In December 2013 I saw the pitch of a promising pre-launch UK p2p lending startup called Landbay pitching on the UK p2p equity platform Seedrs to the crowd. The pitch explained how they planned to do p2p lending secured by property in the UK. I liked the proposal and invested a small amount in Landbay shares.
Since then the founders John Goodall and Gray Stern have been busy. They launched the site in public beta, succeeded in winning former Zopa co-founder James Alexander for their advisory board and managed to get featured on Techcrunch.
They also kept investors updated about their progress. A few days ago I got a 21 page report about the current state and future plans.
Now Landbay is raising a second round from the crowd
Landbay raised capital in a few hours on the weekend in a second SEIS eligible round on Seedrs from the existing shareholders. Landbay raised 81,647 GBP for a 6% equity stake. That’s a valuation of 1.28M GBP (up from 0.62M GBP in first round). To avoid dilution investors from the first round had the right to invest into this new round first.
Now there is a 2.96% equity round – EIS eligible – aiming to raise 41,456 GBP (1.36M valuation).
If you are interested you don’t need to be a UK resident. Just sign up at Seedrs and follow the process. If you are outside of the UK, I recommend using Transferwise, when depositing money in order to reduce currency transfer fees significantly. I think this round will close within days, maybe even hours, so if you are interested you need to be quick.
This article is not an investment advice. Investing in startups bears significant risks, including total loss of investment.
Assetz Capital has been doing P2P Buy to Let mortgages for a year now and will be doing a lot more this year. We use Assetz for Investors (the largest BTL agency in the UK) as our double check on the value of a property to ensure the security could be liquidated easily if required and as a second opinion to the independent valuer.
Hi Stuart,
thx for your comment. Could you tell the readers, if and how they can invest in shares of Assetz Capital?
Hi
We haven’t a public offering planned via CrowdFunding or IPO unfortunately so it’s just private funding presently.
On a slightly un-related topic I contacted Transferwise with respect to making a transfer from my Belgian bank in Euros to USD to a bank in China. They indicated that this was outwith their remit as they only transfer currency in this case USD to the country of origin USA and not to currency accounts held in non national banks. Any experience of this situation or practical work arounds would be welcome to avoid excessive Bank charges and Tourist Exchange Rates. Thanks for any feedback.