Is this comedy really what we want to achieve through equity crowdfunding?

Videogam Worldwide raised £53k on Crowdcube at the turn of the year. Its a start up in the greeting card market.

In this Crowdcube pitch, the headline was  - ''VideoGram have signed a deal with Argos and are currently in talks with Harrods to discuss listing their product.''

Impressive stuff and as we all know this sort of claim is checked by the out to lunch department at Crowdcube, thoroughly.

Videogram Worldwide have just completed a new raise on a site that we havent come across before, Crowd for Angels https://crowdforangels.com/company/Videogram-worldwide-ltd-42

They have raised another £50k of what they describe as seed funding.

Now the really interesting bit about all this is that the sales to date of their products are just under £10k. There is no mention anywhere, at all, of the signed deal they had done with Argos - the one that was the backbone of their Crowdcube raise. Unluckily the company also seems to have failed to follow through with its Harrods deal. We assume the meagre turnover has come from the website, where the reseller page is empty.

In the new pitch the company have launched two new products - not something the first raise highlighted. So the having failed with one lets try another two shall we approach.

The new pitch states - ''Having three brands within the company puts us in a great position compared to other businesses;
For example; should we want to liquidate some of our assets we can sell one of our brands injecting cash in to the business.'' Hmmm.

On marketing they say -  

''We aim to invest £50,000 in marketing VideoGram over the next 6 months to give it a real push and achieve the forecast figures we have projected. We believe this amount will be required to really test the market and give VideoGram a chance to compete with the big players in the industry.'' :))


The exit section really seals the deal for us -

''The Company aim is to be brought out within 3 years. It is likely companies such as Photobox and Moonpig would have the greatest interest in acquiring us due to their buying trends over the last few years. We believe a conservative estimate at that stage would be approximately £5-£10million.'' Thats a cert then.

Seemingly the 11 people who invested agree with them.