Broadband and crowdfunding

A month has gone by since my last blog and I regret to report that I still haven’t done anything about finding a new broadband provider and switching from Virgin Media.  But I have done something… I got my son to ring up and complain and he extracted a promise of some money back from Virgin Media whose speed is usually nowhere near as fast as Usain Bolt and more like the speed of the Clapham Omnibus in rush-hour traffic. 

On the same subject, consumers have had good news with Which?’s* broadband speed campaign at last paying dividends with new rules in 2018 from the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) on dodgy marketing claims, following hard on the heels of Ofcom’s announcement about consumers getting automatic compensation from 2019.  So at least there’s some light at the end of this very long tunnel, to mix my metaphors.

Given these developments, never mind the small matter of economic uncertainty caused by Brexit, I’m not sure now is the time to invest in consumer-facing telcos. Instead, with my failed People’s Trust investment, I’ve stumbled across crowdfunding and, a little to my surprise (given my relatively cautious nature), I’ve found myself crowdfunding. How did this happen to this self-declared ‘reasonable person’?

Twickets and crowdfunding

One of my day-jobs is working on the FanFair Alliance a campaign funded by some important, but fan-friendly people in the music industry who want to see event ticketing fairer for consumers;  to put fans first, not ticket touts. We’ve had considerable success with this endeavour — in the last week, Google announced new Adword rules and the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) announced enforcement action against secondary ticketing websites.

Anyway back to my investing. Through my work on ticketing, I came across Twickets – an ethical way to buy and sell unwanted event tickets fan-to-fan. Through Twickets, I came into contact with Seedrs and to cut a long story short, Twickets was looking for new investors for international expansion and I decided to invest in Twickets via Seedrs.  Since then I’ve also invested in Seedrs itself.

Now, this has got me thinking as to what drove my decision to invest using a crowdfunding platform given the risks involved.  There was the obvious:

• I wasn’t investing more than I could afford to lose
• I had some spare capital to invest due to my inheritance
• Seedrs is well established, reputable and, to some extent, regulated

And as regards my investment in Twickets:

• I liked the idea and their product, and I reckon many others will too, so there ought to be a niche for them in the ticketing world
• I liked the people who are behind it, I believe in them and their great brand
• I understood what their business model is and how it might scale up both in the UK and internationally, and the numbers seem to stack up
• My kids thought it was ‘sick’. Let’s face it, they are the future so it’s worth asking them their view.

It seems to me that those are pretty good rules of thumb to follow when DIY investing in anything, but more about that next time in a post-Christmas round up.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not a regulated financial adviser, and this is not advice.  Always do your research or see a regulated financial adviser.

Have a good Christmas everyone!

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*Mark on the Clapham Omnibus worked at Which? until 2015.

Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash

Article is accurate at date of writing.