SuperCarers is revolutionising the UK care system, connecting families with trusted private carers in their local area through a single platform. After their family were let down by the state care system, brothers Adam and Daniel Pike wanted to help fix it by facilitating affordable, compassionate care – while giving carers the chance to earn a living wage. They came to Seedrs to find investors who were just as passionate as they are about providing a solution to this widely experienced problem. Adam and Daniel told us about their experiences raising equity finance online and how it helped their business.
Why did you decide to start SuperCarers?
Daniel Pike, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer: “We started SuperCarers from a very deep, personal experience. Our mother was part of the sandwich generation and had to look after us, two dependent sons, and also had her parents. Her mum was an incredible lady. She was an artist and a teacher. She had interests and she wanted to get out into the community to do all the things that made her life special. But our mum needed support to provide those special experiences to her and the support just wasn’t there. And as our grandmother’s needs progressed our mother couldn’t look after her by herself and she had to go into institutional care. The experience of that was it just wasn’t necessary for her. She would have a much more enriched and fulfilling life if she was able to stay at home for longer.”
Adam Pike, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer: “Our vision for the UK is that every single family doesn’t have to face the same choice that we did; that every older person can stay at home for as long as possible irrespective of their need.”
Why did SuperCarers look to raise investment for their business?
Adam: “We wanted to grow our business. We were making really great progress with the seed capital we raised originally but we wanted to invest in growing the business across the country. And that’s why we turned to Seedrs to help us to get more fuel behind our business.
There are always multiple challenges [when raising capital], one of the main ones is finding people who have a passion for the business and also the money to help you to realise your ambitions. The support from Seedrs was fantastic in helping us to reach a whole new audience of people who would never have known. Not only in the UK but actually across Europe.”
Why did SuperCarers decide to use Seedrs to fund their business?
Adam: “We decided to use Seedrs as our crowdfunding platform really because of the quality of people. When we met the PR team, the marketing team and the investment team we were really blown away by their professionalism and their grip on what, as a business, we needed. For us, it really was a no brainer. We felt that by working with them they’d help our business be really successful. Not just during this raise but hopefully in future raises as well.
We also wanted to give SuperCarers and clients the opportunity to invest in our business. For us business is all about the people who are either providing care or receiving care, so giving them a chance to buy in a be a part of our journey was really, really important to us.
Seedrs was also the perfect crowdfunding platform to raise money alongside our existing investors. The reason being, they were very passionate about enabling the public to back our business as well as themselves. As a result, the message of the business had a whole new host of advocates who could talk about the business. What it was achieving and how it could help people, so it really would help us to amplify our message.”
How has SuperCarers benefitted since fundraising?
Adam: “We are now able to reach out to over 300 investors who backed our business. Every month we update them on our progress. We share with them recent articles in the news and how the business is progressing. They ask us questions about how we’re performing and how can they help. And as a result of that, we’ve got people who are adding massive amounts of expertise and skills connecting us to people that we’ve never reached before. As well as, helping us to spread a message amongst the wider public about how we’re here to help them and their families.”
Daniel: “We’ve also been able to invest in the team. It’s now doubled in size which means we can develop our product and offer better services to our community. Importantly we’ve also been able to invest in our marketing. We can now think more strategically about our mission, vision and values. Rather than just trying to get the message out there we can make sure we’re spreading the right message and communicating what we’re all about to the wider public.”
What was your experience like working with Seedrs?
Adam: “When raising money from the crowd the hardest part for an entrepreneur is understanding how can you ensure that [investors] go on the cap table effectively. How can you make sure that the legals are done effectively? You can’t possibly close an investment round with over 300 investors – it would be impossible.
One of the areas where Seedrs really excelled was making the process of having a lot of investors really simple. From capturing the money from investors to enabling those investors to be a part of the legal documentation, to providing them with investment certificates which could be part of their tax-efficient investment portfolios. It really meant that we minimise the pain and the frustration on our part. It made it really easy and straightforward.
The main highlight of working with Seedrs was the fact that the people in the business were so passionate about our business and what we represented. It really came through. There was never a moment where we felt that we were alone. There were difficulties and challenges along the way, but there was always someone to ask a question or someone to jump in and help across every single function of their crowdfunding business.”
Daniel: “I would recommend Seedrs to other businesses because I think the real quality of investors that we’ve brought on board from really diverse backgrounds people who really intuitively got the business they didn’t only believe in it emotionally they had something to contribute professionally and that was really unique and something I didn’t necessarily expect.”
Learn more about SuperCarers and check out their Seedrs campaign here.
