kev-reframed

in, real, life, I speak, like, William Shatner. I think my writing should reflect that

I'll take that. We weren't dilligent enough.

That's another reason I'm not going after him legally. He tricked us, it's my fault for not being dilligent enough.

There is someone going after him legally (We were not the only people involved) and they have a stronger case, so I have given them all of the information that I have.

I agree public shaming is crass - an investor of ours was going to write the story if I did not and he is far more prominent than me. I expected this story to only be read by my friends locally so they could be forewarned about him, not do business with him. I was also telling the story individually to my friends. So I posted it on my facebook feed, it somehow ended up here

I have been wondering this for a long time. Looking at the way he positioned himself it is almost as if he just wanted to feel important. He came into our building and told them he would become a sponsor. So right away we were seeing his company name next to the door and events he was organising - putting him above everyone else in here.

Then we later find that he has been organising events within the building and setting himself up as an investor. So he is getting people to speak up to him and pitch to him and make him feel important.

Perhaps because my business partner and I treat people equally the money he was offering had to keep going up until he felt we viewed him in an way that was important or necessary.

perhaps he was waiting for us to be unreasonable so he could have a fight and pull out dramatically and no one would have to know he didnt have the cash, but we weren't unreasonable. I hear he was already faking evidence that he had paid his other invoices he owed.

I don't really understand what his game is and he wasn't charismatic at all, like I picture a con man to be. I'll let someone else work it out and focus on building

Our employees were always informed how much runway there was left, which is how they found jobs so quickly afterwards. They had correctly been looking after their own interests and sounding people out for jobs, just in case. Our developers got new jobs immediately, one within an hour the other within a day.

The most difficult part of this process was the two weekends in which I couldn't share the information with them. Both times occurred on a friday afternoon after they had gone home for the weekend so I had to keep it with me until monday then immediately tell them monday morning.

The staff were always well informed, that doesn't necessarily come across in the article

absolutely - we have taken a huge hit. We made a lot of mistakes. Our next project we are building MVP but not looking for investment to launch it

We raised on engagement rate and having SEIS protection made it a lot easier as it is less of a risk for the investors. (As we found on the next round we needed commercial traction for EIS raise) Our valuation was £1.1M post and we had people viewing videos for on average 20minutes, in many cases (such as Prime ministers question time videos) people watched and engaged for twice the length of a video.

It was a neat 'feature' rather than a business we found and created far too many passive users rather than active users

Hi, We have taken responsibility for what went on. Simon was not the cause of the downfall of the business. The fact that we could not monetise and didn't have a commercial business was not his fault. We have said that to each of our investors in person. We have still maintained a good relationship with all of them and they were involved in our board meetings around this (as they have all of our board meetings) right the way through the business.

The reason I wrote the article is not to say I didn't do anything wrong - obviously we were terribly naive in many aspects of the business and far too trusting. I didn't expect this many people to read it, I thought my friends would read it locally and be forewarned about getting involved (I only posted it on facebook to my friends). Turns out it got more attention