Kokoon make sleep assisting headphones. They presold thousands of them in 2015 on Kickstarter, many of which have still not been delivered. The Kickstarter forum makes for interesting reading.
We haven't seen the terms of this latest raise. Im not sure we want to. All you have to do if you are interested in this company as an investment, is look at their KS campaign, the claims they have made over a number of raises, on Seedrs and Crowdcube and then look at what has in fact really happened. The last Crowdcube round was at the end of 2018 - a private round - we do not know the outcome. Given that they are now on Seedrs, maybe it didn't go so well?
We now understand that they have raised (18 Feb 2019) another £800k from existing backers. The Seedsr round is about to launch.
Everyone knows how difficult it is to get a new product to market. Everyone knows how many delays there will be with tech product iterations until they become scaleable and saleable items. We all know all of this. Clearly Kokoon didnt. As if they had they would not have sent forth projections to gather funding which now look ridiculous.
We have been writing about them for a while - here
They seem to be best at ignoring the obvious. That tactic may yet work but please dont be fooled by what you read in their pitches.
You can find the KS campaign here - 4338 comments and counting. The KS campaign attracted just under £2m from 8,400 punters with a delivery date of September 2015. How many exactly of these have received their headphones by 2019 is not clear. What is clear is that many have not. Those that have, seem on the whole, to be satisfied or maybe that is just knackered from 3 years of insomnia.
I'm not currently a shareholder, but according to crowdcube they raised £711.6k in a follow on round from 151 investors in january this year. Lets juxtapose this with the £1.6mn raised from 841 investors january 2018. I'm no expert, but its certainly questionable that theyre looking to raise finance again so soon, or rather why they failed to raise sufficient finance on crowdcube...
ReplyDeleteNot sure where you are seeing the Jan19 raise results? At any rate it seems highly unlikely that they would be allowed by Seedrs to use CC and then a month later Seedrs??That would be verging on the crazy....no? Clearly what is happening is that they cant afford to make the headphones for the hundreds (thousands?) of KS backers who are still waiting and sell the same headphones to generate revenue off their own website. It is a pretty classic case of tail chasing. Not the first time (Jivr) and wont be the last unless investors are given the full picture - which is where we come in ECF.Buzz.
DeleteThe results of the january 2019 raise are on crowdcube's website.
ReplyDeleteI agree, it is crazy - but it's exactly what is going on; Either Seedrs found a justifiable reason for the sudden trans-platform raise, or they simply don't care. I suspect this will be a hot topic in the investor discussion forum when they raise on seedrs, and i'm curious as to how kokoon'll answer.