Manchester Angels, the North’s premier angel network, has announced its latest two investments.
Its participation in funding rounds for early-stage technology companies Doris Labs and cyber security business Ghost Shift brings its total number of investments to 22.
London-based Doris Labs raised $600,000 (£450,000) in a pre-seed round led by Fuel Ventures, with participation from Manchester Angels and a group of angels from across the B2B software industry.
Founded by Hayden Munt, formerly at Vertice, and Frazer Kearl, formerly at Patsnap (pictured), Doris Labs brings together everything a sales team learns across calls, emails, documents and CRM systems into a single structured graph of the business.
Building on that foundation, the company is launching Sidekicks: always-on AI partners for every deal, with their own memory and routines.
In early deployments, Doris has saved sales representatives six hours of admin per week and increased deal velocity by 72 per cent.
Patently, an AI patent platform used by more than 1,000 teams in 40 countries, found that deals closing within the forecasted timeline increased by 165 per cent after adopting Doris.
Hayden Munt, co-founder and CEO of Doris Labs, said: “We’ve seen it so many times that each deal is treated as if it is siloed from the rest of the GTM – this doesn’t and shouldn’t have to be the case.
“The answer to any deal is there, just no one knows how to find it – Doris does.”
David Levine, principal at Manchester Angels, said: “Doris caught our attention with a unique approach and credible plan for a huge market.
“What sealed it was that each angel in our group could point to a moment at their own company where Doris would have made a real difference. That made the investment an easy decision.”
Manchester Angels has also participated in the pre-seed round of Ghost Shift, a Manchester-headquartered cyber security startup, which closed at a total of £250,000.
The investment was led for Manchester Angels by its chairman Richard Fallon, who runs the network’s cyber sub-group, investing alongside Cambridge Angels, Ante-Bellum Angels and Halceon.
The round unlocked a further £215,000 in matched funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), bringing the total capital unlocked for the company to £465,000.
The deal reflects Manchester Angels’ clear focus on cyber and intelligence, grounded in the sector backgrounds of its angels, including Fallon, who exited his previous business, Manchester data intelligence firm Naimuri, to QinetiQ in 2020.
Tom Sefton-Collins, co-founder and CEO of Ghost Shift, said: “Ghost Shift was founded around a simple belief: the information environment has become an operational domain in its own right, but the capabilities available to organisations operating within it haven’t kept pace.
“This investment allows us to accelerate on two fronts. We’re building the operational capability and team required to scale what we already know works, while investing in the R&D that will underpin what comes next.
“Manchester has an extraordinary history of computing, intelligence and innovation. Building the next generation of information capability backed by Manchester investors feels very appropriate.”
Manchester Angels’ members invested in both companies following the network’s member-led diligence process, drawing on the group’s experience as exited technology founders and operators.
Manchester Angels is an angel network of exited technology founders and operators that actively invests in, nurtures and mentors ambitious, high-growth-potential and game-changing technology businesses based in the North.
Manchester Angels has a portfolio of 22 deals and 45 active angels, with an average total ticket of £220,000.