Tech startup UHubs wins £1 million investment prize sponsored by Haatch, Steve Rigby and Wealth Club
On the first day of London Tech Week, eight shortlisted tech startups – every one of them an impressive contender – were narrowed down to three. This was the Grand Final of Tech Nation’s Rising Stars OneToWin competition, open to EIS-qualifying startups across the UK. The three finalists were to pitch live onstage for a £1 million investment prize.
Each was given three crucial minutes to convince a panel of seasoned early-stage investors from Amazon Web Services Startups, British Business Bank, Haatch Ventures, Rigby Group and Wealth Club.
What would it take to win?
All appeared to have sound business models and innovative products that address recognisable problems.
Ultimately, the judges went for the startup they thought showed the best risk and return balance, as well as exit potential – along with considering criteria such as product-market fit, business model viability and team strength.
The judges thought the winner, sales-team upskilling platform UHubs, stood out by the strength of its commercial traction.
While the entry requirement for OnetoWin was £200,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR), UHubs already generates annual revenue of £1.7 million.
Founded in 2020, AI- and data-driven UHubs helps companies upskill their sales reps with tools, real-time insights and tailored solutions to boost performance. The company ambitiously aims to disrupt a global c.$67 billion sales consultancy sector.
The £1 million investment prize will be funded by the Haatch EIS Fund, and Rigby Group (one of the top 10 largest wholly-owned family businesses in the UK, with Steve Rigby as Co-Chief Executive) – subject to due diligence. Wealth Club members will also be able to participate (you can register your interest to get an alert when the offer opens).
Important: The information on this website is for experienced investors. It is not a personal recommendation to invest. If you’re unsure, please seek advice. Investments are for the long term. They are high risk and illiquid and can fall as well as rise in value: you could lose all the money you invest.
Supporting Rising Stars is about championing the incredible talent and innovation emerging from every corner of the UK. Entrepreneurial young companies play a crucial role in driving economic growth and creating opportunities. Backing these early-stage businesses could go a long way into re-igniting growth.
 |
Left to right: Charlier Weavers-Wright (Haatch - Associate), Charlotte Young (Tech Nation - Head of Early Stage Programme), Alex Davies (Wealth Club - Founder and CEO), Scott Weavers-Wright OBE (Haatch - Co-founder and General Partner), Peter Kyle (UK Government - Secretary of State), Steve Rigby (Rigby Group plc - co-CEO), Ash Ali (Uhubs - Co-founder), Fred Soneya (Haatch - Co-founder and General Partner), Carolyn Dawson (Founders Forum - CEO)
Who are the founders of winning startup UHubs?
UHubs is a skills-development platform for sales teams, set up in 2020 by Matt Milligan and Ash Ali, who had met at a London networking event two years earlier.
Both are serial entrepreneurs.
Ash had been the first marketing director of Just Eat UK, a company that later IPO’d for £1.5 billion. Long before that, he sold his first internet business at the age of 19. He now has over 20 years of hands-on experience creating, growing and investing in startup.
Matt is a Forbes 30 Under 30 entrepreneur. At 22, when he was a consultant at EY, Matt founded the EY Startup Network. There, he helped over 250 founders raise funding and scale their businesses. Matt has also mentored for accelerator programs including Basecamp, Founders Institute and Startup Grind.
What does UHubs do?
UHubs’s technology helps sales team leaders upskill existing sales reps, as well as get new hires up-to-speed faster. By the same token, it can also help companies identify and hire the most suitable salespeople.
It does this by applying AI to real-time data to identify what top performance looks like within the team, reveal blind spots, find development opportunities and devise a tailored training programme.
In his final three-minute pitch to the OnetoWin competition judges, co-founder Ash explained how UHubs is helping sales teams close “the execution gap”, why companies are spending billions on sales performance, and why he believes AI and skills data will change the game.
UHubs aims for its AI platform to help companies leave one-size-fits-all sales training and expensive consulting behind.
The AI investment opportunity – how big might it be?
This year’s London Tech Week focused strongly on AI. The opening discussion between NVIDIA founder/CEO Jensen Huang and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer covered future investment in AI in the UK and globally.
Jensen made the point that AI is not just a technology, but an infrastructure requiring serious investment and commitment. He also noted the UK is a “goldilocks” region: an ecosystem combining fantastic universities and research communities with the third-largest AI venture capital investment (after the US and China) – however, infrastructure must catch up. That said, Jensen considers the UK the perfect place to invest – and plans to start an AI lab and other investments to “get the flywheel going”.
Haatch founder Scott Weavers-Wright OBE was also at the event. He observes, “AI wasn’t just a topic at London Tech Week – it was the foundation of almost every conversation, keynote, and pitch. The entrepreneurs I spoke to weren’t talking about whether to use AI. They were already building with it, testing it, selling it.”
An entrepreneur himself with two exits worth $150 million, Scott considers AI to be the biggest investment opportunity since the cloud.
For those of us who lived through the rise of cloud computing, the parallels are striking. When SaaS began to overtake on-premise software, it felt radical. Today, it’s just the way things are done. AI is on that same trajectory, only faster.
Wealth Club aims to make it easier for experienced investors to find information on – and apply for – investments. You should base your investment decision on the offer documents and ensure you have read and fully understand them before investing. The information on this webpage is a marketing communication. It is not advice or a personal or research recommendation to buy any of the investments mentioned, nor does it include any opinion as to the present or future value or price of these investments. It does not satisfy legal requirements promoting investment research independence and is thus not subject to prohibitions on dealing ahead of its dissemination.
Alex Davies
Chief Executive
Alex was a board director at Hargreaves Lansdown, where he worked for 15 years. He was responsible for building Hargreaves Lansdown into the biggest direct-to-consumer SIPP provider in the UK with more than 150,000 clients and over £12 billion under management. He is a keen investor with a portfolio of shares, funds, student property, EIS and VCT investments.