Date 17th July 2020, Manchester, United Kingdom

Capsule, the smart simple online CRM, announced today that it has completed a minority multi-million-pound investment from Newlands Capital with the support of Hermes GPE

The investment will help Capsule continue its investment in customer centric expansion of building products and features that help businesses to stay organised, know more about their customers, build strong relationships and make the most of sales opportunities.

Capsule was launched in 2009, to provide a simple and easy to use online CRM via a SaaS model from the beginning.

Immediately the team realised the benefit to customers of building strong integrations with other productivity tools, including integrations with G Suite,Mailchimp in and Xero (which has over 2m global users) in (where Capsule is ranked 1st on the Xero Appstore – https://apps.xero.com/uk/function/crm) and as one reviewer on the Xero Appstore put it,

“Capsule is a simple CRM that is very easy to use and with the integration into Xero is even more powerful!” Xero Appstore review

With c10,000 customers across 170 countries (c.60% of sales are outside the UK including c.20% in the USA), Capsule is another fantastic example of a Manchester, UK, based global success story.

Recent additional product features include:

● Integration with QuickBooks (which has over 5m customers globally) launched in Apr 2020 (already Capsule is ranked 5th on the QuickBooks Appstore after less than three months https://quickbooks.intuit.com/app/apps/search/?searchTerm=crm). As one reviewer on the QuickBooks Appstore put it, “The integration and automation of contacts between QuickBooks, Capsule and Mailchimp means
things that took us hours previously can be done almost automatically now. It’s streamlined our lead capture and onboarding processes. This saves us time and resources that we would much rather spend servicing clients. Love it.” QuickBooks Appstore review.
● Launch of Teams in 2018 – offering advanced features for businesses including insight into business and sales performance, and more customisation including extended user permission controls
● Launch of Enterprise in [March] 2020 – offering an enterprise style package with a dedicated account manager, onboarding support and larger quotas.

Newlands Capital were attracted to invest in Capsule due to the strong team, the market leading technology, differentiated market position and the market growth opportunities.

Newlands investment will help the Capsule team continue their impressive track record of investment in customer centric product innovation with the launch of the Microsoft 365 integration in early 2021 and a pipeline of new products in development to follow.

Duncan Stockdill, CEO and Cofounder of Capsule said, “We are delighted to have Newlands Capital onboard to help us continue our product led growth,
putting the customer experience first in everything we do. The bespoke investment offered by Newlands and their 20 year plus technology investment experience is what we need at this point in the development of Capsule.”

Phillip Haines, CTO and Cofounder of Capsule said, “Having built successful integrations with Gsuite, Mailchimp, Xero and QuickBooks, and doubled the
size of our tech team in the last few years, I am excited about the investment from Newlands to support our exciting product road map starting with an Integration with Microsoft 365 in early 2021.”

Charlie Johnstone and Fiona McMahon, Cofounders of Newlands Capital said, “It is exciting to be backing Duncan, Phillip and the team at Capsule in our first deal as Newlands Capital. Having founded the business just over a year ago we reviewed over 100 other investment opportunities, searching for a business with a high quality team, high recurring revenue and large
growth market opportunity. Capsule ticks all the boxes for us as an investor.
The ease of use, functionality offered, quality of native integrations with the likes of Gsuite, Mailchimp, Xero and QuickBooks (with Microsoft 365 to come in 2021) for the price paid means Capsule has a very attractive, differentiated offering in a market growing at 10-20% per annum.

Capsule has demonstrated the value it adds to its customers and the quality of its customer base throughout the recent Covid crisis.”

Advisors

Advisors on the deal include:

• Obair Partners – strategic and corporate finance advice to the company and founders
• Dentons – legal advice to the company and founders
• Alexander & Co – tax advice to the company and founders
• RSM – financial and Tax due diligence for Newlands
• Eversheds, Manchester – legal advice to Newlands
• CIL – commercial due diligence for Newlands
• Intechnica – IT due diligence for Newlands
• EY – Tax advice to Newlands
• AJ Gallaghers – insurance due diligence for Newlands
• Parmentier Arthur – tax valuation advice for Newlands
• Korn Ferry – referencing for Newlands

About Capsule:

Capsule was launched in 2009 following the founders’ frustration with existing CRM services that were either overly simplistic or far too complex for most businesses. We believe the value of a modern CRM lies in the ability to help businesses stay organized, know more about their customers,
build strong relationships and to make the most of sales opportunities, all while minimizing user input. We built Capsule to deliver on these values and today Capsule is used by thousands of businesses of all sizes all over the world in over 170 countries.

About Newland Capital

With a combined experience of over 30 years, Fiona McMahon and Charlie Johnstone founded Newlands Capital to invest in growing, technology and technology-enabled UK based businesses with ambitious leaders.
We focus on making investments of up to £20m, in businesses making profits of £1m to £5m, that have the ability to grow high quality (e.g. recurring) revenues. We work actively with management teams and founders to help grow and develop their businesses, maximising their potential and value.

We have a down-to-earth, supportive approach, and combine management and founders’ expertise with our own experience and network to accelerate growth. Our bespoke capital offering for each business, means that we can be flexible on deal structures, hold periods and the type and trajectory of growth, offering the most flexible solution for growth businesses.

About Hermes GPE

Hermes GPE is part of Federated Hermes International. For over 27 years, we have specialised in investing in what we consider to be the best and most relevant investment opportunities in global private equity from offices in London, New York and Singapore. Our objective is to create
sustainable returns for our investors, no matter what is happening on the global stage.

We focus on fund investments and co-investments in buyouts and growth businesses – managing $6bn of assets via managed accounts, pooled funds and side cars, working in partnership with a wide range of Limited Partners. We employ a forward-looking investment strategy – seeking trends that we think are going to shape economies and societies in the future – investing where we ‘should’ rather than where we ‘can’. The result is an impressive and consistent track record which highlights our stockpicking skills.