Some positive news. Chip started their private round among existing shareholders yesterday and knocked out Crowdcube for a while. Lots of positives with them and I have taken up my allocation.
Chip concerns me (I did invest in an early round). Every raise they compare their valuation to Monzo, Revolut, etc. I canāt believe this is legal. Revolutās valuation has no relevance to the Chip raise and is preying on uneducated investors.
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What advantage do you guys see in Chip versus just rounding transactions or automated saving offered by e.g. Monzo? I donāt see a big USP here.
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Thatās very flakey even if they do put some small print disclaimers. They should also put the worth if it becomes worth as much as a few that have gone bustā¦
I used to do quite a bit of stuff wher we had to follow NFA rules and you would be lined up for a beating at best for something like this. Maybe FCA rules on promotion of crowd type stuff are a bit more relaxed.
Smells like desperate marketing #curve. And good PR for Revolut and Monzo.
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N26 who were an competitor in the Digital Banking, theyāve had to close down there UK function as they couldnāt compete against the big firms. If you believe in Chip as a company, for sure invest.
When will it open to the public?
I donāt believe it will open to the public - this was just a private round for the current investors.
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If you use Monzo or Revolut to put money away automatically into vaults, what is Chipās value proposition? Having an Open Banking API is no longer a unique selling point.
Looks like they have a new CFO: Chip appoints Philip Wright CFO
Keep in mind that raising money through crowdfunding means they donāt have to give you an option to appoint a member or two to the board of directors. We are just passengers if we invest. Wonder if any VCs are willing to take the bait. Usually, during tough times many would be reluctant to invest - weāre in a recession.
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The one thing that gets me with Chip is the āaverage amount saved per yearā figure of Ā£1,800.
The people who can save Ā£150/month are not the people who download āhelp me save appsā. The people who download āhelp me saveā apps are people who struggle save anything at all. So, firstly, those people drag down the average considerably - after all you can only save depending on income (and increasing income is slow) and secondly with that in mind, an average saving of Ā£1,800 per person means thereās people saving >Ā£150/month who somehow felt they needed an app to do it. Mindboggling to me, that.
Iād be amazed if theyāve reached the figure without any statistical nonsense like excluding all the people saving nothing as āinactive usersā.
Iām willing to bet VCs turned this away already. Whereās the profit?
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I agree, they can only depend on their previous crowd investors for now. Especially in this climate itās hard to see VC willingly opening up their check-books to fund them.
What pre-money valuation is chip?
The original target was for Ā£1.07M and they closed with Ā£2.5M. Pre-money was Ā£43,986,000. Given the circumstances that is pretty good going I would say.
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Thanks, yeah that sounds good enough, they can always raise another mini round before a larger VC if they need to
