Who Are The Shareholders Of Crowdcube?

Crowdcube has been supported by several institutional investors along with of course raising funds from the crowd.

This has resulted in one of the largest cap tables that we have come across with over 6,500 named investors of which over 2,200 have shares with value based on the last round fo 100 GBP or less. It clearly shows that Crowdcube has taken on board the crowd, but you have to wonder if the costs of maintaining good governance of shareholders outweigh the benefit of capital received by the 10 to 100 GBP crowd.

There are several share classes and as per usual in companies where there is a mix of crowd and “professional” money then the crowd has a share class without many of the rights and preferences are given to the “professionals”.

The best example of that is possibly Monzo where the Crowd (under a Crowdcube Nominee) are the 5 ot 6th largest equity holder with no information rights or pre-emption rights compared to those who have invested both less in cash terms, hold less equity and invested at the same time or before the crowd. Of course, not having pre-emption rights was probably a benefit to the crowd on the round before Monzo’s down round.

It has been noted that a 2021 raise is being suggested for the merged company and it will be interesting to see at that stage what preferences the legacy preferred share classes have from the existing Crowdcube entity and the current Seedrs equity holders and the advances received by Seedrs that maybe Convertible/Redeemable/Preferences/Ordinary shares and how they if fact convert at the merger.

If the crowd is asked to contribute to the merged company we would hope its at a preference level in line with any “professional” investors.

It will also be interesting to see if there is any kind of cap table clean up as part of the merger by either an offer to buy out small investors or by giving them an incentive to come under a nominee umbrella to streamline compliance and burden