We really do wonder what the Crowdcube Due Diligence Dept does all day - lunch can only last soooooo looooooooong.
A current pitch whose name we shall keep to ourselves, claims that the founder has experience in start ups. It's a fundamental claim in any business pitch - this company is being led by someone with real entrepreneurial and commercial experience.
The obvious give away here is that no names of companies that make up this experience are given. That seems to be Crowdcube's new clever way around having to state real facts.
In the forum a straight question 'what experience' is answered with the real information. None.
A couple of 'start ups' one at school and one at university (where it was not a commercial venture and it gained a 1 star rating) do not make up 'experience' in the commercial world. Otherwise we could expect them to be including that dinner they arranged down at the local or their own weddings.
Its just more of the same from the platform that brought you Solar Cloth Company and 88 Delicious, to name just two pitches that had false information vetted by the Crowdcube OTL Dept and passed as verified.
Even worse when age comes into it and not just this pitch you refer to. It's underwhelming, and always used as PR by naive and inexperienced founders.
ReplyDelete'Remember... I'm only 19'. So? Real money is in play here. It doesn't matter if you do well for your age! It matters that you do well. If the startup fails, I'm not going to say 'wow, you actually did really well considering how young you are'.
As a side point, far too many pitches are saying that their revenue streams are to 'get by' or 'sustain themselves'. They either aren't confident that they can grow their revenue so downplay it, or they haven't a clue how the business will make money yet.
You should definitely check out the campaign with a giant pre-revenue valuation.
completey agree - these businesses aren't suitable for crowdfunding yet and would be much better going to an incubator so they can develop their idea....this is why so many businesses are effectively forced to lie / oversell their idea on crwodfunding sites, specifically crowdcube
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