Yorkshire AI start-up raises £1.7m

A young Yorkshire entrepreneur has raised £1.7m in pre-seed funding for his new business.

Joshua Port is just 26. He’s founder and CEO of Handshaik, an AI-native platform aiming to shake up the dealmaking market.

He came up with the idea after working in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for KPMG, and spent 15 months building the platform before launching to the market earlier this year.

“I was working in deal origination and realised quickly how inefficient the process was. The technologies on offer were expensive, often lacked focus, delivered low-quality data and, crucially, failed to support the way originators actually work.

“Handshaik is a variation on the word ‘handshake’, because deals are built on relationships. That first introduction right through to completion is exactly where we come in.

“It’s no accident ‘AI’ is in the centre of the name, because it’s core to how we transform processes and workflows for our customers.”

The startup recently received a total of £1.7m investment from more than 20 angel investors, indicating its potential to shake up the M&A market. It already employs 10 people, demonstrating the founder’s ambition.

Handshaik creates analyst-grade profiles for every UK company. Its AI identifies the best-fit opportunities based on a user’s brief, using easy-to-understand language on why each company is a fit.

Relevant contacts are enriched with verified emails and mobile numbers. From there, teams can monitor and nurture targets through a collaborative pipeline workflow, without manual admin.

“Deal origination is evolving,” said Port. “There are more data and more tools than ever before. Teams spend hours turning data into an actionable pipeline – time that could be spent building relationships. We saw an opportunity to rebuild that entire experience and create the first operating system for deal origination.”

But M&A isn’t the only use, with Handshaik providing rich data useful to companies building email outreach lists for outbound sales to drive growth, for B2B suppliers wanting to check the credit-worthiness of clients, or for start-ups trying to assess the potential market.

With plans from just £20/month, the platform makes insight accessible.

Find out more at www.Handshaik.com