JAM make the Jivr bike, an electric collapsible commuter bike. They raised money on Crowdcube in 2013 but have yet to deliver anything other than excuses.
JAM raised £160k on Crowdcube and then pre sold bikes to the tune of £120k on Kickstarter in 2015. Now after quite a rough ride through the KS forum, the company has admitted that they are not in position to deliver any bikes without a massive reorganisation and considerable new funding. Dilution awaits those bold enough to see this design as a classic back in 2013 - the same ones who failed to see the obvious flat tyre when it came to the business side.
JAM are not coming back to Crowdcube but have opted to go down the private Angel VC route using that they describe as a boutique bank. This seems a shame if they do not offer existing shareholders a deal. Class B SHs have no preemption rights - all the Crowdcube investors are B shareholders. They stated back in June that they were raising £2m. This we assume is the same £2m that they are about to raise now - or so they say. We dont know the valuation but suspect it will not be favourable to the Crowdcube SHs. They just have to suck it up, despite being the only reason that Jivr reached this stage.
Whilst all of this has been dribbling on, Jivr as a bike, has lost all of its first mover advantage and now faces considerable competition from existing market leaders.
There are ways to attack a market with a new product and this certainly isnt one of them.
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