So what exactly is going on at Crowdcube's Solid Labs?

Solid Labs Ltd or Primotoys raised £274k on Crowdcube in 2016 to invest in their children's board game Cubetto. Things have not gone too well. Now in a letter to shareholders the remaining director tells a tale. 

The last filed accounts for Primo showed losses of £1m and a deficit of over £1m. Of course the Crowdcube projections were a little more optimistic. We wrote about them here. They raised over $700k on Kickstarter but comments suggest that didnt end well either. To cap it all, this year they launched another KS campaign for a new version of the game, which raised another $200k. According to recent posts on KS, this game has not been delivered and there is no delivery date. Ring any bells?

Ignoring the KS show and the fact that none of stuff you are about to read has been passed onto KS supporters who have already paid, SHs in Solid Labs, have now received an email explaining that a newco Pigzbe SA registered in Switzerland, has repaid the outstanding debts and will now be the major shareholder in Solid Labs as they take the group of companies forward. There is no mention of who is behind Pigzbe SA, what they do or when they were incorporated. So here it is. 

Pigzbe SA and Pigzbe Ltd, a UK registered company also not mentioned in the email, were both set up this year and both have the same director - the director of Solid Labs, Filippo Yacob. The Swiss company has registered capital of just £77k although information in Switzerland, like its cheese, is full of holes. This is the company clearing over £1m of debts for Solid Labs.

Pigzbe Ltd, now 100% owned by Pigzbe SA and with no capital, appears to be in the middle of an ICO, with a hard cap of $8.5m. It has an app which is used by children as an online piggybank; run using their new Wallo coin wallet. It gets short shrift on Reddit. To date, the ICO claims that over $7m has been bought. It's crazy stuff this Crypto. Oh and it's totally unregulated; which is fortunate. 

You can find various people on the Pigzbe website who might be of interest. The crypto entrepreneur and ex pensions news item, Philip Nunn is one. The site claims it is important that children learn about Crypto from an early age - surely some mistake there!

Something here doesnt add up. Maybe other investors have a view? It is certainly is a long way from the plan that Cowdcube promoted! Apparently Swiss cows are the easiest when it comes to milking. 

Primo sued for patent infringement and adds £1m loss to its balance sheet.

Primo raised £274k on Crowdcube in 2016. Now in its first full year since funding, it has lost £1m and incurred a US lawsuit for patent infringement.

It's not what you would call a good start. Albeit the lawsuit has been dropped.

The company's claim to fame for the moment is that one of its backers is Mark Zuckerberg's sister, Randi. Projected profits of around £300k have been replaced with a £1m loss. Profits for 17/18 are going to be £1.7m according to the company. They make a kids' toy that teaches programming and it seems they may have been using it to create their financial plans.

They had started life by raising $1.5m in pre sales on Kickstarter and from the comments on their page, it has been far from a satisfactory outcome. They appear to have run two KS campaigns - one in 2015 for delivery in 2016 and another with pledges for $700k for delivery end 2017. It is hard to see where all this cash has gone. Complaints are numerous.

The accounts are something of a revelation - in that they show exactly what HMRC is capable of  - which is nothing. This company has been in deficit since incorporation and was at June 17 sitting on a £1.13m liability. Since then there is no evidence of any new money coming in. Randi must be the backstop but it makes a mockery of the UK accounting system that such a company is allowed to call itself a going concern. The Crowdcube 'historic' accounting information looks very dubious when compared to the filed accounts; something we see too frequently.

Finally Amazon sells it but has only 5 reviews. So maybe its not really selling. Who, you might ask, wants to train their 5 yo to code?