Jon Allen - Crowdcube Entrepreneur of the Year 2012.

This is the shocking state of our entrepreneurial base in this country. A serial failure in the world of start ups is now charging people to advise them on start ups. All using the fact that he was Crowdcube Entrepreneur of the Year 2012.

This sort of thing does my head in. It certainly does not help UK plc.

Jon Paul started a business in 2005 called Front Up Ltd. He traded rugby shirts. That was all fine. In 2012 the business got into a spot of bother and he put it into administration. Well that is fine too, anyone who has run businesses will have had a failure.

In 2012 as Front Up was telling creditors that they had lost their money, Jon Allen was setting up Front Up Retail with Keith Watson - who has featured recently in the Suit that Fits saga. Together they formed Front Up Retail Ltd - using the heavily discounted assets that JP had bought from his administration. 

That's not quite so good.

This Front Up Retail has featured here many times - it raised money on Crowdcube twice in 2012 and then again in 2013 before collapsing in a total mess and being sold on in another pre pack to Lyle and Scott. Investors and creditors lost it all.

That's getting worse.

Now in 2016, JP set up another company - Enploy Ltd. This company uses the expertise of JP to advise start ups - for which it charges - who are these idiots? JP's bio on the company website tells interested parties that he has  - 

over 15yrs experience creating, growing and selling disruptive concepts into new markets. Crowdcube Entrepreneur of the Year 2012.

I think you can guess what we think about that. JP hasnt a clue what he is talking about when it comes to running a company. Just look at the evidence.

In much the same way of as Julia Elliot Brown has created a myth for herself after her business, Upper St, lost Seedrs investors all their money and left her creditors (£400k plus) to die, so JP is trying to create a myth around his failed entrepreneurial history. It simply is not honest and it really shouldnt be allowed. Failure is fine but you have to own it. This country needs better learning about business and how to make it work; not how to avoid the consequences of failure. 

Beware - Jon Allen now reappeared as entrepreneurial guru

They say you cant keep a good man down. Ex Crowdcube 3 time failure Jon Allen is now selling his 'success' story to lure would be entrepreneurs. CAVEAT IPSUM EMPTOR.

We have written a few blogs on JA and Up Front Retail Ltd here  - it has been 

anything but up front.

Crowdcube investors lost over £400k (according to Allen's own Linkedin page) when he did a pre packed deal with Lyle & Scott, where L&S got the company for next to nothing. They have obviously now had enough of him so he is on the loose taking money from unsuspecting entrepreneurs in his latest guise as a business guru. Allen had already seen at least one of his companies go down a similar route. 

Reading his CV you would believe that this guy could help you out. But he leaves out the important bits; how he raised money several times on Crowdcube, always promising the earth but failed to ever deliver figures anywhere near to his projections and then closed, leaving all shareholders and creditors high and dry in a deal which gave him a full time job with Lyle & Scott and paid off his business loan. Nothing illegal you understand but then nothing moral either. 

So just in case you run into him, his new venture is called Enploy and The Entrepreneur Test. 

You have been warned.