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Sunday 14 May 2017

We were wrong - Vulpine just got a lot worse


An article in today's Sunday Times makes the Crowdcube Vulpine fiasco look a lot more serious than just poor management.

This article (google it as we cant find a link) by Oliver Shah, suggests that people in Vulpine knew things were not working before the company came to Crowdcube and raised £1m in just a week.

Investors in the previous seed round, according to the article, who had put in £1.1m, had by the Summer of 2015, become totally disillusioned with the company and the way the founder Nick Hussey and his wife were effortlessly sprinting through the money. Two of them, Philip Jenks and Simon Hulme, both experienced angel investors, resigned from the company's board. According the ST article an unnamed source stated that when Vulpine went to Crowdcube is was because they had totally run out of alternative funding avenues.

So this is where we depart from the ST piece. If what they have written is true, then it seems very clear to us that Crowdcube have failed to carry out any reasonable level of due diligence on this business, prior to promoting them as a highly successful start up on their platform and getting their investors to hand over £1m. Why did the resignations get no mention in the pitch? They are listed at CH but you have to go someway back to find them. They would be quite easily missed. Which was clearly the aim. Why were the projections allowed to be so impressive when it was already clear the business model did not work? 

Crowdcube, as ever the clowns, have trotted out their usual pathetic, amateurish apology. Surely they are not going to get away with this yet again, not after the similar debacle with The Solar Cloth Company? You really cannot be serious!! 

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