Don't invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more.
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Due to the potential for losses, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) considers this investment to be high risk.
What are the key risks?
- You could lose all the money you invest
- If the business you invest in fails, you are likely to lose 100% of the money you invested. Most start-up businesses fail.
- You are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong
- Protection from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), in relation to claims against failed regulated firms, does not cover poor investment performance. Try the FSCS investment protection checker here.
- Protection from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) does not cover poor investment performance. If you have a complaint against an FCA-regulated firm, FOS may be able to consider it. Learn more about FOS protection here.
- You won’t get your money back quickly
- Even if the business you invest in is successful, it may take several years to get your money back. You are unlikely to be able to sell your investment early.
- The most likely way to get your money back is if the business is bought by another business or lists its shares on an exchange such as the London Stock Exchange. These events are not common.
- If you are investing in a start-up business, you should not expect to get your money back through dividends. Start-up businesses rarely pay these.
- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
- Putting all your money into a single business or type of investment for example, is risky. Spreading your money across different investments makes you less dependent on any one to do well.
- A good rule of thumb is not to invest more than 10% of your money in high-risk investments.
- The value of your investment can be reduced
- The percentage of the business that you own will decrease if the business issues more shares. This could mean that the value of your investment reduces, depending on how much the business grows. Most start-up businesses issue multiple rounds of shares.
- These new shares could have additional rights that your shares don’t have, such as the right to receive a fixed dividend, which could further reduce your chances of getting a return on your investment.
If you are interested in learning more about how to protect yourself, visit the FCA’s website here.
| Sector: | Technology |
|---|---|
| Target return: | 5x |
| Minimum investment: | £10,000 |
| Targeted allotment: | 2025/26 |
| Next deadline: | 31 Oct 2025 |
Important documents
| Sector: | Technology |
|---|---|
| Target return: | 5x |
| Minimum investment: | £10,000 |
| Targeted allotment: | 2025/26 |
| Next deadline: | 31 Oct 2025 |
Important documents
The Haatch SEIS fund is managed by the same team as the Haatch EIS funds: entrepreneurs with first-hand experience of successfully founding, growing and selling businesses.
The fund invests in disruptive digital businesses, in sectors the team knows well and where it can use its considerable experience to add value. Haatch refers to this as its ‘Smart Money’ approach.
In April 2025, the fund recorded its first positive exit, a 7.4x return from its holding in Native Teams (see below), with a second profitable exit announced in August 2025. Of the remaining portfolio, 25 companies are held at an uplift, averaging 2.6x cost, 75 are held at cost, six have failed and three were exited at a loss. Past performance is not a guide to the future.
- Target return of 5x over five to 10 years – high risk and not guaranteed
- Planned deployment into a portfolio of 9-15 (minimum of 7) – not guaranteed
- Minimum investment £10,000 – you can apply online
- Deadline: 31 October 2025 for 2025/26 deployment, not guaranteed
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.
The manager
Haatch was founded by Scott Weavers-Wright and Fred Soneya. They met at Kiddicare.com, an online baby care retailer co-founded by Scott, which became one of the UK’s largest ecommerce businesses and was acquired by supermarket Morrisons for £70 million in 2011. Whilst at Kiddicare, Scott and Fred ran the Kiddicare startup program, working with selected startups, three of which achieved exits in excess of $1 billion.
This experience led to an angel co-investment joint venture, Haatch Angel, in 2013 which in 2018 became Haatch Ventures.
Scott also founded retail cloud platform Elevaate in 2014, acquired four years later for $25.7 million, and in 2022 was awarded an OBE for services to Technology and Retail Ecommerce Entrepreneurship.
Alongside Scott and Fred, the other partners at Haatch are Mark Bennett and Jonathan Keeling. Mark is Vice President Platforms and Devices Partnerships at Google. Previously, he led the international business for Google Play and was managing director of the music streaming service Blinkbox Music, which he helped grow to 2.5 million users in 18 months. Jonathan joined Haatch in 2024 and was previously Chief Growth Officer at Crowdcube. As well as working at Haatch, Jonathan founded consultancy firm Edge Funding, which advises consumer startups on raising funds.
Partners have historically invested in every SEIS fund tranche.
Before your subscription is invested, the cash will be held by the custodian, Apex Unitas Limited. After investment, shares will be held by the nominee, MNL Nominees Limited.
Meet the manager: Fred Soneya, partner at Haatch
Co-invest alongside the British Business Bank in the current tranche
In January 2025, British Business Investments Ltd, a commercial subsidiary of the British Business Bank, committed a further £10 million to Haatch through its £150 million Regional Angels Programme, taking total funding to £20 million.
The commitment is managed by Haatch and invested alongside the Haatch SEIS and EIS Funds. Haatch intends to deploy the British Business Investments’ funds alongside all its investors in each and every investment.
Investment strategy
Haatch seeks to back entrepreneurs building disruptive digital businesses, particularly B2B software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. This is where the team has significant experience and should be well placed to add value.
Each company is assessed against two key metrics: the problem it aims to solve, and the potential buyers.
The team seeks to back companies whose products it considers capable of becoming operationally essential to its customers and building natural levels of recurring revenues.
Haatch will also look at a company’s client acquisition plans, pricing strategies, and distribution channels to establish how well it understands its target market. While founders may be technically proficient, they are likely to need commercial support. Haatch will use its experience to advise on go-to-market strategy. Haatch believes its four partners complement each other and can provide portfolio companies with the support they need.
Haatch seeks to back promising founders before they have officially start to fundraise, so a significant proportion of deals are sourced from outbound enquiries and Haatch will be the first investor, typically leading funding rounds of £300,000 to £1 million. Haatch usually invests around £85,000 from British Business Investments alongside its SEIS fund investments.
The SEIS fund looks to back companies with 12-18 months of runway and potential for significant revenue growth (not guaranteed). The most promising businesses from the SEIS portfolio may receive follow-on investment from the Haatch EIS fund.
Where possible, Haatch reserves board rights, so any member of the investment team can attend portfolio companies’ board meetings.
Portfolio
The fund seeks to invest in a portfolio of at least seven, but usually 9-15 disruptive SEIS companies. Previous SEIS funds have averaged 12 investments each.
The companies outlined below are previous investments made by the Haatch Ventures SEIS Fund and give a flavour of the types of companies a new investor might expect.
Recent investment
Falkin
Globally as much as $1 trillion is lost to online scams annually, and around 1 in 4 people will be victims of an attempted scam every few months. Meanwhile, AI is making it easier and faster to create fraudulent schemes, which financial institutions struggle to monitor effectively with traditional tools.
Founded in 2024, Falkin has created a scam prevention platform that can be embedded into financial service providers’ existing products. It helps them protect their customers from scams in real time by detecting suspicious messages, blocking phishing links and other social engineering techniques.
The Haatch SEIS fund invested in May 2025 as part of a £1.7 million round.
Data Literacy Academy
Businesses spend hundreds of billions of pounds each year on capturing, analysing, and storing data but the full value is often left unrealised. Only 11% of employees say they’re confident with their data literacy skills.
Data Literacy Academy was set up to address this. It has developed a learning platform providing clients and their employees with access to live and on-demand data literacy training. The company was founded by Greg Freeman, an entrepreneur who built several businesses from first sales to multi-million ARR, whom Haatch had previously worked with.
The business was pre-revenue when the SEIS fund invested £150,000 in November 2022. In the first quarter post-investment, the company attracted blue-chip clients such as carmaker Bentley and utility SSE, generating 70% of its year 1 revenue target in one quarter. More recently the company has announced a partnership with accountancy firm Grant Thornton and Aston University.
In October 2023, Haatch provided £480,000 follow-on funding via its EIS fund and BBI commitment. The SEIS investment is currently valued at 3.7x cost (August 2025). Past performance is not a guide to the future.
Example of previous exit
Native Teams
Native Teams is an online work platform for freelancers, remote workers and businesses around the world. It provides the tools they need: from invoicing, to payments, employment solutions and more.
The business was launched in July 2021 by serial entrepreneur Jack Thorogood after experiencing the problems of running a global remote team first-hand. Today, it is reported to operate in over 50 countries and has attracted more than 80,000 users.
Haatch SEIS fund invested £150,000 in March 2022 as part of a €2 million funding round alongside several European and US venture capital firms. In April 2025, Haatch exited its position through an all-cash secondary transaction, returning £1.1 million to the fund, equivalent to a 7.4x return on cost. Past performance is not a guide to the future.
Example of previous failure
UnderstockMe
SEIS investments are high-risk and not all will work out as planned. UnderstockMe is an example.
UnderstockMe was a B2B surplus food platform connecting food suppliers with commercial buyers to address supply chain food waste. Haatch invested in September 2021. However, UnderstockMe struggled to convince business buyers that its service was essential, so it failed to gain traction and scale effectively. As a result, the investment has been written down to nil.
Performance
The Haatch SEIS Fund has backed a total of 114 companies since launch in February 2021.
In April 2025, the fund recorded its first positive exit, with a 7.4x return from its holding in Native Teams (see above), it has since recorded a second exit for 2x cost within two years of the investment. Of the remaining portfolio, 25 companies are held at an uplift, averaging 2.6x cost, 75 are held at cost, and six have failed. A further three companies were exited at a loss. Past performance is not a guide to the future.
The chart below shows the average performance of the total subscribed into the funds in each of the last 10 full tax years (or from when the current strategy was adopted if later). The chart is based on the latest valuations provided by the manager, expressed on a £100 invested basis. Please note, individual investor portfolios’ performance will deviate from the average.
Performance of Haatch SEIS Fund per £100
Source: Haatch Ventures, as at August 2025. Past performance is not a guide to future performance. The chart shows realised returns (where share proceeds have been returned to investors as cash) and unrealised returns (where cash has not yet been returned and the value of the investments is based on the manager’s own valuation methodology). There is no ready market for unlisted shares. The figures shown are net of all fees and do not include any income tax relief or loss relief.
Risks – important
This, like all investments available through Wealth Club, is only for experienced investors happy to make their own investment decisions without advice.
SEIS investments are high-risk and should only form part of a balanced portfolio. As must be expected with early-stage investments, some or even all of the companies in the portfolio could fail: the fewer the companies included in the portfolio, the higher the risk of loss if things don’t go to plan. You should not invest money you cannot afford to lose.
There is no ready market for unlisted SEIS shares: they are illiquid and hard to sell and value. There will need to be an exit for you to receive a realised return on your investment. Exits are likely to take considerably longer than the three-year minimum SEIS holding period; equally, an exit within three years could impact tax relief.
To claim tax relief, you will need SEIS3 certificates, normally issued once shares have been allotted. This can take several months: please check the deployment timescales carefully. Tax reliefs depend on the portfolio companies maintaining their SEIS-qualifying status. Remember, tax rules can change and benefits depend on circumstances.
Before you invest, please carefully read the Risks and Commitments and the offer documents to ensure you fully understand the risks.
Charges
The charging structure of this fund is different from that of most of its peers. There is an investor initial charge of 10% but there are no annual fees or on-going management charges – neither to investors nor investee companies. The manager believes this structure could be more beneficial in the long term. Please note: tax relief should be available on the amount invested, after deduction of the initial charge.
A summary of the main charges is shown below. The investment may have additional charges and expenses: please see the provider documents, including the Key Information Document, for more details.
| Investor charges | |
|---|---|
| Initial charge | 10% |
| Annual management charge | — |
| Administration charge | — |
| Dealing charge |
— |
| Performance fee | 25-30% |
| Investee company charges | |
| Initial charge | — |
| Annual charges | — |
More detail on the charges
When you invest through us, Wealth Club will receive initial commission (4%) and trail commission (0%). These are paid by the provider – there is no additional cost to you.
Investor charges may be deducted from the subscription. This will reduce the amount invested and on which tax relief can be claimed.
Any investee company charges are levied on the underlying companies. The amount available for tax relief should not be affected but remember indirect charges can still affect investor returns.
The performance fee applies on returns in excess of £1 per £1 invested. Whilst not uncommon among SEIS funds, this is a low hurdle. Performance fees are calculated on a portfolio basis.
Other charges apply. Please see the provider’s documents, including the Key Information Document, for more details.
Our view
The Haatch SEIS fund offers an opportunity to invest alongside a team of experienced entrepreneurs with first-hand experience of successfully founding, growing and selling businesses. The combination of mentoring from the Haatch team, a founder-friendly charging structure and the addition of British Business Investment money could make for an enticing prospect for entrepreneurs seeking SEIS funding and lead to enhanced deal flow (not guaranteed).
The fund is expected to build a portfolio of 9–15 companies to which the team believes it can add value, in sectors it knows well. The strategy delivered its first two positive exits this year, including a 7.4x return from Native Teams (see above). The remaining portfolio is also seeing some good progress, with 25 companies held at an uplift. Past performance is not a guide to the future – there have also been failures.
The offer could be a consideration for experienced investors looking to invest in a portfolio of SEIS companies alongside a team of experienced entrepreneurs.
This financial promotion has been communicated and approved by Wealth Club Ltd on 4 September 2025
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.