What made you invest in Tec Avenue? I took a quick look now, and it looked like a wireless charging brick? Something any Shenzhen factory can produce at will?
Because at the time they had just developed a new version, and were in contract talks with one of the biggest distis. But I guess all the other manufacturers caught up and overtook them. I did get a free charging brick out of it though 
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Ahhh, the eternal pitch of crowdfunding. “We’re in talks with insert big names here”
Wonder how much of the time this means “we’re still emailing that guy in insert big name here even though it’s very clear by his tone and actions that this isn’t going anywhere.”
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Reminds me of what always happens on Dragons Den:
“Big [retailer] is very interested in working with us!”
“Is that true?”
“Yes, they want to buy lots of units from us!”
“Do you have anything in writing?”
“Here’s a contract :)”
Dragon glances at paper
“This isn’t a contract, this is a meaningless polite letter thanking for you getting in touch, and counts about as much as when you meet someone on holiday and say you must meet up again in future. I’m out.”
People selling something always seem to end up reading much more in to vague interest than is actually there.
See also, something Peter Jones does a fair bit:
“This is really good. Do you have a patent?”
“No, we have been unable to get a patent for it.”
“I can make my own, then. I’m out.”
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Or the very common:
“Have you got a patent”
“Yes”
“Can I see it”
< Hands it over >
“This isn’t a patent, this is a patent application. Have you had a response?”
“Well we have, but they didn’t grant our patent”
“So you haven’t got a patent…”
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Another one bites the dust! Canny raise on Crowdcube and is currently in the process of winding up.
Reason: money has finished!!! 
Canny in the can!
Oh dear. “We’ve sold 10,000 overpriced milkshakes (small carton, £2) for a total revenue of £20,000, and we’re probably deeply in the red. Please value us at £600,000 pre-money, here we namedropped Northstar Ventures”
Did anyone invest in these? Can you explain why this looked like a good idea? I can only imagine these going into Dragon’s Den. “So you made a chocolate milkshake… and you’ve made £20k top line… And you reckon you’re worth £700,000… 
”
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Going to get darker…
Fantoo , an early Crowdcube one and also guys like Ruffena and a few more of that type. Took about 200k from Crowdcube 2013 and then form Syndicate Room and others. Equity holders and creditors wiped out for 2.5m . Guess they didn’t think keeping accounts was very important
At Dell as Entrepreneur in Residence after winning a Dell Pitch. In CVL , the Insolvency Guy states the below. I think rules need to change so that Insolvency guys can look at Directors actions even in a CVL which are being used when there are directors or directors F and F loans to get a CVL approved screwing HRMC who have usually been used as a bank and equity holders.
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Fantoo was madness. How did anyone ever expect a chat/email aggregator to become profitable? You were basically crowfunding salaries.
Not to mention many free alternatives exist, so their offering had to be vastly better to get people paying for it.
There’s going to be even more names ending up in this thread because of the current conditions.
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Indeed - we’ll see how many companies with products & services that have no real path to profitability collapse.
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Its going to become brutal. I am sure there are many ECF and early stage companies that are dead already looking at their social activity when many say they are digital.
The crunch on early stage funding I think will be huge, people have been burnt too much on unlisted stuff with no liquidity and the returns not being anywhere near good enough even if one gets an exit for the risk.
If you do get the lottery ticket winner , great , but that will be harder now a reality dose has been put into valuations (at least on the acquisition/IPO side, if not at the ECF raise end of it…).
The its OK to have share premium = retained losses model won’t work for much longer as the faith in the company becoming profitable has gone. The only ones making money are FB and Goggle selling views, likes and impressions which seem to be the new KPI’s rather than LTV, conversions and churn
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Those who invested in Revolut at the start has massive unrealised gains per the Seedrs Secondary Market.
Starling is privately held.
I would suggest that those who bought into Monzo during their crowdfunding are likely sitting on unrealised losses (I have no evidence, just what I think could happen).
I thin Anna Money was a Equity Crowdfund that wsa bought out but not a huge amount went to the crowdfunding investors. Mindful Chef was sold to Nestle, and I think again the crowdfunders did do fantastically:
I assume you mean in the long run?
Before their down round my shares were worth 8x what I’d put in. Now it’s more like 4x.
I personally believe Monzo will still do very well in the long run but I guess time will tell.
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Monzo will do fantastic long run. No doubt about it
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I invested in Mindful Chef and the return has been 3.5x (without EIS) and 5.0x (with EIS). Not really fantastic…
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What was the timeline for this investment? 5x does not seem too bad…
3 years.
I see. Yeah… I guess it could still be worse though - you only have to scroll up in this thread 
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