Angel Academe EIS Fund 1 was the UK's first EIS fund focused on female founders. It was a partnership between Angel Academe, the UK's first angel network dedicated to investing in female founders, and SyndicateRoom, which manages and administers the fund.
The fund raised just shy of £1.2m from individual investors, who each invested between £10,000 and £200,000. It put roughly £125,000 into each of eight early-stage companies, all in the 2025/26 tax year. Five work in health: menopause care, fertility, respiratory care, surgical prehabilitation and hospital infection control. The other three recycle laboratory plastic, simplify financial data sharing and verify product data for AI shopping tools.
Angel Academe found, vetted and backed every company before it reached the fund. Its network screens more than 500 applications from female founders a year and shortlists 120 to 140 for closer inspection. Few of those are invited to pitch at a screening meeting, and only around one in ten of the founders who pitch there go on to present to the full network.
Angel Academe members with relevant sector experience then lead the due diligence as a deal team, and members invest in the round alongside the fund. Angel Academe presents each opportunity to the fund's investment committee, and SyndicateRoom, as the FCA-authorised manager, reviews and approves every investment.
The fund looked for female-founded or co-founded businesses with a scalable proposition, a large market and early evidence of demand, run by founders who are organised, transparent, collaborative and aware of risk. After investment, Angel Academe members support the companies as non-executive directors, advisers and mentors where they have the right experience.
Company | Sector | What it does |
 | Women's health | Adora Digital Health is a clinically led digital companion for menopause support and triage, sold to employers and the NHS. |
 | Fertility | Béa Fertility offers clinician-guided, at-home intracervical insemination treatment, positioned between natural conception and IVF. |
 | Respiratory care | Aflo has built an AI platform that monitors inhaler technique and adherence for people with asthma and COPD. |
 | Circular economy | LabCycle decontaminates single-use plastic from laboratories and hospitals and recycles it into pellets and new lab consumables. |
 | Fintech | Onteric is an API and consumer app that securely shares financial application forms and documents between people and financial institutions. |
 | Digital health | PreActiv offers personalised exercise, nutrition and wellbeing programmes that prepare surgery and cancer patients for treatment. |
 | Data infrastructure | Provenance turns claims made about consumer products into verified, machine-readable data that AI shopping assistants can use. |
 | Medical technology | Zonova licenses a non-leaching antimicrobial technology to medical device makers to reduce hospital-acquired infections. |
Angel Academe EIS Fund 1 is closed. For Angel Academe's latest fund, including its thesis, minimum investment and closing date, see the fund page. Tax reliefs depend on your individual circumstances and may change.
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