Cornerstone Partners and SFC Capital participate in a £545k round into Cubic Lease

Proptech company Cubic Lease secures early stage funding to digitise the property and letting process.

The global pandemic has accelerated the need for paperless, contactless application processes. The ‘new normal’ has changed the face of business administration and digitised forms are set to replace paper based customer onboarding.

Enter Cubic Lease, the early stage mobile app that automates letting and property purchases by verifying photo ID, AML, soft credit checks, and Open Banking API’s that assess affordability and proof of funds.

Cubic Lease was co-founded in October 2019 by financial services and property professional James Owusu, an alumni of the annual Cornerstone scale-up programme which is hailed as the first black and diverse accelerator in Europe. After participating in the 9-week programme, James successfully won first prize at the closing demo day competition, paving the way for investment from the Cornerstone angel syndicate.

Cubic Lease continued their fundraising efforts by securing investment from SFC Capital, one of the most active seed investment funds in the UK. Their investments include Onfido, Jack & Bry and ETIQ AI.

The £545k round includes, amongst other funders, angel investors Richard Harley and Samantha Tubb, Founder and investor respectively of ScholarPack, an education management software business based in Lincoln.

Edwin Appiah, Co Founder of Cornerstone Partners says of the backing:

“Inefficiencies in the application process provide a real opportunity to innovate and digitise customer onboarding practices. James, who showed some real promise during our scale-up programme, is well placed to embed these changing behaviours for property transactions. We look forward to supporting the business as they grow and working in partnership with SFC Capital, and angel investors Samantha and Richard”.

James Owusu CEO and Co Founder of Cubic Lease comments:

“Working with Cornerstone Partners has proven to be a great success for our business. Joining and winning the Cornerstone scale up programme has played an important role in clarifying the vision for the company along with their assistance in developing our fundraising strategy. We are pleased to be aligning with an organisation that complements our values and are excited to see what the future holds.”

If you are a founder who is seeking investment or interested in learning more about Cornerstone Partners, please visit our website at www.cornerstonepartners.co.uk.

For more information, please contact:

Edwin Appiah, Co Founder of Cornerstone Partners, [email protected]

About Cornerstone Partners (“Cornerstone”)

Cornerstone Partners is the leading angel network for black and diverse founding teams in the UK. We focus our attention on this group because we believe their entrepreneurial talent is often overlooked, underestimated, and underrepresented in the traditional funding community.

We are a generalist angel syndicate providing investment of between £25k and £100k into post revenue businesses across the UK. We add value by leveraging the background and skillset of our fellow partners and external talent network. In addition to providing capital, Cornerstone runs an internship programme to widen access to angel investing, an annual scale up programme for post revenue businesses and commissions research to raise awareness of the benefits of diversity led investing.

Since inception, Cornerstone has supported 14 UK businesses and invested just under £1m in aggregate. Examples of our recent investments include Tectonic, Coordinate Sport, Hutch Logistics and Nudea.