Community Meetup: Crowdfunding special, Tuesday 13th September 2022, live in London + on Zoom. POST YOUR QUESTIONS HERE

Any Glasgow / Edinburgh events planned ?

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Err, I think that was an illustrative exampleā€¦ not a suggestion that the company could sell for Ā£60million. Rightā€¦ right?

I mean, I know my :cow: :skull_and_crossbones: Hooves Of Doom :skull_and_crossbones: :cow: are powerful and R7 was my biggest investment to date, but even I canā€™t do that much damage can I? Question for the team - am I banned from taking part in future crowdfunding rounds because maybe I should beā€¦

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And crowdfunding in particular is a high risk business. All sorts of questionable companies end up crowdfunding as šŸš€ Crowdfunding graveyard āš°ļø attests to.

When it comes to the kind of crash that we have seen what history suggests is that a minor percentage of those will recover. The market in all probability will recover but IMO very likely new companies will sprout and become the new darlings.

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Amazon being the famous example of bouncing back from a 90% crash ( but very much an outlier )

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If the company is sold for Ā£60 million the first Ā£50 million of proceeds would go to the preferred shareholders. Each preferred shareholder would receive Ā£1 per share and recoup their investment

Can someone please clarify who the ā€œpreferred shareholdersā€ are? Is that everyone pre-R7 or just VC? Surely this doesnt just impact R7 investors but all other rounds too? I know there were some rounds where people bought A class shares which were different to ordinary shares - are they preferred shareholders?

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Even with that example, people sometimes forget what kind of revenue Amazon had in 1999 ($1.6 billion), in 2000 ($2.7 billion) and in 2001 ($3.12 billion). The point I am making is that Amazon did not need external funding even though it was a loss making entity. Those companies that need investor money just to generate revenue are in even more trouble in a downturn when evaluations go down ā€¦ investors become reluctant to put in money and there is a possibility then of a downward spiral. VCs donā€™t expect the majority of their investments to turn out OK - that is built into their business models. They build a portfolio of companies to cover the space of interest ā€¦ knowing well that a fraction of their investments turn out well.

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The example in Adamā€™s email was nothing more than an example :sweat_smile:

Mentally write your shares down to Ā£3.77 and assess whether you think itā€™s a good price to top-up your holding.

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It may have been an example, but the fact is the R7 shares would be worth a 5th of the preferred shares if they sold out below the original value. This would mean for example the Ā£3.77 then being divided and the R8 getting Ā£3.77 and the R7 people only getting 20% of that price.

That is a massive loss of not only the price reduction but then getting a much smaller ratio compared to other people.

Of course, this is all theory of something unlikely to happen and I have effectively written off my money as a lesson, but it is quite a big deal if things do not go too well or if FT cash in at a huge profit for early investors and R8 but not for R7 people.

At least that is how it was read to me.

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I also read this and thought hummm are they planning on selling or will this round go bloop as they state about risky investments straight after that part of the message too lol

Question, When will the main page graph be implemented to not show deposits and just show investment progress.

I check daily, and it would be nice to just see this as the app opens with no faffing about.

Donā€™t say you can go to the insights tab and play about in there to see the progress etc because thatā€™s faffing about.

Main page, thank you please :slight_smile:

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The difficulty with this request is that it treats cash as some kind of ā€˜otherā€™ category and for many, especially in turbulent times, itā€™s a valued asset class.

Iā€™m sure there is a work around but that had been the reasoning so far.

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Yeah I get that but even having say a preferred viewing selection of the users own choice on the main page would be useful to cator for each individuals preferences.

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The OP needs to understand in that case what will happen is he will exclude interest, dividend and sales from his portfolio i.e. he wonā€™t have a view of the investment progress that he desires to see. The Home page title is Portfolio - and that is exactly what is shown. The OP admits he doesnā€™t want to see his portfolio but just what he states as ā€œinvestment progressā€ which is not as black and white as he imagines especially if one removes all cash (or decide to differentiate between the ā€˜originā€™ of the cash in the account) in the definition of investment progress. It could be that the time weighted return or money weighted return are of interest - but these are analytics i.e. Insight, if not, then what are they? It is not a matter of user preferences this - it is a matter of definition.

Maybe the user finds it too onerous to click on Insights - that is a fair point (I canā€™t question what a user considers onerous or not; that is obviously a personal opinion).

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What is the interest rate for the convertible loan/preferred share. I am not able to find it on any chat or document.
Thanks

There isnā€™t one Raj.

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Yes exactly this so instead of coming on the app to click insights then to check both time weighted and money weight just have them on the main page.

Yes I do want to just come online and see investment only progress as a graph, as I check throughout points of the day as I like to see how things are doing/changing so Iā€™m maybe on the app 12x+ a day, not worrying like some might think I just like looking at the progress etc and how the worlds doing.

I guess yes interest rates, dividends etc would all be on this graph, I would let you gurus calculate all that jazz :slight_smile: Iā€™m just a user :smiley:

Please donā€™t forget to post here the Zoom link for this evening meetup :slightly_smiling_face:

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What is FTā€™s path to profitability? Losses are increasing way more than revenue

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Look forward to hearing more, Iā€™ve not kept as up to date as I used to be but really enjoyed last years meetup / presentation!

Couple of questions from my side:

  1. First question for FT would be on Europe.

What is FTā€™s angle for Europe now?

If I read the last messages correctly from the FT team the plan is to do a EU-wide release of the app in its current state first. Also, at this point if we use Sweden as a reference for speed of execution it will take multiple years to release local tax wrappers for other countries in the EU.

The way I see it right now the FTā€™s current offering is not superior to what is already offered in the main EU markets and in some cases is more expensive.

TR, T212, Bux 0, LY, Rev just to point to those most similar to FT with mobile app first approach, have been around for some time already in the EU capitalising on ā€œlow hangingā€ customers.

There are older players with deep pockets Degiro, Etoro, Saxo being the closest to FT.

There is also a potential new entrant which is very strong in the US - Webull.

And there are a massive number of old banks/brokers that are not sleeping and working on improving their offerings.

What is the uniqueness of FTā€™s offering for Europe right now? What is the main selling point? E.g. If you ask me the same question for UK right now - would answer SIPP + easy to use app + community forum

The only historical data point we have is a 2k waitlist in Sweden. Hard to interpret it. If we take 30k waitlist for UK (early 2018) then accounting for population difference we should be around 5k in Sweden, however this is not apples to apples as the FT app is far more developed than it was in 2018. The Swedish part of the community forum is dead silent if it is another sign of interest.

The recent comment from Viktor on how to launch Europe with a low marketing spend from the community surprised me a lot!! (FT share price thread on the forum):

Adam himself pointed to the competition being more interesting on the continent in May this year.

Is there a clear plan to fight competitors sitting on PFOF or CFD revenue streams? Are you aware that you have crazily well-funded competitors on the continent with extremely competitive products (referring to Viktorā€™s comments above)? Launch and see approach would have cut it in 2018 when FT started to discuss the expansion plans (EU expansion thread on the forum started in mid 2018), but we are in a completely different game now.

Would love to hear a clear plan for Europe. EU-wide app + ā€œlocalisation in some EU markets that we will not reveal just yetā€ is not enough imho. Also unless FT clearly articulates the competitive advantage of FT compared to other players in Europe I donā€™t understand how one could be bullish on FTā€™s launch in Europe today.

FT unfortunately has so far been unable to demonstrate that they can execute UK and Europe, simultaneously (Adamā€™s explanation on slow pace of the product development in the UK was working on European infra, also letā€™s forget for the moment that Canada and Australia were supposed to launch as well). I am worried that EU will turn out to be just a drag on the FTā€™s consolidated financials, drag on ressources (via localisation of the product for some markets and developing localised parts of the app for the EU) and will result in low number of customers since the value proposition of the product vs competitors is unclear.

  1. Crypto

What is the stage of development of the crypto product? If the regulator says yes tomorrow is the product ready to launch? If not, what is % progress on the development. Can the details of the offering be shared?

Many were under impression that the only bottleneck for Sweden and EU was the licence which turned out to be not true.

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