Case Study - Mint Ventures

The Scottish Tech Army recently supported angel investment club and network Mint Ventures to develop a web platform that would facilitate new member registration including payments functionality and applications for funding from entrepreneurs.

Mint Ventures is a women-led business angel investment club and network offering a fresh approach to investing by providing Social, Human and Economic (SHE) Capital for women entrepreneurs and diverse executive teams or boards. Mint Ventures encourages both women and men to learn how to angel invest with as little as £2k per annum and provide a much-needed new capital source to invest. The training offered by Mint Ventures enables everyday people to become angel investors   to become part of like-minded growing community.

Co-founder and CEO Gillian Fleming first learned about the Scottish Tech Army on social media. Gillian and Mint Ventures have a strong links and interest in the Scottish tech ecosystem. When the Scottish Tech Army was launched by co-founders Alistair Forbes and Peter Jaco, it coincided with Mint Ventures’ setting up and pivoting to prioritise the digitisation of its business.

Gillian commented: “We were ready to launch when the first lockdown hit and had planned to have a program of events, and meetings which focussed on being physically present. We approached the Scottish Tech Army to assist us in creating a platform that would enable us to digitise our offering.”

After discussing the project’s requirements in more detail with Joanna Allan, the project was matched with volunteers. 

Scottish Tech Army volunteer Iain McLeod first learned about the Scottish Tech Army through LinkedIn. As a freelance developer looking to broaden his portfolio of projects and gain new skills, being able to do that while helping an organisation deliver a worthy project made joining STA an easy decision. He signed up one evening, and by the end of the day had been allocated to a project.

When Iain joined the Mint Ventures project, some of the technical groundwork had already been put in place by other volunteers. Iain said: “The project had already been running for some time, so all the technical groundwork had already been put in place for me. I was able to build on that work and develop a website that hopefully helps Mint Ventures grow.”

Gillian and Iain met regularly online and decided on what style and features were required.  Iain would work on those, act on the feedback, and then move onto the next set of features.

The website is integrated with a platform called Thinkific which Mint Ventures has utilised to assist with the training material on its website. Users can then navigate back to the original website to sign up or make further contact.  Technology-wise there were a few platforms in the mix that Iain hadn’t used before and relished the opportunity to experience - Netlify for hosting the website, Stripe for taking payments, and Tailwind for the CSS styling.

Iain added “All in all, it was an excellent opportunity to get some real-world experience with new technologies - this is one of the most appealing aspects of the project to me - the chance to learn something new. 

“The project itself was exciting, and it’s been a pleasure working with Gillian. I’ve been able to pick her brains about business/start-up investment so as well as being exposed to new technologies, it’s also been a great opportunity to learn about an industry that I previously knew very little about.”

Gillian paid tribute to Iain’s work on the project:
“Working with Iain has been a delight and I look forward to actually meet him in person someday! He’s been extremely helpful and supportive making himself available to advise and develop the platform throughout the project and was really well matched with us.”

Gillian said: “The Scottish Tech Army have been instrumental in getting our company off the ground and have people signing up online that we may not otherwise have reached.  The team at STA has fundamentally supported us to digitise our strategy to launch during a pandemic by pairing us with an expert developer to design a web platform for companies to apply to us for funding and a streamlined online application process and training for our members.”