In a move that massively dilutes Crowdcube shareholders, Peter Hargreaves has invested £2m into the SME invoicing and on line form company, Powered Now.
Powered now had raised £1.1m on Crowdcube in two tranches in 2014 and 2015. In order to achieve this Hargreaves' investment, the company altered existing shareholders pre-emption rights by special resolution. That's why the dilution took place.
Whilst Hargreaves may be castigated for his £3.2m funding of the Leave campaign in order to help him avoid the new EU tax avoidance directives, his involvement in any start up must be a massive plus. Powered Now certainly needed that boost.
The company recently filed accounts for YE Jun17 showing a £500k loss against a projected £1m profit in the 2014 projections. Having completely missed those 14 projections, the 2015 version had a loss for the same year of £347k; so much closer to the mark.
The company gets rave reviews for its service and products and now it has a very serious backer, we'd expect it to make good progress. It is just a shame that pre emeption rights which were clearly sold to investors have been tampered with. Mind you the company did really need the cash.
