UK VC's offering 20% off funding deals in April

Broadstuff Exclusive - Following the kick-off of Startup Britain, the UK's Venture Capital community has decided to help by announcing a 20% off deal for all funding rounds for New Tech businesses that apply for funding in April. Responding to frequent complaints about the "Equity Gap" and the oft-times difficult-to-fathom funding process, Nik Shylock of Venice Merchant's Fund said that VC's understood the problems as they were also human:

"We VC's have eyes, we have hands and passion, and we eat the same food, have the same diseases and live in the same place as entrepreneurs. We are human - if we are pricked, we bleed too. If we are tickled, we laugh too."

The terms sheets are due to go up later today, but we understand that in principle the VC will value your business, decide what they want to put in, and then give 20% extra for the same level of ownership dilution. They are also changing the way they prioritise what businesses to fund - Phin Barnum of B&BC:

"Normally we look at the team and see if they have run a business before for 20 years, we look at whether someone in the US is already running a similar business for validation, and we see if the business up for funding is making revenue and profits before we fund it. After all, you don't want to take risks with Venture capital. However, for April we will make an exception and look at how disruptive the idea is, the market potential, and whether the idea can be shared with as many others as possible"

There is a catch however - the application proposals have to be filled in today. Responding to criticism that the process of funding can be quite byzantine, members of the VC community collaborated with Government Dept of Business form design User Experience experts in designing a simpler form. Forms can be requested from info@vc.com, but we have put a copy on this post.

Entrepreneurs have welcomed the move. A straw poll we conducted this morning at Silicon Roundabout suggested 67% were in favour, 23% were against, 10% were "Other" and 9% didn't understand the question. Richard Sugar, founder of social mobile location-augmented reality m-commerce game platform Boooooodl said:

"This is a great day for Startups. Usually, if you have to put a proposal together on a Friday its quite hard as it needs to be done before you go to the pub and everyone gets wasted, but the form is so simple we can do it on the iPad while the intern gets the first round in."

Phin Barnum agrees - "It's a tremendous win for Entrepreneurs in Britain" he says "It seems like there is a new startup being born every minute"

Broadstuff's take is that one should always beware of those bearing gifts to geeks.