[Crowdfunding 🔨] Coconut

[neovo]

@anon1435622

Coconut, accountancy automation fintech, will be crowdfunding by April. If you’re a lucky shareholder, you’ll get access to a pre-emption round at a 20% discount beforehand.

Really happy with my investment in Coconut and will be doubling down in April

[TickTock]

Blockquote

@neovo

Really happy with my investment in Coconut and will be doubling down in April

I think that there is a very good call

[neovo]

Perhaps somebody can help (I’ve possibly already asked on here some time ago)…

The previous share price was 0.0154 so I currently hold tens of thousands of shares.

I’m assuming these will be massively diluted when they raise again?

[Andrewpclark (Andrew Clark)]

They will be but the value of each share would go up and typically more than make up for it. Your percentage ownership of the company will reduce but you’ll generally be richer. Some companies offer pre-emption to cover this (i.e. you pay for more shares to maintain your stake). It’s more meaningful if you are a VC trying to keep 10% of a company to keep your board seat. I own 1/40,000th of Monzo and will own a much smaller percentage if they eventually float as my ownership decreases each time they raise. I’ll reflect on that when I’m sitting on my yacht…

[neovo]

I’ll be sure to take up the 20% pre emotion offer then

[Andrewpclark (Andrew Clark)]

I chose not to invest in them, I hope I don’t come to regret that decision…

[neovo]

There’s an investor event this Wednesday, anyone planning to attend?

Be interesting to find more about the next raise, future plans etc etc

[Connor]

I can’t make it either, but would like to hear from anyone attending please!

[neovo]

Keen to hear if anybody went

[anon1435622]

I did! Hope you don’t mind iif i leave it for my last write up in the megathread in a few days - it was mostly about features and growth; crowdfund details (timelines, valuation, etc) are still as yet unannounced though - an email’s dropping in a few days/weeks appaz

[neovo]

OK great, cheers

[Richard (Freetrade 2 Financial Freedom)]

New Forum

https://bite.getcoconut.com/?utm_source=Website+Sign+Ups&utm_campaign=e211b83e90-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_02_Customer-Vision-Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f8063fcd26-e211b83e90-201144109&mc_cid=e211b83e90&mc_eid=cde0c379a8

[samoconnor (Samuel O'Connor)]

Hey Everyone, you might be interested in the video of the presentation I did at the event on Facebook.

Also keen to do an AMA if that’s something the Freetrade community are interested in.

[SpyrosL]

Crowdfunding round coming up - what is your take on Coconut?

Interested in investing but would like to hear the thoughts of this wise and prudent community

[LewisHarding]

I like the look of them personally! There’s around 5 million self employed in the UK which is a decent sized market. Accountancy packages are too complicated for the smallest of businesses so that’s where Coconut come in. They have a webinar coming up about the crowdfunding and I’d like to see the pitch deck too before making my decision. It’ll be interesting to see how they are navigating Covid-19 and if it’s affecting sign ups.

[SpyrosL]

What I mainly struggle with is the possibility of an exit and how would it look for them. Cannot see them IPO and not sure if other companies are looking to buy smaller ones in that sector.

Not sure yet!

[LewisHarding]

Yeah I agree with you that an IPO probably isn’t realistic. If the product really takes off, I can see one of the major UK Banks taking an interest.

NatWest bought FreeAgent a few years ago which is a cloud accountancy package aimed at smaller businesses. Using this example I think it’s more likely that they get bought out.

I’m interested to see which VC gets involved with the series A round as that could be a decent indicator!

[CashCow (Open to journalist enquiries)]

Coconut is a business current account, not a bank. The Coconut current account is an e-money account provided by Prepay Solutions (PPS), a trading name of Prepay Technologies Ltd, which is an electronic money institution authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 (FRN 900010) for the issuing of electronic money.

I’m self employed and looked at Starling, Coconut and Tide when I was moving banks at the start of the year. Monzo Business hadn’t launched yet and, whilst I liked the sound of the Monzo offering, it seemed risky to have my personal and business banking with the same bank.

Tide were giving £100 to new sign ups so I tried them but ran into problems as they’re not a proper bank. Clients that tried to pay me were getting warnings when doing bank transfers and it turned out the card I got with the account wasn’t a “proper card” but some sort of prepaid thing. I left them after a couple of painful months and went to Starling.

Coconut appears to be similar to Tide in that it’s not a bank and I really don’t see what advantages it offers over Monzo or Starling which both seem to offer the same business services but are both both actual banks? Coconut does have a great website though, however I’m can’t see how anyone’s going to get rich from it. Are they hoping that one of the legacy banks buys them out or something?

[LewisHarding]

Coconut do have their own current account however now with open banking they can connect all of the major UK banks to the app. So people can use the app with their usual bank account and benefit from the accountancy features within coconut.

That’s where I think the key value is - having a current account isn’t revolutionary but having the tools to make VAT and accounting as simple as possible is.