Is this comedy really what we want to achieve through equity crowdfunding?

Videogam Worldwide raised £53k on Crowdcube at the turn of the year. Its a start up in the greeting card market.

In this Crowdcube pitch, the headline was  - ''VideoGram have signed a deal with Argos and are currently in talks with Harrods to discuss listing their product.''

Impressive stuff and as we all know this sort of claim is checked by the out to lunch department at Crowdcube, thoroughly.

Videogram Worldwide have just completed a new raise on a site that we havent come across before, Crowd for Angels https://crowdforangels.com/company/Videogram-worldwide-ltd-42

They have raised another £50k of what they describe as seed funding.

Now the really interesting bit about all this is that the sales to date of their products are just under £10k. There is no mention anywhere, at all, of the signed deal they had done with Argos - the one that was the backbone of their Crowdcube raise. Unluckily the company also seems to have failed to follow through with its Harrods deal. We assume the meagre turnover has come from the website, where the reseller page is empty.

In the new pitch the company have launched two new products - not something the first raise highlighted. So the having failed with one lets try another two shall we approach.

The new pitch states - ''Having three brands within the company puts us in a great position compared to other businesses;
For example; should we want to liquidate some of our assets we can sell one of our brands injecting cash in to the business.'' Hmmm.

On marketing they say -  

''We aim to invest £50,000 in marketing VideoGram over the next 6 months to give it a real push and achieve the forecast figures we have projected. We believe this amount will be required to really test the market and give VideoGram a chance to compete with the big players in the industry.'' :))


The exit section really seals the deal for us -

''The Company aim is to be brought out within 3 years. It is likely companies such as Photobox and Moonpig would have the greatest interest in acquiring us due to their buying trends over the last few years. We believe a conservative estimate at that stage would be approximately £5-£10million.'' Thats a cert then.

Seemingly the 11 people who invested agree with them.   

Videogram Worldwide is latest Crowdcube failure

Videogram Worldwide took £55,000 of Crowdcube investors in 2014. Later that year it took another £50k of investors on a platform called Crowd for Angels. Now it has filed for dissolution. 

Oddly the Crowdcube round has been taken down but its still mentioned on the C for A site. 

Accounts for YE August 17 show zero cash but a small profit, although we suspect this is mistake as the share cap account has reduced by a similar amount. They have refiled accounts before. We wrote about their joke accounts and their ridiculous pitch here many years ago. 

Really no idea what happened here. The only fact seems to be that this was never a business worth investing my socks in, let alone £1. 

Yet another Crowdcube moment. Happy losses. 

Are HMRC asleep?

We wrote about Videogram before - here

They have filed accounts that are beyond a joke. You have to go onto the HMRC site to believe it.

Probably better that we just dont bother with annual accounts as these are clearly made up just before popping out to the pub.

They make minimalism look extravagant.  Paid up share cap £1, Profit and loss account £3, cash at bank £3.