River Capital Partners

Rivers Capital Partners was formed in  early 2009 as joint venture by its two founding partners, Finance Tree and E-Synergy, bringing their experience and track record to the North East of England.

Rivers Capital have now been managing the Finance for Business North East Angel Fund since January 2010 and completed over 50 investments into 34 business with around £4.5m invested and a further £2.5m additional capital brought into the deals.

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FinanceTree was originally formed as NStar Corporate Finance Ltd in 2005. It was established in its current form following a management buyout by Jonathan Gold and Peter Hiscocks in April 2008.

Finance Tree continues now as an independent sister company to Rivers Capital Partners, and is a specialist in corporate finance and business planning helping companies raise capital. It also maintains a training activity in areas such as venture capital and investment readiness programmes.

Finance Tree projects have included:

Finance for Business: ONE North East £2m investment readiness project which assisted over 1800 companies through more than 90 workshops and seminars.

Achieve More: developing tools to access investment capital.  This is a €1.8 million EU CIP (Competitiveness and Innovation Programme) project, delivered to the European Commission's DG Enterprise and Industry. The project has nine partners from across Europe and has a three year delivery schedule.

Software Ventures Programme: Sunderland Software City; a development project for start-up IT and software businesses comprising a series of 5 workshops and a pitching to investors day.

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E-Synergy is a European venture capital group, set up by, amongst others, John White, Richard Brook, Jon Moulton and Michael Stoddart.

With £36m currently under management through six venture capital investment funds and two grant awarding funds, E-Synergy invests in start-ups and early stage high growth companies (from seed to series 'A') and currently has 28 portfolio companies. It also provides acclaimed investment readiness programmes such as London's Gateway2Investment or "g2i" programme (with to date £28m invested in 39 companies). Examples of E-Synergy activities are:

Early Stage Growth Fund £5m: Created in 2002, following a tender by BERR, the fund was designed to invest in early stage technology companies from £50,000 to £200,000 (in two stages with the ability to follow to £500k).

East Midlands Early Growth Fund £5m: Developed in 2006 this was aimed at the very early stage, investing typically £50,000 to £150,000 for SMEs, and university spin-outs. It was designed with the ability to use a variety of investment instruments from small micro loans, convertible loan (secured or otherwise) to equity.

Emerald Proof of Concept Fund £2.5m: A grant based Proof of Concept (POC) fund based around a consortium of 8 universities in London.

Northern Ireland Investment Growth Funds £10m: A group of separate funds; a £5m venture fund, a £3m grant based POC fund and two additional university based seed funds.