Start-up secures £500k funding
Tech start-up Faces Consent, based in Stafford, has secured £500,000 Series A funding from first time investors Social Money.
This is the second round of funding for the aesthetics and beauty app after it secured £90,000 six months ago.
Faces Consent was launched two-and-a-half years ago by entrepreneurs Ben O’Brien and Ashley Simpson-Davies as an app designed to house the consent forms for their own private aesthetic clinic. They soon realised that other practitioners were eager to use their technology, so they granted free access to help build a critical mass of users. Since then, Faces Consent has seen impressive growth with over 45,000 registered users, 90 per cent of which are UK based.
While the app itself is free, Faces Consent has a range of commercial partnerships which bring in revenue. It currently sees an average of £20,000 of pharmaceutical sales each day as practitioners purchase products such as Toxins and fillers directly within the app. This figure is likely to increase and the Faces Consent team have plans to increase their product range.
The business has been valued at £5 million. In exchange for the £500,000 investment, the founders are giving 10 per cent of their business to Social Money, which is the parent company of millennial buy now, pay later finance firm Payl8r and bridge lending business SoMo.
On March 28 it was announced that Payl8r has become a new lending partner on the Faces Consent app, allowing users to select flexible payments in exchange for their treatment and pharmaceutical products, such as Toxins and fillers, which are sold directly through the app. It was through negotiating this deal that a wider investment partnership was realised and agreed.
Ben O’Brien, co-founder and managing director at Faces Consent, commented: “This is a sizable investment for Faces, and one that can help transform our growing business. We plan to make more hires to strengthen our tech team and to develop further our plans to launch our own pharmaceutical product range.
“What’s really exciting about this investment is the added value we get through Social Money’s expertise. The team has really strong tech expertise and is always one step ahead of the market. Together we make a formidable team.”
Louis Alexander, owner and director of Social Money, said: “This is the first time that Social Money has invested outside of our business. It’s not something that we were actively seeking to do, but when an opportunity as strong as this comes along, you have to take it.”
