First it was the founder and Chairman Steve Smith of Poundland fame. Now the multi millionaire Darren Richards has also left.
We dont know why, yet, but the two key figures behind Estatesdirect, which raised £493k on Crowdcube in 2014, have both now left the company. Obviously if things had been going to plan, then this wouldnt have happened. In the Crowdcube video, the company claimed it had a 3 year plan to have hundreds of local offices all over the UK. The video map which is populated with these offices, has many of them in Loch Ness!
Richards made his money by selling DatingDirect.com to Match.com for £27m. With that sort of capital you might ask why they needed Crowdcube.
Another one of the company's big hitters Rodger Danks has also gone overboard.
We tried the site just to see what was happening. They offer a free instant valuation service. It's crap. We had a house valued recently and the value that Estatesdirect came up with is around half the real value. According to Steve Smith in 2014, the company had more than 130 franchisees lined up - here. Yet a quick search reveals that they have very few, if any, franchisees live today.
Accounts are not due out until August so we will just have to wait - unless of course it closes before then. Shareholders, convinced by the A Lister team members, must just hope that there is someone still in the wheel house.
PS - Luke Lang backed this one personally which is a sure sign that it's going tits up.
PS - Luke Lang backed this one personally which is a sure sign that it's going tits up.
alarm bells were ringing with this one when they institutional investor, which supported the raise with an investment of 300k was found to be a start up itself, who just a year previously had less than £100 gbp on the balance sheet.
ReplyDeletePP Asset Management? They seem to be worth several million now.
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