Incus Performance

In March 2019 Dunelm Partners made their first investment in INCUS Performance contributing £200k of the company’s £550,000 equity raising.

Founded in 2016 by Chris Ruddock, at the time of the initial investment a 26 year old engineering graduate, INCUS Performance was a sports technology start up that looked to help triathletes train better for the triathlon sports of swimming, running and cycling. The INCUS platform provided high quality analytics to improve technique and training. By combining artificial intelligence and data analytics with wearable technology, INCUS brought new levels of technical clarity to athletes in an easy to understand way.

As top-class athletes began to use the device more, it became clear to live triathlon broadcasters that the device could also deliver live data to support their broadcasts and a number of contractual discussions were opened with them.

Dunelm helped organise and participate in follow-on fund raisings in 2020 and 2021 to support the continued development of the product as well as managing the significant commercial issues presented by a nationwide Covid lockdown as the Company moved towards a significant Series A financing as the next step in its lifecycle.

Unfortunately, Covid did delay the commercialisation of the product- at one time every pool in Europe was shut and no live triathlon events were taking place. This, together with the disruption to the financing market following the Autumn 2022 budget – a letter of offer to invest £500k in INCUS was withdrawn immediately following the financial fall-out caused by the budget announcement – put pressure on cash flow. Consequently, despite a further innovative rescue finance package put together by Dunelm in late 2022, the Company went into liquidation in Spring 2023.

This was desperately disappointing, given the potential of the product and effort committed to it, for the INCUS team and all its financial supporters. However, Dunelm believed it had explored every avenue with the Founder and the Incus team to achieve the success they aspired to and utilised all the Dunelm Partner group expertise in this process. Dunelm also sought to support the Founder and team during and post liquidation as best it could.