Serve First raises £5m to convert surveys and reviews into frontline action
This article covers Serve First, a startup that has raised £5m in a growth funding round from Pembroke VCT and the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II via fund manager Mercia Ventures to scale sales and product development. The funding will support hires, further investment in AI and a European rollout of its customer experience data platform that aggregates feedback and converts it into frontline actions for multi-site retail, hospitality and health operators.
Serve First has raised £5m in a growth funding round from Pembroke VCT and the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II, through fund manager Mercia Ventures, to scale sales and product development — including hires and more investment in AI. The deal matters because the business, which launched in 2023, says it has almost doubled annual recurring revenue since an earlier round and is expanding across Europe, signalling fresh investor appetite for CX data platforms that turn feedback into frontline action.
Why it matters
The funding comes as organisations with multiple sites increasingly look to centralise customer insight and convert it quickly into operational change. Serve First targets that gap by aggregating feedback from in-store surveys, online reviews and mystery shopping and pushing actionable tasks to frontline teams. The company’s claimed growth and a European rollout covering more than 2,500 pharmacies suggest momentum beyond a UK-only pilot stage.
For investors, the combination of recurring revenue growth and a product that ties directly to customer loyalty and compliance (including a new offering aimed at helping venues meet Martyn’s Law requirements) makes the business a strategic play in customer experience automation. The deal also points to continued regional fund activity — the Midlands Engine fund is explicitly aimed at supporting businesses across the Midlands.
Inside the product
Serve First’s software ingests multiple feedback sources and synthesises them into operational tasks and performance metrics for frontline staff and managers. The platform is positioned at the intersection of customer experience and operations: it promises faster closed-loop feedback, performance tracking and insights for multi-site retail, hospitality, health and wellness, franchise and facilities management customers.
Customers named in the announcement include Brentford FC, The Sushi Co, Topps Tiles, The Body Shop and Spud Bros, illustrating use cases across retail, events, hospitality and foodservice. The company says it has also secured a European contract covering 2,500+ pharmacies across seven countries, a deployment that tests the product’s ability to scale across different regulatory and multilingual environments.
Serve First plans to use the funding to strengthen sales and marketing — including hiring a chief revenue officer — and to accelerate product workstreams, notably further investment in AI capabilities aimed at making insight-to-action faster and more autonomous.
Who are the investors?
The round is backed by Pembroke VCT and the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II, the latter invested via fund manager Mercia Ventures. Pembroke previously invested in Serve First in June 2025, and this follow-on check reflects that continuing support.
In the announcement, Fred Ursell, Investor at Pembroke Investment Managers, said:
The best investments reveal themselves quickly. Erol is a rare founder – someone who has both operated multi-site businesses at the coalface and scaled software companies, which means he understood this problem from the inside before Serve First ever wrote a line of code. That founder-market fit is showing in the numbers: since backing him in June 2025, Serve First has grown revenue at breakneck speed, deepened relationships with its existing enterprise clients, and secured a significant European rollout with a major client. When a portfolio company executes this well this early, increasing our support is an obvious decision. We're excited to back the team through the next phase.
In the announcement, Howard Mitchell, Investor at Mercia Ventures, said:
The Serve First team have built a great product that is loved by their expanding list of customers. With market demand strengthening, this is an opportune time for them to accelerate growth. We are excited to support them on their journey.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Erol Ayvaz, Founder & CEO at Serve First, said:
The company’s growth over the last year is a clear indication of the market appetite for Serve First’s offering, and this latest funding injection speaks to both the future potential of the business and the strong delivery over the last year by our exceptional team. It’s an exciting time to be operating in this space, and there remains considerable untapped potential for Serve First’s offering. We expect market demand to accelerate rapidly with the rise of agentic AI, which is making customer experience far more critical to business performance than ever before.
Ayvaz, who previously held roles at Asana and Market Force Information and has more than 20 years’ experience in technology and customer experience, founded Serve First in 2023. The business employs 25 staff and says it has grown ARR to just over £2m since its prior funding round, which the company cites as evidence of traction with enterprise customers.
The bigger picture
Serve First’s raise highlights two broader trends. First, investors remain willing to back companies that tie customer feedback to operational outcomes, especially where recurring revenue and cross-border rollouts reduce unit economics risk. Second, the mention of agentic AI reflects rising investor and founder expectations that autonomous AI tools will augment how businesses collect, interpret and act on customer data.
The involvement of the Midlands Engine fund also underscores continued regional investment flows in the UK, channelled through managers such as Mercia. For startups in the CX and data tooling space, the deal is a reminder that combining domain expertise with operational integrations — and demonstrating rapid revenue growth — can unlock follow-on capital.
Serve First’s expansion into Europe and its sector mix — retail, hospitality, health and events — will be one to watch as the company converts the new capital into hires and product development. The investment also contributes to a broader UK narrative: investors remain active in backing data-led customer experience platforms that promise measurable improvements to service performance.
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