Business surgery: limber

Company name: limber

Year established: 2016

Sector: Tech

Number of staff: 6

Company owners: Chris Sanderson and Richard Lees

Website: www.limber.work

The Company 

Chris and Rich, limber’s founders, have a simple vision – they want to use technology to change the way the hospitality and retail sectors manage staffing.

limber is an on demand staffing platform designed, on one hand, to help hirers keep their staffing costs proportionate to their takings, and on the other, to empower a new generation of workers who value flexibility. 

Hirers can login and post shifts for whenever they need them. Shifts instantly appear in limber’s app which allows workers to swipe through the listings or search for something that works for them.  Hirers can either choose to review staff profiles themselves or let limber’s algorithm assign the best people for the job.  After shifts are completed, both hirers and workers provide feedback and payment is processed – limber taking care of the payroll administration. 

With limber, hirers can ensure they’re not over or understaffed and can finally take down the “part time staff wanted” sign from their windows.  On the other side of the marketplace, workers can mix and match shifts in their local area and fit work around whatever else they have going on.

The challenge

“Our medium term challenge is around funding. Because limber is a low margin, high volume proposition, we will need significant funding to get to the scale necessary to turn a profit. What advice would you offer us in that process and, in particular, what is the number one issue that could concern investors and how should we counter it?”

FEEDBACK

Ian Morgan, Director, ASC Finance for Business

“A shrewd investor will always look to balance risk and reward. At the early stages that risk is highest and the value of the business lower. The later in the process you involve an outside investor the smaller the proportion of the business you will have to give away. Short term you could look at borrowing funds against whatever assets you have available, and ‘family and friends’ can often be a useful source.

You need to show the business works and it is scalable. With the computer platform already developed, that will be down to marketing. Get local firms in Bristol to use the system by going to see them and explaining the benefits to them. You might use advertising and PR locally to build a network of workers.

Go as far as you can to grow the turnover and so you can show investors you have something unique.”

Matt Penneycard, Head, Downing Ventures

“Investors are somewhat obsessed with high margin SaaS (Software as a Service) business models at the moment. However, my advice is to make a strength out of what you’re currently viewing as a weakness. Investors respond to leadership, and an utter belief in what entrepreneurs are doing, so I would apply this to your challenge here. You’re operating in an industry that needs disrupting, so you’re already in the right zone for attracting investment.

Your stated need for a high degree of required funding is simply a product of the business sector that you operate in. There’s nothing wrong with this, if you stick to what’s fundamentally exciting about this as an investment proposition, rather than worrying about what the Techcrunch crowd thinks. This need for certain levels of funding just means that you are more targeted about the type of investor that you will be focusing on.

I would also advise that the most compelling element of any fund raising story is probably performance data. If you have achieved product-market fit and the model is early, but working, you will have an easier time raising money, particularly in the South West where many investors are wealthy and can be risk averse when it comes to backing young technology businesses. One way around this is to make the investment decision based less on hopes and dreams and more about extrapolating forecasts from early data signals.

Over and above all of this is you guys. How much do you want success for this? How truly committed are you, and what is your very specific end goal or reason for building this business. Ultimately this is what investors buy into. We need to feel that you are capable of doing what you are raising money for, and that its extremely important to you.”

Read more: Bristol Uni creates new investment fund