KLIK SaaS Raises £300K Seed Funding at £6M Valuation

Key Takeaways

1. KLIK SaaS has closed a £300,000 seed round backed by SEIS and EIS tax-relief schemes, valuing the pre-revenue company at £6 million.
2. The round was funded by independent investors, including pharmaceutical veteran Malcolm Knott, former CEO of Industrial Technology Systems (ITS) for over 30 years.​
3. The Hartlepool-based platform enables organisations to transform existing websites into branded online community hubs, bringing member management, events, communication, and recruitment into a single licensed system.​
4. KLIK SaaS is pre-revenue and nearing launch, with plans for workshops and live demonstrations to attract licensing partners.
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Quick Recap

Hartlepool-based KLIK SaaS, founded by Kelly M. Whitfield, has completed a £300,000 funding round backed by the UK’s SEIS and EIS investment schemes, placing the pre-revenue business at a £6 million valuation. The seed capital came from a group of independent backers, headlined by Malcolm Knott, a long-time leader in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. The announcement was shared via social media and regional press in late February 2026, as the platform nears its commercial launch.

Community Platform Strategy

KLIK SaaS is not a website builder, CRM, or standalone event platform. It positions itself as a “community layer” that sits behind an organisation’s existing website and provides a branded, members-only environment for networking, collaboration, and engagement. Organisations can license the platform to manage members, host events, advertise opportunities, and facilitate peer-to-peer connections, all while retaining full control of their own data.

Founder Kelly M. Whitfield describes the integration as minimal: “It takes just two buttons on an existing website to make it happen”. The platform targets trade associations, charities, business clubs, and industry bodies that currently rely on fragmented third-party tools to manage their communities. KLIK SaaS has already secured a partnership with Learning Curve Group, one of the UK’s largest training and education providers.

The SEIS and EIS backing is a significant detail. Under these UK government schemes, individual investors receive up to 50% income tax relief (SEIS) and 30% (EIS), plus capital gains tax exemptions, making early-stage UK startups highly attractive to angel investors. This structure likely played a role in assembling the independent investor group behind KLIK’s round.​

Growing Demand for Owned Community Platforms

The timing of KLIK SaaS’s raise aligns with a broader shift in how organisations think about digital communities. Reliance on third-party social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook for community engagement has long created issues around data ownership, algorithmic reach, and lack of monetisation control. A growing cohort of platforms now promises to bring community management in-house.

The global community management SaaS market has attracted significant capital in recent years. Hivebrite, a Paris-based community platform serving organisations like Boeing and the Obama Foundation, has raised a total of $99.8 million across five rounds, including a $37 million Series B in 2023. Disciple Media, a London-based creator community platform, raised $6 million from angel investors including Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason. Even niche players like Gradual, focused on enterprise community-led experiences, have closed seed rounds north of $1.7 million.

For KLIK SaaS, the white-label licensing model is a differentiator. Rather than hosting communities on its own domain (as Circle or Mighty Networks do), KLIK layers onto existing websites, letting organisations keep their brand front and centre while adding structured engagement tools behind the scenes. This positions KLIK closer to a B2B infrastructure play than a consumer-facing community product.

Competitive Landscape

The community platform SaaS space is crowded, but most established players operate at much larger scale and pricing tiers. For a fair comparison, the two most relevant competitors to KLIK SaaS at its current stage are Disciple Media (London-based, angel-funded community platform) and Gradual (US-based, seed-stage enterprise community platform).

Disciple Media holds the advantage in market maturity, with 700+ communities and over 2 million members already on its platform. It offers polished mobile app experiences but comes with steep pricing that starts at $399/month and scales quickly. Gradual, meanwhile, competes on the enterprise side with a focus on bringing events, video calls, forums, and member directories under one roof for large organisations. KLIK SaaS’s strongest card is its low-friction integration model, where organisations do not need to migrate away from their existing website to adopt the platform.

TechnoTrenz’s Takeaway

I find KLIK SaaS’s approach genuinely interesting, and here is why. In my experience covering SaaS funding rounds, the vast majority of community platforms ask organisations to move their audience onto a new domain or app. KLIK flips that script. The idea that you can bolt a structured community layer onto an existing website with minimal technical effort is appealing, especially for trade associations and charities that often lack dedicated tech teams.

That said, I think the £6 million valuation on zero revenue is a bold ask. It signals that investors are betting heavily on the licensing model’s potential to scale across entire industries rather than one organisation at a time. If KLIK can land a few large industry-wide licensing deals, the math could work out quickly. If adoption is slow, that valuation becomes harder to justify.