Macrebur pull large institutional funding after Seedrs round is finalised.

Quite simply - if you do not want this sort of thing happening regularly, you need an independent platform that provides investors with the real information - not what the platform or company want you to hear. That platfrom is here at ECFBuzz. See https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ecf-buzz-the-crowd-investors-information-centre/x/19804529/

Macrebur's Seedrs campaign majored on the large investment from another road builder, Instarmac. Investors have now been told that that money is no longer available. How can that be right? 

We have written a few times about this company -

http://fantasyequitycrowdfunding.blogspot.com/search?q=+macrebur

There were many questions left unanswered but now at least one of them has an outcome - albeit not the one investors were told about. The investment was for something like £1.8m - we are cautiously vague because the amount and the supplier were kept vague in the pitch. You can read about that in the other posts. There was a lot of vagueness.

To avoid this sort of thing, ECF Buzz will have a forum to allow investors to discuss with other like minded people, what they think or what they know. This will be totally independent from from the investing platforms, in this case Seedrs and the company. To date there has been nothing like this. ECFBuzz will also help to educate investors in what to look for in a good management team and what to avoid. Its library resource will cover all aspects of start up funding and investment. You simply shouldnt invest without it.

Seedrs Macrebur forum illustrates a fundamental problem with their equity crowdfunding model.

Macrebur are about to close a £1.9m funding round on Seedrs. Yet if you read the forum and the latest updates by the company, you would think this company has plenty of serious questions to answer before it closes on such a large sum of the public's cash.

UPDATE - this one really needs a live feed! Macrebur have now announced, just days before they close a £2m round, that the investment from Pontaq of £500k has been rejected by the Macrebur board. This investment has been a key element of their campaign, so why now at the very end is it being rejected. Surely these terms must have been sorted long ago - or it WASNT a definite investment. The CEO told investors on the Seedrs forum that '' Pontaq have already invested'' and claimed that Macrebur were, via Pontaq, talking to The Minister for Transport for Tamil Nadu. Now the CEO states that India was never their focus. What's next?

Most of the outstanding Qs revolve around a £1.8m investment by a potential strategic partner (although much more established)firm, Instarmac.

This has been ongoing for a while - we wrote about it before on here.

Two days ago the company posted an update on Seedrs stating - ''We have been offered a £1.8 million investment by a UK manufacturing and distribution company. The company operates in the same market as MacRebur and, subject to the investment completing, the investor will help us develop our business using their experience and connections. The investment would be made in the form of convertible loan notes and these notes would convert automatically into shares at the same subscription price as the Seedrs’ investment round if MacRebur meets certain financial targets.

'This investment is of course subject to us agreeing final terms and conditions with the investor.'

Since then the forum has been filled with investors claiming that this £1.8m, which the company has said is from Instarmac, is a concluded investment. Whats more they have declared enthusiastic support for the company based on the fact that Instarmac's due diligence has concluded in their investment. That is simply incorrect. It has also been pointed out that a convertible loan is not an investment as such, until it is converted - ignoring the fact that in this instance the company has told everyone that the 'investment' terms have NOT been agreed yet  - ''subject to us agreeing etc etc''. Prior to this conversion, which maybe be a few years down the road , it is a loan. A loan is not an investment - even if the liability of the conversion may make this such in the accounts. Anyone asking about the terms of the deal or the date it might be signed, is ridiculed as some sort of troll.

All of this confusion is continually increased by investors comments which make it plain they could not tell a convertible loan from a pancake. Then this is added to by the statements from the company in answer to requests for clarification that this is indeed an investment in the company. For example, the CEO states on 7 Nov '' Fabio - it's Instarmac who have invested.'' But there has been no update on the 'invetsment' terms being agreed. 

I have to say it is the most ridiculous mess and does nothing for Seedrs attempts to make ECF open and informative. 

We are not making a judgement on whether this is a good investment or not. We are just shining a torch on the bleeding obvious - there are some very contradictory statements lying almost side by side. If it were my money I would want clarity. Im sure the CEO would as well.

What if the terms of the Instarmac deal cannot be agreed? For example they want a conversion rate that puts them in a better position than current Seedrs investors - something Macrebur has said they wouldnt allow. How many ECF funded companies have we seen talk about large investments from strategic partners or VCs, for these to suddenly disappear months after investors have handed over their cash. Too many is the answer. 

Readers might also be amused to read what the CEO has to say about us or rather me on the Seedrs forum. First of all I am a scam solicitor working for Bird and Bird who cons people into handing over cash by writing rude stuff about them. Then he recants on this and declares he has done some looking into me and has found that my company has filed no accounts. We have filed 2 years of accounts. He also accuses me of planting comments on the Seedrs forum - which is wholly untrue and really just makes him look rather foolish. We do not make comments on the Seedrs forums. All of this was done late at night which might suggest something. He also makes another false statement that we have no relationship with Seedrs - untrue as Jeff Lynn would confirm. I would be very wary of slagging off Bird and Bird my man! It speaks volumes for the sort sales pitch he has presented on Seedrs. And unfortunately the sort of investor who has backed it.  

For the record Qs still not answered by Macreburs - 

1. Patents - especially for MR7 which is their main revenue driver. 
2. What are the full terms of deal with Instarmac. Why was a VC deal talked about  - Instarmac are not VCs. 
3. How will they get from £2m to £8m revenue by end of 2019? 
4. Conversion of loan to equity target dates - Seedrs state May 19 and CEO states October 19. Big difference in projections.

Macrebur have parallel funding rounds on Seedrs and Angels Investment Network.

Macrebur, the maker of a recycled plastic additive product for roads, is currently over funding on Seedrs and is just over halfway to its £4m target on AIN. Neither campaign appears to mention the other one. 

It is a little confusing.

Following our piece here and some Qs to the company from Seedrs investors - the AIN camapign has been removed. When asked on Seedrs what this was all about, the CEO of Macrebur claimed that they had not put up the campaign on AIN and that this was merely a collection of HNWs all linked via a FB page. That'll be news to AIN. Confused? 15/10/18 

Just to make things even simpler, we now discover that a deal is also on offer via Greenbackers - here - .https://www.greenbackers.com/the-pitch.html - this time we have a screenshot.  They pitched to the Greenbackers on 11 October according to the platform. In this pitch the total being raised was not £2m, it was not £4m but £6m - £4.8m of which has already been raised. This £4.8m does seem to include include the £500k from Pontaq that is listed on Seedrs as part of their campaign - so this has been double counted. On Greenbackers there is a new amount of £1.8m already funded by Instarnac - something that is not mentioned on Seedrs. 

To help clear up any misundertsnading and to explain the CEO's claim that we have facts wrong re the £1.8m Instarmac investment in Macrebur  - here is a copy of the slide (slide 8 of 9) that is downloadable as Macrebur's PD on the Greenbackers website - 

So the CEO can hardly claim we are wrong - Greenbackers maybe but that would have involved them putting this PD together for a pitch that the Macrebur CEO has readily agreed he went to. It states VERY clearly ''investment so far'' and then lists the £1.8m.

This may well be all perfectly fine but it does seem a little confusing. There are certainly claims on the Grenbackers PD that do not stand up to much scrutiny - this one in particular - 'MacRebur are not aware of any other company in the world using a mix of waste plastics to replace bitumen in asphalt'.  See 

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/sustainability/plastic-and-glass-road-that-could-help-solve-australia-s-waste-crisis-20180802-p4zv10.html

and to counter Macrebur's claim that somehow one of their distributors is responsible for the Austrlian article/product here is a little more on their product - which makes no mention of Macrebur or its products. Which begs another question - about the patent??

https://www.closetheloop.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Fact-Sheet-for-Plastic-and-Glass-Modified-Road.pdf

Readers and I mean those with a questioning mind, not the lemmings who seem to support Macrebur whatever they claim, might like to read this - https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/heard-about-miracle-plastic-roads-heres-why-its-not-solution-our-plastic-problem-36927 - it is not peer reviewed and is old (2015) but it throws up some interesting points. All these points seem to be irrelevant to Macrebur. For instance they claim that their bitumen (ie the bitumen with their additives in it) will not leach micro plastics into the environment - that is a 100% guarantee they give in their answer - no micro plastic leaching. Firstly this is not provable as their product has not been time tested for long enough to produce this data. Logic suggests that if a road degrades over time through use and more importantly weathering, then there has be leaching of all the road contains and if it contains plastics then QED micro plastics will be leached. Put that alongside the argument that we should be banning all production of plastic waste (and therefore eventually short use plastic) likes bags and the argument that hiding waste just encourages its production and Macrebur's claim to be a world saver looks rather foolish. To gain the sort foothold they are selling to investors, they will in fact be encouraging the ongoing production of plastic bags. How crazy is that??

If a company is going to use multiple online ways of raising the same funding in the same round, it doesnt seem too much to ask that they use the same information each time. Macrebur's claim on the Seedrs forum that we are wrong is completely untrue - check out the facts; they are all correct. As AIN have now removed this pitch, there is now no issue.  We wish them and all who invest the best of luck.

Both campaigns have a pre money valuation of £14.5m. But AIN is not, strictly speaking an investment platform. It promotes campaigns and then investors get in touch directly with the company and invest. According to the AIN Macrebur page, £2m of the target £4m has already been invested. As AIN state in their own words, this investment simply goes straight onto the company - there is not minimum level requirement as with ECF platforms.

So to cut to the chase - a pre money valuation of £14.5m would be the same as a post money valuation, after this £2m has been 'invested', of £16.5m. But the Seedrs valuation is also £14.5m. 

According to AIN that £2m has already hit Macrebur's bank account. According to Seedrs it has not. 

AIN are not FCA regulated although their new ECF platform, Seedtribe.com is.