Crowdfunding (Upcoming 2018/19 Round) - Updates

What I think would allow Monzo to be sure of hitting their funding target and also allow everyone the chance to invest would be a moving investment limit over time.

Eg. If monzo want to raise £30m, instead of saying anyone can invest up to £1000 and when it’s gone it’s gone (which in theory means it could be the first 30k pledgers get to invest then it’s closed… why not do it like this:

Day 1 everyone can pledge up to £100 in the app (if 50k people pledged that then that’s £5m pledged.)
Day 2 the limit goes up to £500 (if 20k of those people above decide to increase to this then total pledged is £13m)
Day 3 the limit goes up to £1000 (if 10k of the people above decide to increase to this then total pledged is £18m)
Day 4 the limit goes up to £2000 (if 5k of the people above decide to increase to this then total pledged is £23m)
Day 5 the limit goes up to £5000 (if 1k of the people above decide to increase to this then total pledged is £28m)
and so on…

If the number of pledgers underwhelms expectations then you can just increase the limit higher until filled, as there are definitely private investors who would want £10k, £100k, even £1m+ chunk of Monzo. That is still a fraction of a percent of the company so Monzo doesn’t need to worry about unknown entities building stakes as they may have been worried about by limiting earlier rounds.

This may be a dumb idea but good to get some ideas out there, rather than no ideas and then everyone moan when it doesn’t work out fairly for them. I would be interested to hear other people’s ideas as to how this one can be done fairly. As we have seen in previous crowdfunding rounds, the deadlines quickly creep up and Monzo haven’t previously had a lot of time to consider how they can balance off securing the funding quickly and easily as well as keeping all the potential investors happy, so it would be a good time to discuss it now.

Edit: or maybe rather than various days of coming back for sub-rounds Monzo could ask people however much they want to pledge and then run these rounds on an engine to complete it much quicker. Eg. It could first pick out everyone who wants at least £10 and allocate that, then if the total is short of £30m then run the list again for everyone who wants at least £100 and allocate to them, then run the list for £250 etc etc until target reached.

In order to prevent false pledges and multiple registrations like in past rounds maybe Monzo could leverage its own platform. If pledges can only be made in app then that is a real, verified person making the pledge, unlike round 2 where people made duplicate email addresses to pledge multiple times on Crowdcube. Also, to ensure pledges are real maybe the amount pledged can only be confirmed if the user transfers that amount into a pot which will be locked until the investment is completed? If I pledged £10k and I was only able to invest £1k then it would take £1k from the pot and return the other £9k when pot became unlocked.

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Can you do multiple pledges?

I’d hope Crowdcube have the means to recognise multiple accounts for the same person? I imagine there is not much can be done if say a husband and wife both bought shares, but one person shouldn’t be allowed multiple goes.

Hey Fateha, it’s not possible to pre-register just yet, I’m afraid!

I will say this - we are hugely aware of how much interest there was in the last round, and how disappointed many were who didn’t get the chance to invest. So, with this round, there will be ample notice given before the actual round starts :slight_smile: If you pay attention to the forum and our blog, and even the app itself, you’ll have no excuse for missing out! :slight_smile:

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It might be a good idea to give priority to the people that registered for the last round but didn’t get selected?
Last time we had two weeks to register and we all knew it was coming for weeks if not months. I don’t think it’s about having enough time to decide wether or not you would like to invest but more given the opportunity to.

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All these problems would be solved by an open round that lets people invest as much as they want up to a limit per person.

Quickfire FAQ:

  • Why can’t they just hold an infinite size open round?
    • The EU has a cap on funding without a Prospectus
  • Why not just have everyone get a £10 share?
  • Gimme some (unverified) percentages:
    • 16% of pledgers got to invest in the last round
    • 34% invested up to the equivalent of equal share investment (£60)
    • 51% of the previous round, reinvested in the last round

@kennygrant Setting the limit of £60 when it costs £20 means you cut a 1/3 of the total investment to admin costs
.

But it might all change? It might not? We will have to wait and see…

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Why not produce a prospectus so the limit can be lifted?

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My thoughts exactly. Anything else seems a bit pointless and fiddly. Depends how much work a prospectus is though and perhaps with the new rules they won’t need to. A limit on small holdings would be perfectly reasonable, min of £100 for example, trying to manage a stampede of investors at £10 each seems to be the problem and a lower limit would help that.

Figures for the last round are not very useful as investments were heavily constrained and it underfunded as a result.

min/max limit with uncapped total? Couldn’t this lead to runaway dilution? Imagine 400,000 people wanting to invest £1000 each? (Yes unlikely but …)

I imagine the institutional investors would want a limit on any dilution to protect their holding.

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I doubt very much that would be a serious concern given previous rounds, but they could have a hard cap at some very high level. Anyway, we’ll see later in the year I suppose what they decide.

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Looking forward to hear about this! Thanks

It would be good if the investor’s identity could be verified simply by the ownership of a verified Monzo account rather than outsourcing verification to Crowdcube or whichever partner.

Monzo already has hundreds of thousands of fully verified users so they don’t need to pay someone to do it all again. Maybe last time they didn’t have the time or the scale to think about taking that in-house but it makes sense.

Who is the new Crowdfunding Lead btw?

We don’t have anyone confirmed yet :slightly_smiling_face:

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Do they need Crowdcube experience or will an enthusiastic Monzo account holder fit the role? :wink::wink:

As a company seeking investment? Or as an employee of CrowdCube? I’ve met tons of developers who applied there, yet never heard of anyone who actually got accepted. I went to their offices years ago, seemed like a nice place with a nice team too!

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@stephenjames Not specific experience working for Crowdcube but experience running crowdfunding campaigns is definitely a plus point :slightly_smiling_face: Hiring for this role is paused at the moment, and something we’ll probably pick up end of March beginning of April

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That’s a shame, the only crowdfunding experience I have is rounding my mates up to pay for their rounds. Best if I let an expert apply for the position.

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Can’t wait to see what you guys do with the new card and can’t wait to invest. Love what you do!

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Thanks, Hennie! :grinning:

Looking forward to hear more here. With the Open Banking API and investing the change it has become a massively interesting integrated proposition. Hoping to get a piece of the action!