Freetrade's $15m Series A funding - Q&A

Same price for the crowd and the VC is great achievement and very fair to existing investors. Very difficult to imagine both VC and crowd completing at exactly the same time so there was always going to be a time gap between the two.

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Excellent news, congrats!!

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Great news, happy with the progress! Regarding VC share price, I think getting them to pay the same price as retail investors is amazingā€¦ If I were investing millions in a startup I would for sure ask for a hefty discount!

Excellent progress Freetrade team, letā€™s see that team grow and with that the platform!

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I think itā€™s reasonable to expect them to pay the same share price, it probably been in negotiations for quite a while, maybe since before the crowdcube round. And itā€™s not a ridiculous amount of dilution.

As I have a few Draper Esprit shares in freetrade, I now have exposure to freetrade in draper esprit in freetrade :smiley:

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The real question is were new shares issued. If they werenā€™t more than happy to have FT raise at that valuation. If they were issued on the other hand all the crowdfunding investors have had their stakes diluted. I will have to go onto Pitchbook later today and see if I can spot anything

Edit: |t has not made it to Pitchbook yet

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While I understand the sentiments of VC money (including me), but we also need to appreciate the crowd investment where same amout $7.5 M was invested by crowdfunding in recent R4 and R5 so by no means we are below VC money. What I am really interested to know when the VC round was closed. If it is closed during Crowdfunding R5 then itā€™s ok but if it is closed few months then it is not OK as we (crowdfunding investors) invested in R4 and R5 in different valuation within few months of time difference. I sincerely hope Adamā€™s letter to shareholders can provide some justification and background.

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TOTALLY AGREE WITH THAT

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Well done on the Series A raise Freetrade team!

Looks like my holding in Freetrade has indirectly increased, as I own a few Draper Esprit shares as well. Happy days!

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New shares would have been issued, otherwise itā€™s just someone selling their existing shares which isnā€™t really a Series A

That amount of dilution isnā€™t an issue for me. Itā€™s not really much more than Iā€™ve already been diluted by every round after R2

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I mean were extra shares issued on top of from the pool that hadnā€™t been issued yet. Whatā€™s the extent of new shares issued is what Iā€™m getting at. Often youā€™ll find not all shares are issued I know one such company and about 8/9% is unissued awaiting a Series A

Edit. Capdesk hasnā€™t updated if there was NEW shares issued. Hopefully itā€™s up to date and they just came from the unissued pool :ok_hand:

In practice is there any difference between new shares issue and shares from a pool? In both cases the company valuation goes up and the VC gets shares that no one else had previously. isnā€™t the dilution just the same?

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Would you rather the current 45M shares or there to be 50M shares? eg. I would much rathers that theres 10M in the pool that dont have a home yet in the 45M to give than to issue more??? Dilution is not nearly as bad this way. Sorry I explained my points above badly. Itā€™s early and Iā€™m happy about FT getting their Series A so not really in the right head space

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Not sure what you mean by in a pool, who owns these shares in the pool?

"Draper is investing in the business on the same terms and at the same Ā£52m post-money valuation as the startupā€™s crowd investors did earlier this year.

ā€œOur crowdfunders can feel comfortable that theyā€™re getting the same deal as Draper Esprit, and thatā€™s important to Draper Esprit as well,ā€ said Dodds."

Thatā€™s good!

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No one they havent been issued to anyone there still in the pool. Draper now hopefully

This is a startup from 2016. 520,433 has been issued out of the 1,030,933. Thereā€™s still 468k of options with no ones name on it. They could be for staff joining, VCā€™s etc. If you donā€™t want to issue all that you can take some off the table thus increasing the position(%) of everyone who owns the stock currently. If you increase the total outstanding and thus the total itā€™s diluting it even more. I hope Draper got some of the Total Outstanding and the total number of shares wasnā€™t increased. Get me?

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In addition, Adam Dodds, CEO and founder of Freetrade, tells me there will be a marketing and content push

Holla at me when you have a Digital Marketing Position :wink:

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So what is the practical difference between share no one owns and new shares?

They canā€™t be included in the market Cap if no one owns them?

As Adam said, the deal came together at the same time as our latest crowdfunding, meaning R5.

For various reasons, as it often happens with these deals, we needed to wait for hard completion to announce.

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Great news team. This is a really important step in the evolution of this business. moving from great crowdfunding support (which I am sure will continue to be tapped and valued greatly) to include validation from a significant 3 rd party institution investor.

Capital is needed to push the business on at the pace we would like.

So many companies flounder at this point when the scale up capital (rather then start up capital) does not emerge.

:+1::muscle:

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