Curve crowdfunding

chamelion

So - campaign went live 1h 40m ago. they've raised 4.7M of the 1M target. They also have investor material there as well as info around series B investment rounds that were recently closed at 42.8M.

https://www.crowdcube.com/curve.

masonic

chamelion wrote: »

So - campaign went live 1h 40m ago. they've raised 4.7M of the 1M target.

So they've upped their valuation from £0.25bn to £1.2bn? Or will they be giving more of their company away to crowdfunding participants?

bowlhead99

masonic wrote: »

So they've upped their valuation from £0.25bn to £1.2bn? Or will they be giving more of their company away to crowdfunding participants?

Seems rather more likely that they are simply issuing a greater amount of shares at the same pre-money valuation - so yes, giving more to the crowd funding participants in exchange for more money.

masonic

bowlhead99 wrote: »

Seems rather more likely that they are simply issuing a greater amount of shares at the same pre-money valuation - so yes, giving more to the crowd funding participants in exchange for more money.

I'm not sure where the £70m figure quoted earlier in the thread comes into this, but if they've raised £42.8m from their Series B round, then perhaps there is plenty of equity available for crowdfunding investors.

Edit: the £70m figure appears to be based on the $70m raised prior to the latest round, so no idea what valuation the company is giving itself for this latest round, having already given a 30% of the company away.
Edit2: It's valuing itself at £201m according to Crowdcube, so somewhat less than the £250m suggested above. Perhaps that was also in $ not £

bowlhead99

The GBP figures from the pitch on the site show Seed and Series A raises totalling £16m and a recent Series B at £43m (converted from the dollar actuals) meaning they have raised £59m; perhaps '£70m in funding' meant $70m.

The recent ~£40m Series B was done at a ~£160m pre-money valuation and crowdfunding investors will get the same price per share, so post-money it's a valuation just north of £200m (so quarter billion valuation will be dollars rather than GBP).

They updated the site to say they will stop the crowd cube over-funding at about £6m total (they are about 5.5 now). I will have take £1000-worth. With no EIS relief and extremely limited financial information it is a complete punt with fun money. They have 500k users now, but whether they are all truly active users and what proportion of them are monetisable, is something of an unknown.

The only thing to rely on is the fact the B investors invested not long ago and will have done some due diligence. But they will still see it as 'a bit of a punt' too, and it won't be the only fintech startup they hold. For a Curve customer, being invited to crowdfund, it may well be the only fintech startup (perhaps even the only investment) they hold, and they may not really be expecting the 100% loss they might get.

Really the purpose of allowing a token £1m crowdfunding round (and letting it overfund) is not because they couldn't get institutional backing; they've already got several tens of millions in the bank in recent months. It's just that when new technology looks to achieve widespread adoption, word of mouth is a good channel, and if going through word of mouth it is quite sensible to have your early-adopting customers have some financial incentive to really pass on the recommendations to their social circles.

masonic

bowlhead99 wrote: »

I will have take £1000-worth.

Blimey, first WPCT and now this?

bowlhead99

Well, WPCT is only down a third or so since I invested, with declared NAV still more than what I paid.

This one is just for fun.

It's a bit ridiculous that they haven't bothered to give *any* financial information to their customers, simply expecting them to sign up like sheep and throw money at the company for untold rewards. It's a blind investment and somewhat unclear exactly what if any rights are available to the crowd investors Vs the founding shareholders or the seed / series a / series b are, compared to the crowd round. If I'm reading the Articles correctly (found on Companies House but not even linked from the pitch) there is no pre-emption or tag along rights for those with tiny shareholdings.

And there's no EIS.

I actually quite like the product but it's something they need to just get loads of users and sell the product and enlarged customer base to omeone with deep pockets, rather than truly believe they will show proper positive earnings any time soon.. The vast majority of customers will like it as a 'free to use' product but but not want to pay £x per month to use it on a premium package.

That's why I'm only giving them £1k as a bit of fun instead of something more meaningful.

polestar2

Hi Experts,

There is some financial informations here: https:// beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09523903/filing-history

As you can guess, I am one of those customer who threw some money only because I used the product ,loved it and consider it as a great idea. As you guys mentioned, this might not be good enough. Since there is still time to withdraw from the funding, looking for more advices based on data.

bowlhead99

polestar2 wrote: »

. Since there is still time to withdraw from the funding, looking for more advices based on data.

There is no meaningful data publicly available that will help you conclude whether the valuation makes sense, only the fact that other professional investors have recently given them investment at that level of valuation.

The Companies House data is over a year old and since then they have more customers and more cash in the bank (from fundraising) to spend on operations and acquiring customers. They have not published publicly (or on their crowdfunding pitch) any forecast on how much revenue they can expect to make from customers or how exactly they will do it, and they have decided not to release a recent balance sheet, profit and loss account or cashflow statement into the public domain.

They were easily able to hit their crowdfunding raise target several times over without doing that (because their customers like the story and are generally not sophisticated investors) and so they are not going to do that now because they can afford plenty of the crowd investors to drop out.

Personally I like the product (have the free one) and look forward to getting the upgraded version for 'free' for a year by giving them investment money that I may never get back. I can afford the £1000 punt as part of a broad portfolio of investments which includes ISAs and pensions and mainstream investment assets, the vast majority of which is invested in actual real companies which make profits.

jaybeetoo

Curve need to sort their systems out. Several times recently, I have received messages saying they are experiencing a disruption to their service and to carry a backup card.