Vulpine raised £1m on Crowdcube in late 2015 and has now closed. It never delivered on its promises and figures we have now seen help to show why. Its not illegal but it is certainly immoral.
It turns out that the director of Vulpine was helping himself to a salary of over £90k pa at the same time as running a start up business, using shareholders money, rapidly into the ground.
We dont very often get to see these figures - people like this dont want this sort of thing out in the open. Vulpine tried to raise even more cash on Crowdcube this year, but luckily for all involved, failed miserably. Crowdcube were clearly totally oblivious to these goings on or they wouldnt have allowed the pitch to get off the ground. Or more likely didnt give a damn.
In the last 4 months (Dec 16 to March 17) before the director pulled the plug and there is only one director listed at CH, he paid himself £37k. This with the certain knowledge that the cash had run out. Just to clear up one fact that has appeared in the comments on other Vulpine posts here, this sole Director and Founder took back full control of the company in June 2016 - reportedly to turn it around. So yes it is he who is helping himself with both hands.
It illustrates yet again why we need ECF platforms to be run by professionals who have some skin in the game and why we need a more open and certainly more honest approach to assessing businesses using this form of financing. Before it is all too late.
A quick search online shows the director bought a £675,000 house in December. This seems like it's not just bad business sense but a serious fraud.
ReplyDeleteDo you have a link?
Delete90k pa for essentially sitting around and tweeting a constant stream of drivel. I'd be furious if I was a staff member or investor.
ReplyDeleteDon't miss the fact he was paying his wife a salary - she joined shortly after the board resigned. After the corwdfund raise, the board was appointed in Feb 2016 to try and turn around the mess, they realized the finances were in a much worse state than had been originally disclosed and the board then resigned in May due to a disagreement on the future direction. They wanted to liquidate and get some value back for the shareholders, Nick wanted to continue to milk the company until the bitter end!
ReplyDeleteHe was always quite full of sh!t, to be fair. Talked a good game but that's about it. Sunk investors' hard-earned into vanity projects like Hoy and Matrix Vulpine. The guy's deluded at best, criminal at worst.
ReplyDeleteDid wonder about his £5000 custom made hand built bike - ah well there goes my investment
ReplyDelete