Megathread - Crowdfunding

efoldi looks quite impressive.

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Thoroughly impressive in my view. From zero sales to Ā£2.3m in a year. Profitable. A new product about to go liveā€¦ all into what UK a small market for the product.

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Good morning guys, I can only thank all the community for the sharing and contribution to this post here. Very interesting comments, great research, latest info regarding upcoming roundsā€¦ This is a fantastic post! One greatest power of Freetrade? their strong community members. :clap:

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Coinburp currently live on Crowdcube in private mode.

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Update

COWBOY

Cowboy is a smart ebike startup, based in europe. Backed by index ventures (Facebook, Skype, Deliveroo, Revolut - I could go on) and Tiger Global. Quite possibly the raise of the quarter, goes live 9am, Tuesday 10th December. Check out their pitch deck here. They will also be doing a live facebook Q&A here tomorrow at 18:30.

This may well be a raise that oversubscribes/finishes in private mode, so be sure to check it out promptly. I may be able to upload the link shortly before it goes live, so please keep an eye out on this thread :slight_smile:

Iā€™ve tried to summarise, as concisely as possible, some key points:

Here's why you might invest
  • Great product that excels in design and innovation and tackles many cycling pain points (for example, the removable battery is a novel solution to range anxiety). As a result, consumers love it (NPS (potential for organic growth) of 70; Monzoā€™s NPS is 80 (was once also 70) and Freetradeā€™s is 60 as a reference)

  • The world is positioned well for smart ebikes: batteries and sensors are at an all time low cost, urban congestion is at an all time high, car ownership is plummeting and cities globally are investing heavily in cycling infrastructure. Urban cycling has therefore seen strong growth (see london statistics below):

  • Urban congestion and pollution due to car use is a growing problem. Micromobility, specifically cycling, is a solution to this problem. City planners, regulators and commuters are trending in favour of this (e.g. london cycle super highways, ULEV zones, congestion charge, etc):
    image

  • wtfcropped
    *Direct to consumer model cuts out the middle man (distributors) and preserves margins. Warby Parker (eyewear), Casper (mattresses), Dollar Shave Club (Grooming), even Apple are recent example of D2C model success stories, proving the concept.

  • Cowboyā€™s investor/partner at index ventures, Martin Mignot, is bullish on micromobility, and has an impressive track record, having backed the likes of Revolut, Deliveroo and Bird. He discusses his investment in Cowboy here (skip to 20:35).

  • Cowboy has strong growth


    It should be emphasises that Cowboy are loss making, like most high growth early stage companies, having lost 3m euros last year and 1m euros the year before that. As they are a hardware startup, particular attention must be paid to their manufacturing costs, pricing model, etc

Here's why you might not invest
  • Cowboy is a hardware startup, meaning theyā€™re capital intensive (expect heavy dilution ) and carry risks around supply chain, etc. Where freetrade, say, can onboard customers and sell their product for the cost of engineers and server hosting, Cowboy would need to pay for staff, logistics, manufacturing, and so on. Hardware is frightfully hard.

  • Their main direct competitor, Vanmoof, has a large first mover advantage. They have 4 bikes in their product portfolio, are present in Asia, USA as well as Europe, and forecasts put their revenues at over 4x that of Cowboyā€™s. Check out their pitch deck from 2017 here - thereā€™s an elusive 2019 pitch deck from a crowdfund they did this year, will update this post if i obtain it.

  • There are several well capitalised companies in the mobility space (Uber, Bolt, etc) that may well target the ebike market. Their is also a case to be made that alternative mobility models (ridehailing, escooters, shared mobility, etc) will eclipse ebikes.

  • A fair valuation would be around 8x revenue, given recent valuations/terms of similar hardware startups like Peloton or Vanmoof.

Private live

Small robot company - An agtech startup trying to automate the farming process. invest here.

31dover - Online alcohol retailer, invest here.

Efoldi - a foldable mobility scooter startup, already profitable, is crowdfunding. invest here.

Shoutout to @JBL for bringing this one to all of your attention first!

Other private live campaigns include zazu (the zambian fintech/neobank), Feral horses (art investment/crowdfunding fintech - they once offered banksyā€™s!) and Oriental to-go restaurant chain Hop Vietnamese

Upcoming

Allplants - Frozen vegan meal delivery company backed by Octopus ventures. Looks like theyā€™ll raise in the new year, so not quite as soon as hoped. Check out their website in the mean time.

farmdrop - the challenger supermarket backed by Atomico, will go live any day now

Fatmap - An adventure holiday bookings platform (Much Better Adventures competitor) backed by Episode 1 Ventures (Betfair, Zoopla, Carwow) and Jaguar Landroverā€™s InMotion ventures (ByMiles, Lyft, Festicket). pre-register here. Definitely could be interesting.

vegankind - the UKā€™s largest vegan supermarket, will be crowdfunding in January. Pre-register here.

Grindsmith - A coffee chain based in manchester, will be crowdfunding. pre-register here.

Rumours

Monzo - Monzo will almost certainly crowdfund, having several strong indicators from Crowdcube and Monzo themselves, itā€™s just a matter of when. Monzo will send out an investor update email later this month that may (or may not) confirm a crowdfund for the coming months. Great to see the lively discussion going on in this thread.

Zego - Insurtech startup looking to offer loans to those with thin credit files (gig economy workers, immigrants, etc). Modest indications theyā€™ll crowdfund, Iā€™ll soon ask them myself if I can attend their networking event tomorrow! See why Balderton capital invested in them here.

Stepladder - fintech backed by Seedcamp, allowing home buyers to save a deposit 45% faster on average. See why Seedcamp invested here.

Thanks to all of you for the lively discussion :slight_smile:

News

Iā€™ll be meeting up with Seedrsā€™ Chief product officer in the new year to try out beta products and talk crowdfunding. If thereā€™s any queries youā€™d like me to pass on, please holler!

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8 posts were split to a new topic: Cowboy crowdfunding

Thanks for the update!! Always useful!

Any news on the Revolut rumours?

Need the Seedrs app ASAP :tired_face:

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Must of must this, what have crowdcube & Monzo said?

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Thanks for a great update, as always. If I may add to your why you should not invest section. This is a BIG red flag to me

1-2-3ā€¦10 guys :scream::scream::scream:
Are they building a water polo white male team or a product they want the world (in its entire diversity) to enjoy?

Let me guess, they have a team of female interns responsible for marketing and maybe one or two is from Asian or African ethnics?

Iā€™m sure they can do betterā€¦

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Well first off the bottom 3 are the VCā€™s, which is an overwhelmingly male dominated space. Who cares what colour they are? So what we are to have quotas now for every company? They are there on merit not the colour of their skin or what sex they were born

You denounce racism and sexism and end up looking like a racist and a sexist :grimacing:

And the co-founder is Middle-Eastern :joy:

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Thatā€™s a very odd investment criteria and kinda racist.

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You can choose not to invest because they donā€™t have any women on the board. That may or may not be be a valid criticism depending on how they were chosen. But I wouldnā€™t say thatā€™s a red flag in terms of whether they will be successful

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I purposely wanted to be provocative on this one but definitely didnā€™t want to sound racist. Apologies to anyone that may have felt offended guys

No racism here, well the team is my first investment criteria. I am looking at diversity and complementary in a team

I wish them to be successful and offering great returns to their crowdfunding investors. My belief is they will be more successful with a more diverse team

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No oneā€™s offended but you were offended originally so thatā€™s what the problem is. You invested in Freetrade? As far as Iā€™m aware they arenā€™t that ā€œdiverseā€ in the C-Suite

To be quite honest the sex/colour of the C-Suite wouldnā€™t even enter into my decision. White Europeans lead a European startup. Shocker!

Black People lead African startup. Shocker!

If the full team was black women would you say itā€™s not diverse? No you wouldnā€™t itā€™s only because they are white men. So if YOU see white men itā€™s automatically not a diverse company. Ye thatā€™s racist

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Maybe you did not phrase it perfectly, but it has merit as an investment criterion. Studies show that more diverse teams outperform less diverse teams, especially on a male-female scale.

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@SebReitz On what criteria, founding team? Wouldnā€™t buy that Apple,Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Netflix, Facebook etc.

Nope, team performance as in ā€˜working groups in companiesā€™. So youā€™re right, it is indeed not focused on founders, so might or might not apply in this case. But it would not be an entirely far off extrapolation of the above.

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What are the clues that Monzo will certainly crowdfund again? I havenā€™t seen any discussion on the Monzo forum. They also raised 100M+ less than 6 months ago. Have I missed something? :upside_down_face:

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Think thereā€™s defo space for a lot of big players in this market

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Thereā€™s loads of ebikes around, they may not all be smart but how smart do you need a bike to be?

Not a unique enough selling point for me

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