Legal & Professional

Blackfinch celebrates investments totalling £17m ahead of tax-year deadline

Published by
Nicky Godding

The team behind Gloucester-based Blackfinch Ventures EIS Portfolios and the Blackfinch Spring VCT has completed 12 investments ahead of the tax-year-end deadline. This included £5 million into three new companies:
Futr, Placed and Measure Protocol.

Futr enables organisations such as police forces, local councils and financial institutions to enhance their customer service functions through a set of simple-to-deploy no-code artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning tools. The platform enables AI-powered conversations across multiple communication channels, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Slack, and can translate conversations into 120 languages in real-time. Futr also learns from historical datasets, meaning new customers see value in the accuracy of the platform almost immediately.

Measure Protocol enables leading technology companies to access highly granular customer experience data. Users on Measure Protocol’s platform are asked to perform specific tasks for brands while their activity is captured through screen recording technology. The company’s proprietary technology then uses image processing to extract behaviour and data, such as the layout of icons on a mobile phone screen.
Placed is a talent attraction and recruitment platform built for the retail and hospitality sectors consisting of a two-sided marketplace, with job seekers on one side and employers on the other. The retail and hospitality sector is the largest employer of people under the age of 25 in the UK; Placed offers a dynamic user experience catered to this demographic, via its CV-less, user-friendly, engaging mobile application.
Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe. After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts. She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.

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