One we missed. Rateragent closes down after some very odd Crowdcube numbers induced investment.

This is the Crowdcube model in action. Rateragent made several claims and produced some very interesting numbers in their 2015 Crowdcube pitch. It managed to raise £134k from 133 people who really should be ashamed of themselves.  

The company then filed one set of accounts for 2015 and has filed nout since - being closed by compulsory strike off in December 2017. Con? Well you judge. Revenues went from £170k to £2.6m in 2 years - well of course they didnt but that is what Crowdcube agreed to print so they could claim their commission. We will never know if there were any revenues  - losses for 2015 were more than double the Crowdcube figure. Our ridiculous accounting system means that we cant learn much from their filings. 

We called this back in 2015 - here. 133 of you didnt listen. Crowdcube made around £6k, everyone else lost the lot.

Its worth noting before you read the final paragraph that the company's strapline is -

Rateragent - Where transparency is Key. 

In a final baffling twist, Rater Agent Reviews Ltd, with the same logo, is now operating here. This company was incorporated in August 2017. Joshua Paul Rayner is the sole director and shareholder and was until a few months ago a director of One Moment Ltd - the parent of the original Rateragent and the company Crowdcube investors put their money into. Ring any bells?

Yet another Crowdcube moment and groundhog day.  

Rateragent moots closing due to total shambles. We called it two years ago.

Yet another Crowdcube funded company comes off the rails within 24 months of funding. This Blog warned would be investors at the time that the claims made by the CEO were far from transparent.

To quote the email sent to shareholders - ' Unfortunately, due to the previous leadership the business has reached a precarious position.' IE it's insolvent.

It had spent all of the £134k it raised on Crowdcube in 2015 and more by the end of 2015. In 2016 it was due to be turning over £1.23m with profits of £294k. In fact it only achieved just over £80k in revenues, with a small loss of £8k,; cut back from the £150k it lost in 2015 when it received its lovely lolly from 133 investors.

The leadership that is roundly blamed for this shambles is one Mal McCallion, who is described in the Crowdcube pitch thus - 

Mal was involved in the launch of two very successful property technology start-ups, Zoopla & Primelocation. He has spent 15 years immersed in UK property tech.

and

Mal has extraordinary experience in this marketplace, having been on the launch team of Primelocation in 2000 - taking that all the way to exit in 5 years for £48m - and driving the re-launch of Zoopla, when it pivoted from a private sales platform to an estate agent subscription site from 2008. 

Having spent three years helping to build Zoopla from zero subscribing agent branches to a solid number two in the property portal market (behind Rightmove) by 2011, Mal was headhunted to join Brent Hoberman, co-Founder of lastminute.com, in an interactive floorplan business which let people build Computer Generated Images (CGI's) of their actual homes with up to 125,000 new furniture items in them. 

Having sold that to Floorplanner in 2013, in 2014 Mal went to run Fine & Country / Guild of Professional Estate Agents' technology company, PropertyLogic. The concept of a new start-up in raterAgent became too tempting in December 2014, however and, within a month, the 'beta' site was launched in January 2015.

Until he began to use every waking hour creating and nurturing raterAgent, Mal loved running, cycling and spending time with his family. He is a downtrodden Ipswich Town fan and knows more than anyone reasonably should about Simple Minds' back catalogue and Blackadder.

That hardly sounds like someone who would place the company in such a precarious position by accident. Mal resigned a while back and we wrote about this here and here whilst the pitch was live and in fact told investors that the claims made on the Crowdcube pitch were dubious...at best. 

Crowdcube must be held accountable for this misinformation - it was after all a prime part of the pitch they vetted and published under their FCA license. But of course they wont be. And so it goes on and on and on ......................................................................