George Edwards invented Gas Sense. Well he invented the idea of inventing Gas Sense. All the other stuff is just fantasy.
If you google search George Edwards and Richard Branson you get quite a few pics of the great Dick with the pupil. Dick flew George to the US as a Virgin startup winner. You begin to believe the PR - this guy really is something. Other pictures show him conferencing with Martha Lane Fox - under a Virgin banner of One to Watch - https://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/young-entrepreneurs-watch-george-edwards. Well in someways Virgin were right - just not in the sense they intended.
George invented a gadget for telling people how much LPG was left in their bottle. He then went to Kickstarter, where he raised £15k. This was 3 years ago.
As recently as 2016 he got this PR in a rag - https://thetab.com/uk/2016/07/07/i-skipped-uni-im-make-first-million-7013
Despite many promises and talk of big business being interested - a deal for many thousands of units with a major US distributor surfaced at one stage, George and his company have delivered nothing. It was all made up or so it would seem.
This astounding lack of any moral code or any decency seems to be the acceptable face of our world today. Off the back of this apparent scam, George has been able to appear as the public face of young British inventors. He was quite famous for a while.
Now George's company Gas Sense Solutions is due to file accounts. Why he has kept the company open is anyone's guess - maybe easier to let it close organically than admit the theft of £15k.
We have tried to contact him many times to hear his side of the story. He never responds. The little bit of business sense he has picked up he uses to prolong the fantasy - 'we have meetings with our suppliers' or 'We are talking positively to backers' - you get the idea. It always comes to nothing.
Its a sad fact that this guy, educated at a decent public school, believes it to be his right to take people's money and then deliver nothing for it. The crime is even worse when you consider how he has manipulated the facts to further his own prestige. Virgin are either stupid, gullible or dont give a damn. Whichever one, they need to wake up.
His website is still open for orders although they out of stock! One to watch indeed.
Well you can fool some people some of the time apparently:-
ReplyDeleteTake a domain name, onewomenowner, tell everyone your usp is err your domain name and you will have a website for it going live soon, mix in that you will let clients post car adverts for £10 not £65 like auto trader, another USP, don't put any financials together whatsoever and tell the crowd that it's such a great idea they will be kicking themselves if they don't invest, not to mention the "idea" is already worth £1.7 million. A member asked how they will compete with Autoglass £15.7 million online marketing budget to be told, they would need to sign an NDA as its secret!
Result:.overfunding on £300k plus - you couldn't make it up!
If that business makes it, I think I will show my bottom on poundlands window!
Yet another example of what you are talking about!