A pair of motorsports fans who met in a queue for the bar have won a £200,000 investment for their new tech startup.
Tom Bunten and Nikhil Patel had never met each other before going to a networking event for the Ignite Accelerator at By The River Brew Company last year. During the key social event for the tech industry they found themselves standing in the same circle of people with angel investor Kevin Beales, introducing themselves and talking about their startup plans.
Mr Bunten talked about his niche platform for the gaming and esports community, which he founded in 2021 – and a week later they were in the Everyman Cinema cafe discussing an investment deal.
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Now the duo’s startup, called Grid Finder, has raised £200,000 to develop the platform which helps racers find racing and helps esport community managers manage their race calendars, results and standings, communication and much more. The investment comes from an angel syndicate led by Mr Beales.
Mr Bunten and Mr Patel – both huge motorsport fans with a love of esports and online racing – recognised that the sim racing market was growing quickly but was fragmented. Grid Finder is being built to bring communities together and lower the barrier to entry for ambitious racers and community managers.
The company already has over 1,800 esports communities listed on its online platform, and will use the investment to grow their community and improve on and expand their features.
Mr Bunten, who participated in the Ignite Pre-Accelerator Programme in January 2022 with Mr Patel as his CTO, aims to raise further investment later this year.
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The company is now working on both building its virtual community base and expanding into real-world motorsport racing.
Mr Bunten said: “I built Grid Finder to solve a problem for what I thought was a relatively niche group of sim racers I’d been racing with online. Six months later, over 1,000 esports communities had listed themselves on Grid Finder and I realised this was a real opportunity to build a useful suite of tools that solves problems for over 1.8m sim racers and hundreds of millions of casual online racers worldwide.
“I met Grid Finder’s new CTO, Nikhil, and our investor, Kevin, in the queue for the bar at the Ignite social event at By The River Brew Co in late 2021. Nikhil and I joined the accelerator and closed our funding round with Kevin in early 2022. This investment from Kevin allows us to take Grid Finder from being a ‘passion project’ to being a major player in the sim racing world.
“We now have the means to develop faster and market Grid Finder to a larger audience. Most importantly, we now have the advice and guidance of Kevin and his investment syndicate who between them have decades of experience in sales and SaaS.”
Mr Beales said: “From our first casual meeting at the Ignite event, I was impressed by what Tom had achieved in such a short period, the scale of opportunity globally and his vision. When shared with other angel investors, they felt the same and we were keen to support Tom and Nikhil.”
Mr Brunten said the fact he could meet his co-founder, the Ignite team and his future investors in one evening shows the crucial role organisations like Ignite play.
Jo York, programme manager at Ignite, added: “It’s been an absolute pleasure having Tom and Nikhil take part in our Pre-Accelerator Programme. Over the past five months, we’ve seen them combine their skills and passions to build Grid Finder into a viable business, and successfully secure investment through the Ignite network. And it all started at a networking event.
The Pre-Accelerator that Grid Finder were a part of is the first of a range of programmes we’ve started delivering in the North East through funding from the North of Tyne Combined Authority. Grid Finder is a great example of how such programmes can contribute to economic growth in our digital economy, and highlights the importance of NTCA’s support to create and support businesses like this in the region.”