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Monday 22 January 2018

What now for Zero Carbon Foods?


This post has been removed as we were getting an increasing number of spammers commenting.

The company accounts are due out in February so we see what is really what then. 

11 comments:

  1. What beautifully lazy journalism. Michel was moved to an advisor because he couldn’t attend a monthly meeting as we created a board to scale the business. We did a down round when we took a corporate investment from Europe’s largest indpendent salad grower G’s Fresh. We have launched into M&S, Ocado, Wholefoods, Planet Organic and Farmdrop and are in advanced negotiations with other multiple retailers. Furthermore we have passed Red Tractor, BRC and M&S’s Field to Fork technical Food safety standards that allow us to scale our retail business. All of this could be picked up by signing up to our newsletter or getting in touch for an interview, not receiving a companies house update and making wild assumptions about board changes. Kindest regards Steven Dring.

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    1. Point taken about Roux. But you still had two others resign. The investment by GS was tiny at £125k so any down round on this is irrelevant - I dont have any proof it was a DR. Stockist list looking good but as Im sure you know its the pull through that counts not the initial listing. You cnat deny that compared with your Crowdcube sales pitch you are a long way short of what you sold to investors(you were supposed to have a £1.7m net profit this least year) and you must be very short of cash. As we said we like your business but feel you were poorly advised by Crowdcube. Look forward to being totally wrong about it all when your accounts come out soon.

      Would be delighted to do a piece on what you see as the future of Zero and how ECF has helped or not. I'll drop you a line. We did a similar thing on Hopstuff Brewery if you put it into our search. Lazy journalists we are not.

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    2. ps Suppose the bottom line is had you not made up the Crowdcube projections and valuation you would never have got that £580k investment - certainly not on the figures you have produced. Worth some consideration I think.

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    3. Again. We moved Glen who was an early investor but lived in Dubai and couldn't be present to scale the business and replaced him with appointees that are shortly to be added, one a board member of the British Investment Bank and investor since our first round, the G's head of sales and marketing and the G's group finance director will also join as an advisor.

      Please drop me a line then I could give you my explanation and then if you disagree you print that, that's what one would believe to be fair approach, no? Additionally, there seems to be two separate subjects 'Equity Crowd Funding/Due Diligence/Crowdcube advice' and the progress of Zero Carbon Food Ltd, Ill happily give you my opinions on both.

      As a serial entrepreneur you will know how hard it is to get any business from idea-to-profit and therefore apologies re "lazy journalism" but the fact that we are arranging to talk after this has been published just didn't seem fair to me, to the blood, sweat and tears from many people over the last 4 years, to our business or our investors.
      Kindest regards
      Steven

      Feel free to drop me a mail and we can arrange a call. Steven@growing-underground.com

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  2. Dear Rob - You have just updated the strap line of this piece with the line "We have little doubt had we contacted them directly they would have ignored us".

    A) Never turned down an interview yet.
    B) Think you might be justifying the fact you didn't contact us.
    C) You are actually predicting how we would have responded. Which is either telepathic or beyond arrogant. You decide.

    As I said in my message to you, if you want to discuss this drop me a line - like every other journalist from every other publication.

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    1. Well we agreed I would do that. The alteration which is obviously been added hence the red, wasnt supposed to be critical but now looking at it maybe its poorly expressed. Now corrected. Apologies.

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  3. What makes you doubt that they would have responded to you, Rob? Do you know Steven and Richard as well as the rest of us do? In my experience, they have a lot more to offer than this blog, which as Steven points out, is based almost entirely on huge assumptions made from the CH filings.

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  4. I have to defend this blog, yes it can be aggressive at times but it provides an excellence counterbalance to the thick PR fog of lies and spin that clouds UK startups and equity crowdfunding. The combative tone is no doubt a reaction to the shameful level of dishonesty and incompetence that plagues the UK ECF and startup scene right now.

    I can't comment on the specifics of ZCF and who knows maybe Steve and Richard are business visionaries. However looking at the latest ZCF accounts the company is losing money hand over fist so I'm happy to steer well clear.

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    1. Thanks. I had to delete (or rather not publish) one comment from anon which implied I was some sort of drivelling deviant with a failure complex. While this maybe true it didnt add anything to the this argument.

      I dont say in this post that ZCF are dead - just that they have misled investors - twice. I had forgotten that they had a second raise using their new trading name Growing Underground. In typical Crowdcube fashion these two raises, which are for the same legal entity, are displayed by Crowdcube as two seperate successes ie in their now infamous infographics it is 2 successful companies not one. That is rather why the blog exists.

      Invest in ZCF by all means but do it with your eyes open.

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  5. Eyes absolutely open, Rob. ZCF owns the Growing Underground brand. Always did.

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    1. As Im sure you are aware that was not the point being made. Because ZCF had failed to get close to their first CC projections, round 2 was promoted as GU. That was the point. CC have now claimed both as two seperate companies - take a look at their website. I do wonder sometimes about who anon is on here.

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