Ship Shape and Cardiff join forces

Ground-breaking Venture Capital search engine Ship Shape is teaming with Cardiff University to help investors find small growth companies.

The award-winning Wales fintech software identifies highly relevant investors in seconds. It is currently available to Universities, Venture Capital firms, Corporate Finance firms and Governmental organisations for the entrepreneurs they support.

Now, thanks to support from Welsh Government’s SMART Cymru programme, which is funded by the European Regional Development Fund, experts from Cardiff University’s School of Computer Science and Informatics have been brought onboard to further develop Ship Shape’s platform.

The project intends to create a new benchmark for investment financial data, driven by data science.

Ship Shape co-founder Alistair Baillie said: “Financial data on investment is not targeted enough. We need to cut out the noise and give decision-makers exactly and precisely what they need to know. We are delighted to lead this disruption, and to have the support of both Cardiff University and the Welsh Government’s SMART Cymru funding.”

Venture Capital is a growing industry. In 2020, the global Venture Capital industry was estimated at £220bn. For 2021, £310bn had already been invested by August. However, it is an industry plagued by entrepreneurs spending months trying to identify the right individuals at VC firms.

Professor Irena Spasic, School of Computer Science “We are delighted to be partnering with Ship Shape in their quest to match backers with businesses. Text mining and data science will play a key role in gaining knowledge for financial investments in the context of big data. We are happy to have an opportunity to translate our research into disruptive innovation.”

Colleague Dr Fernando Loizides, Deputy Director of Cardiff’s Data Science Academy added: “The partnership offers a wonderful opportunity to match academic expertise with industry need. Throughout the project we will aim to ensure there is flawless interaction between the systems and their end-users to deliver explainable AI and an enhanced user experience.”

Ship Shape won Fintech Start-up of the Year at Fintech Awards Wales 2021.