Skaken em up boss

Shaken's main man, mixologist and cunning escapologist, Mark Jennings has made our day. He says we are well known. 

Well that's how the Crowdcube PRing dept would have spun what he actually said.

Just so you know, Shaken took £200k off Seedrs investors and closed 6 months later. Oh and they had already helped themselves to £150k on the same platform. The company has now closed through a voluntary dissolution. Shareholders were not consulted or given any information. Seedrs have been utterly useless with helping to resolve the situation.

In a series of Q&As on the platform, they have tried to find out why this all went so wrong. They even quoted this blog. That's where Mark's comment comes in. He stated that he doesnt respond to trolls and then goes on to say that I'm a known troll - the 'well' bit we inserted of course.

Mark really should get a conscience. Investors are entitled to know how he went through £200k in 6 months and achieved nothing. His final comment is telling - he says that he has complied with all the legal requirements for closing the company and that he wont be producing any accounts or anything else that might be helpful. His recent twitter feed shows him spending plenty of money at the local Garden Centre and on expensive hotels. Nice.

Well we hope that investors will remember his name for future reference. He is already selling himself as some ECF guru. He doesnt deserve your support. At least we offer a place for righteously angry backers to air their views. Troll or no troll.

Zzish........... we'd like to know

The Zzish Crowdcube pitch has to be a first. Target of £1.150m but declared investment already raised off the platform of £1.24m. So why bother?

We have heard but cannot confirm, that the statement on the Crowdcube pitch that the £1.24m was invested on the same terms as the crowd invested (the pitch closed at £1.318m) is not exactly correct. 

The very fact that Syndicate Room raised over £600k for the company a while back but gets no mention in the funding section, as with the Idleman pitch, says more about Crowdcube than anything else.  They put themselves first before information for their investors. Childish but true. 

So if there are any investors who took up their pre emption rights and know that the deal was different to the one offered by Crowdcube to the crowd - we'd love to hear from you. We really would. 

Vulpine purchased out of administration by Mango Bicycles

Vulpine has been purchased out of administration by Cotswold based Mango Bicycles. Mango, who had traded profitably since 2013, made a large loss of £280k in 2015/16 and were showing a negative balance sheet for YE March 2016.

Details of the transaction have not yet been made available. The administration is not even filed at CH as of today. It seems unlikely that the deal will leave any room for Crowdcube investors to see any money back. Hussey seems more concerned for the brand than the people who allowed him to play with it. We can only hope that for once the administrators do a thorough job and make some effort to protect the interests of the shareholders.

You just cant keep a good man down!

Mal MacCallion used to run Rater Agent, which raised £150k on Crowdcube at the end of 2015. He was the main man in the Rater agent pitch. Then he left and worked for Callwell. Now he has rebirthed Growtion (nee Tramal).

Rater Agent are late with their accounts and Confirmation statement. We expect there are the usual reasons for this tardiness - projections showed a healthy profit.

We wrote about this before here and here

We expect Growtion to appear on an equity crowdfunding site near you very soon. They have a good list of customer reviews for a company that has only been trading for 12 months, including two from Callwell. They help you grow, apparently.

On the Growtion website, they have some case studies, along with a glowing account of Mal's business acumen and successes. It is hard not to laugh out loud.

One of the case studies is ......... Rater Agent. According to Mal, Rater Agent is profit making - obviously thanks very largely to his business skills.  The last set of accounts field at CH for YE April 2015 shows net assets of £1 balanced by Shareholder Funds of £1 - in fact £1 is the only figure on the balance sheet. Another case study is Zoopla. By dint of working at Zoopla at some stage (apparently), years before Growtion was incorporated, Growtion has helped Zoopla to its success. The final case study involves Callwell. Callwell is a tiny company making small losses. When we say tiny, it is really teensy.

So if you are willing to believe any of the above means that Mal has a clue about business, you really need to see someone. Why was he allowed to pitch on Crowdcube? I think we all know the answer to that.

Lucy's Dressings defies the Righteous message

Lucy's Dressings is back on Crowdcube - a year after its first raise. According to everything we know from the Righteous salad dressing company, this should be a no no.

Old timers on Crowdcube will remember Righteous - a company set up by the same people who now run Cauli Rice. The founders of Righteous sent an email to investors a year or so ago, explaining that they had been delisted by most of their glittering band of supermarkets. Why? Well the founders explained, salad dressings are not really selling and no one now expects them to in any great quantity. Good to know, if a little late for the investors who had believed the hype behind Righteous' previous CC pitches. Their PR was excellent.

Now Lucy has some salad dressings with glittering stockists. Hang on, havent we been here before? 

How many times can people make the same mistakes? Countless it appears. Good luck. 

Idleman Crowdcube pitch very casual with the facts

Reading the new Idleman Crowdcube pitch you would think this company was on track. Put simply it hasnt been on track since its first Crowdcube money grab in 2015 and its now very definitely in the sidings.

As usual with Crowdcube, nothing in the pitch is a lie. It's just not all quite true or very important bits have been left out.

Example - in 2016, so only a year ago, Idleman raised £1.2m on Syndicate Room. In the section on this new Crowdcube pitch, dedicated to listing all previous funding, this fact has been totally left out. Neither the amount or the raise are mentioned. Why?

Well we think probably because the valuation in April 2016 is now the valuation in May 2017 - despite the massive progress the platform tells us Idleman has made in those 12 months. Of course as the raise on SR isnt mentioned, neither is this valuation; which means in essence that this round is a down round. 

Example - in the SR documents the projections showed revenue figures that Idleman have since missed by miles. They have of course also missed their 2015 Crowdcube projections by even greater margins. Neither fact gets a mention on the current CC pitch.

Example - In the SR 2016 pitch they show the Trust Pilot aggregate at 8 out 10 - a reasonable result. However if you go onto their page now on TP, you find they have dropped to 7.5. This is very clearly heading in the wrong direction. This gets no mention. One star reviews are not uncommon. 

There are more but to be honest we simply cant be bothered to go through them. This company has never delivered on a single target that we have seen. Any company that quotes revenue figures including vat really needs to back to kindergarten business school. Our guess is it never will get close to its ambitions. Invest if you must but at least do it with your eyes wide open. 

Ethos spins a complicated web.

Ethos Global raised over £700k on Crowdcube just last year. Accounts are now 8 months overdue and other companies now appear to be running the Ethos Yoga studio in London. Where are shareholders in this complicated web?

Shareholders invested in Ethos Global Ltd on Crowdcube  - a company run by Dr Theodoros Koutroukides and Jennifer Lynn Hersch. Company number 07874390. Remember those names.

We have written about this company before - here

Ethos was described by Crowdcube as - 

Looking to disrupt a £50b+ global industry, ETHOS is a chain of boutique yoga & fitness hybrid studios combining health, science and technology. Growing the cash-generating Cambridge headquarters........

For a company with one studio, you might think the use of the word 'chain' to be typical Crowdcube BS. Shortly after this investment was completed, the 'cash generating Cambridge HQ' closed down; annihilating the one link chain. The property, St Andrews House First Floor, appeared on the market for re let and is still there with Bidwells.

Shortly after this, a new Ethos studio opened in London. This studio is still running but is not run or owned by Ethos Global according to their website's T&Cs. This studio is run by Ethos London England Ltd co number 10601085. Not to be confused with Ethos London Ltd which is an entirely separate company. The Directors of Ethos London England are one Theodoros Koutroukides and Jennifer Hersch. By dropping the 'Dr' and the 'Lynn' they appear at Companies House to be different people to the ones running Ethos Global - but they are not. Hersch has now resigned from Ethos Global. Since February 2017 when this company was set up, it has changed its name to Soma London England Ltd. It is in turn 100% owned by Soma Holdings, company number 10598796, which is 100% owned by Koutroukides. 

Meanwhile accounts due at the end of September 2016 for the Crowdcube funded company, are missing. So what exactly do shareholders in this Ethos now own? Who knows. Crowdcube projections had them making £1.6m by the end of 2016 and £4.6m by the end of this year. Who wouldnt want a piece of that; if it was true?? It seems unlikely as Ethos Global dont seem to do anything anymore. Maybe that's their version of Mantric Yoga.

The company was issued a compulsory closure notice a few months ago but has since had this rescinded as it has raised what appears to be £280k in a new share issue. Or so the filing shows. As it appears to have nothing to do with the London Ethos Yoga studio, why would anyone invest in it? Again who knows.

All in all, a very strange set of events and outcomes.....so far. The accounts would help but when we asked (repeatedly) about them we got nowhere. We were told that the company was just fine - doing well. Certainly the London studio, which appears to be 100% owned by Koutroukides is doing well. We just wonder what money helped to set up this studio? Could it have been the £700k plus raised for Ethos Global on Crowdcube? If this is all perfectly normal, why change the company name, twice, set up a totally new company structure and close down your cash generator and why appear in CH filings with different names to the original company directors' names. One being different might be normal but both of you?? Seems unlikely.