Serve First, a startup that has developed an AI customer experience and performance management platform, has secured an investment of £5m.
Launched in 2023, the Serve First platform collects and analyses customer feedback from in-store surveys, online reviews and mystery shopping. The data is then turned into insights for the team to improve service performance.
The company has reported its annual recurring revenue has reached over £2m, with clients including Brentford Football Club, The Body Shop and The Sushi Co.
“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,” Erol Ayvaz, founder and chief of Serve First.
“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.”
The funding came from Pembroke VCT and the Midlands Engine Investment Fund, managed by Mercia Ventures.
“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,” said Fred Ursell, head of investments at Pembroke Investment Managers.
“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.”
