Local entrepreneurs and SEO experts Andrew Allen and Kieran Headley, founders of SEO platform ‘Hike’, have successfully secured an investment of £130,000 for their business from Jenson Solutions, an early-stage SEIS and EIS investment fund.
Hike is a SaaS platform designed to solve the SEO problems that small businesses face. It guides businesses with little to no knowledge to the top of the search engine rankings by enabling them to create and deliver a bespoke SEO strategy specific for their target niche.
The pair, based in Claybrooke Parva in Leicestershire, spotted the opportunity for Hike after being surrounded by startup founders whilst enrolling on UK-based startup accelerator, Ignite. They soon discovered that these businesses needed SEO support to compete but, due to limited budgets, couldn’t afford the fees of big SEO agencies. They decided that they would create something that would enable them to do their own SEO, and not have to employ an agency if they didn’t wish to.
“We did some market research and found that although 90% of businesses said SEO was super important for their growth, over half were not doing any or doing very, very little,” explain Andrew and Kieran, “75% of these founders wanted an automated platform as a solution and there’s nothing on the market that does this for startup businesses, so we set about creating Hike.”
“Many tools provide the user with valuable data and assume that they’ll know what to do with it. Hike is an action-based solution that guides you through exactly what to do with the data, step by step, whilst explaining why each step is beneficial. It helps small businesses conquer and navigate the world of SEO.”
Already with almost 4000 customers since September 2018 and available in 10 different languages in 70 different countries, Hike has truly gone worldwide. With investment from Jenson Solutions, Andrew and Kieran will be able to take Hike to the next level. The next year see’s the team developing the platform further to improve their client’s performance, alongside immediate plans to grow the team.
Jenson Solutions have been providing numerous companies with the financial and operational support to help them grow and develop since 2001. They now have over 25 partners throughout the UK and provide services to help companies start up, raise funding, grow organically and by acquisition, restructure if required and ultimately prepare for exit. In 2012, Jenson Funding Partners LLP launched the first Jenson Seed EIS Fund and have since raised over £12m and invested in over 90 companies.
Andrew says, “We’re very excited to be working with Jenson Solutions for this next stage of Hike’s growth. There’s mutual excitement at what we can achieve by working together and maximizing Hike’s potential for growth across multiple territories”.
To find out more about Hike, please visit: https://hikeseo.co/ or follow Hike on twitter @hike_seo.
