Process

We will make sure you are kept fully informed of your company's progress throughout the process and as soon as you are at Stage 2 an investment manager will work with you right the way through to an investment decision.

Stage 1: Submit your Exec Summary/Business plan

Once we've received your executive summary/business plan, we'll let you know the outcome of our review. If your plan meets our investment criteria, we may ask you to provide us with further information and/or a business plan. After we review this, we'll decide whether we need to organise a meeting with you.

Stage 2: Assessing your proposal

This will take place over several meetings and will involve:

• analysing any additional information;
• discussing the terms of any potential investment;
• consulting with other potential investors and shareholders.

We may ask you to present your business to members of our Ventures team at NESTA's main office.

Stage 3: Initial due diligence and approval process

A team of experts will assess your business and will write an investment case to be presented to our Investment Committee.

If the investment is approved, we'll send you an offer letter - subject to contract - outlining the proposed terms of our investment. If you accept our offer, you must agree a period of exclusivity so that we can complete our investment.

Stage 4: Final due diligence and legal contracts

The investment will be complete when you sign all of the necessary contracts. We sometimes offer a convertible loan structure; this will be discussed and agreed upon in earlier stages, if your company is eligible.

Next step
If you have a proposal which fits these criteria, please send an executive summary of your investment proposal and/or your business development plan to: investments@nesta.org.uk