investor with the Wales Angel Co-investment Fund, Deri Green will work with Toby White as Chief Executive and Doctor Luis Espinosa Anke, a lecturer in Computer Science at Cardiff University and specialist in Natural Language Processing. Both are advising on the development of the algorithm along with Martyn Baker who has also joined the MarketMate team in an advisory capacity. He was one of the first six employees in the UK Twitter team.
Chief Executive of MarketMate Toby White explained:
“Managing business growth requires specialist marketing support and advice that often comes at a premium. My own experience of developing my company ARTIMUS as a successful AI development house left me questioning the value of agency support and feeling frustrated that there was no simple automated solution that met my specific needs.
“It quickly became apparent that there was a real opportunity to develop an algorithm that enables business owners and managers to take control of their own marketing with the development of original content in a more cost effective way than employing agency support.
“MarketMate soon sparked the interest of digital marketing and technology specialist Deri Green who is now working with us to realise the full potential of MarketMate. The support from him and our advisers along with the funding from the Wales Angel Investment Co-investment Fund is making a real difference to our ability to be able to scale up and reach out to a global audience from our base here in Cardiff. I am also very grateful to Sion Tudur at Loosemores for his ongoing advice.”
Lead investor Deri Green said:
“All investments I look for have to be strategic, scalable and possess disruptive attributes with multiple points of difference. What’s great about MarketMate is that it has all these in abundance! As well as the business concept, at least 50% of the investment decision is made on the founder and the individual leading the business. For such a young guy, Toby has a mature head on his shoulders and all the ambition and drive necessary to make this business a huge success”
“The launch will be powerful and compelling, and the subsequent growth rate will be impressive; it’s an exceptionally exciting opportunity to be part of.”
Tom Preene is Operations Manager for Angels Invest Wales.
He added:
“Our lead investors bring together syndicates that can support the right individual with the right business model and ambition to grow which is why we are always looking for new investors to join the co-investment fund.
“Deri is an experienced investor and will be a very useful source of knowledge, mentoring and contacts as MarketMate develops. In fact, this really is a great example of how agile and innovative we can be when supporting angel-led investment.”
The £8 million Wales Angel Co-investment Fund was launched in April 2018. It is managed by the Development Bank of Wales and provides match funding up to a maximum of £250,000 per project. With an established network of over 150 investors, the Development Bank of Wales can match potential syndication partners and is focussed on encouraging more active Angel investment.
Hugh James advised Deri Green as lead angel investor.