**Glad you like the improvement fryry
Hey Nathan,
I think your vision for the future is spot on. I think weāre witnessing a bit of an enlightenment at the moment as forward-thinking businesses like Monzo, BrewDog and Freetrade etc. understand the benefits of customer ownership. We are just starting to see how that can create superfans who not only believe in the same vision, purpose and beliefs of the business but can get involved and contribute to the businesses success. It is a fascinating dynamic that shouldnāt be limited to start-up and early stage businesses. Why shouldnāt household names who are battling to stand out inspire loyalty, engagement and advocacy through shared ownership. Would John Lewis be doing better if they had hundreds of thousands of customers who also owned a stake in the company, which was driving loyalty, probably not.
The opportunity is definitely global. I think the alignment of regulations in Europe, which will better reflect what we have in the UK is going to be a gamechanger for ambitious European companies. Weāre tremendously excited about being able to fund more businesses like fintech pioneers, ID Finance and Bnext, and e-bike maker Cowboy
Weāre well financed at the moment and have no plans to raise any further capital right now. Weāll be sure to let you all know if we do crowdfund again.
Weāve got a really exciting pipeline of businesses whoāll be on Crowdcube in the coming months; some new to Crowdcube and some old friends. Which business, other than Freetrade, would you like to see back on Crowdcube?
One of our business development team met with the founders of Deliveroo when they were very early stage. Alas, they didnāt raise with Crowdcube. However, I like to think if that meeting happened today it would be a complete no brainer for a B2C platform like Deliveroo to invite their customers to become shareholders and help grow the business and share in any success.
Sadly, some businesses do switch and think the grass is greener. However, I am very confident that at least two of those companies you mentioned (Farmdrop havenāt gone live yet as you say) will return to Crowdcube if they decided to do another crowdfunding campaign.
Looking forward to meeting up and having a beer when the bars are open and life has returned to normal.
Cheers,
Luke.
Hey Gary,
Mous. I bought one of their indestructible iPhone cases recently and love it. They have a cult-like following, which I love, and were backed by 55,000 people on a Indegogo campaign in 2017. I love the technology behind the product, the elegant design and fun brand. Theyād kill a crowdfund with Crowdcube.
Luke.
Iām a big fan of goheny, the pocket money app for kids and parents. I love anything that has a deep sense of purpose and is trying to make a genuine difference in the world. Making kids better with money is a worthy vision. On a par with them is Pod Point who were recently acquired by EDF. They literally are trying to change the world, one EV charging point at a time. I know the founder well and heās been toiling for nearly 10 years, waiting for electric vehicles to take off. Itās really starting to now, particularly with the government objective to go electric by 2035. Heās had so many false dawns though, remember the Nissan Leaf? What a sack of shit that was! It takes real grit, determination and passion in the vision to stick with it over that length of time.
Entrepreneurship is addictive, particularly if you really believe in the companyās purpose and you know that you are making a difference. I love that. I also hate that its addictive! I probably should be play with my new born baby who is on the table next to me rather than answering questions on entrepreneurship!
(On that note I think I am going to stop for this evening and play with me 4 week old son
Thanks for your time tonight, Luke! Hopefully you can come back and answer more!
Indeed thanks for the answers but there has been a certain amount of cherry picking here. Also didnāt see any advanced notice of this new timing?
Luke finally got an empty hour freed up to do some of this. We are grateful for his time, and we didnāt want to hold him back with dates and times. He promised to be back.
Even in our own Freetrade AMAs, we donāt always get to all the questions.
āAMA but Iāll answer the questions that I likeā doesnāt really have the same ring to it I guess. I also think these AMAs are best when there is some level of interaction and back and forward. Also if weād known about this then Iām sure there would have been more questions that were relevant to the current climate as well.
He Ben,
Iām certainly not cheery picking. As you can imagine things are quite hectic at the moment so I am going to be doing my best to answer as many questions as I can over the coming days.
Iāll make sure I pick a few tricky ones as well
Luke
He Viktor,
Absolutely, Iāll do my best to answer as many as I can over the coming days.
Luke.
Good to hear! Looking forward to hearing more.
Thanks for sharing @LukeLang.
2020 will be a year many startup founders will want to forget.
Hope youāre staying indoors !
Hey Codf,
Working for electric vehicle charge-point maker, Pod Point, which raised funds three times on Crowdcube would have been really cool. Iād have loved the chance to work with Erik, the co-founder, who I admire immensely. But mostly, Iād find getting up each morning knowing that youāre genuinely making a difference to the world really inspiring.
Gohenry, which helps kids be better with money, is also another firm favourite of mine. I think I could have a lot of fun with the brand. And, any brewery, Iām not fussed which one
Luke.
Hi earlyretirement,
We donāt have any plans to take carry on investments and therefore profit off shareholder returns.
Luke.
Hey SpyrosL
The risk of this happening is pretty low. From a shareholders perspective not much would change. In the event that the Nominee was unable to hold shares for investors, for example as a result of administration or a change in the law, the Legal Title of the shares, which is held by the Nominee, will be transferred to another Nominee/Trustee company. The underlying Beneficial Ownership held by investors would remain the same and unaffected. This is done by way of amendments to the raising companyās Articles of Association or Shareholderās Agreement which are standard provisions in each Nominee raise. Essentially the Nominee would be transferred to a third party who would continue to manage it in the same way we do now. As an FCA authorised company this is an eventuality we have to have procedure and process in place for.
Luke.
Thanks @engineer, I happen to agree exactly with your quote from Andy Grove. My A-Level Business Studies tutor said something similar to me in 1995 that stuck with me. Darren and I started working on Crowdcube in the middle of the 2008 crisis and I know that was the starting point for a lot of other fintech businesses like Funding Circle etc. Difficult times create opportunities. Luke.
Hey again @engineer, around 85% of our funded businesses are trading; this compares favourably to a report by the Office of National Statistics, which found that 50% of all new UK businesses fail after three years. I also read a report last year that showed the failure rates of businesses who had crowdfunded were comparable with traditional finance providers like angel and VC; unfortunately I cannot find a link to that report (apologies). It is very difficult to define and keep track of zombie companies so this isnāt something we record. Luke.
Hi @Ratioexmachina,
A popular question!
Some time ago we took the difficult decision to prioritise improving our systems, processes and technology so we could significantly scale the number of businesses we could find, launch and fund, rather than building a secondary market. In my opinion, this has proven to be the correct decision, which has helped us to materially improve our revenue and develop a firm foundation for future growth without substantially increasing our costs.
That said, Iāve been impressed by the reception Seedrsā secondary market has had. I continue to believe in the need for secondary liquidity for investors, and I am delighted to have given thousands of our investors the opportunity to realise financial returns on their investments by facilitating multiple secondary transactions in 2017, 2018 and 2019, including a 19x on Revolut. We also beta tested a secondary market in 2017 and gained some valuable feedback and continue to look at way in which we can offer returns for investors through Crowdcube.
I remain convinced that we were correct to prioritise how we scale our core business but I look forward to when Crowdcube can also boost a secondary market.
Cheers,
Luke.