Crowdcube · UK

E-Car Club’s 2013 crowd round: 3x to 4x when Europcar bought it in 2015

63 people put £100,000 into E-Car Club on Crowdcube in 2013. Europcar bought it two years later, paying a reported 3x to 4x in what was called the first crowdfunding exit.

Past returns are not a guide to future returns. General information, not advice.

The figures

Multiple 3x to 4x Realised

Platform
Crowdcube
Country
UK
Crowd round
2013
Entry price or valuation
£100,000 for 20% of the company, at a £500,000 valuation
Exit or latest event
Bought by Europcar

E-Car Club: crowd round in 2013; entry at £100,000 for 20% of the company, at a £500,000 valuation; exit or latest event: Bought by Europcar.

The round

E-Car Club was the UK's first all-electric car club, started in 2011 with a government Smart grant of £24,000 and a proof-of-market study. In 2013 it went to Crowdcube. UKTN (opens in a new tab) records 63 people putting up £100,000 for 20% of the company. City A.M. (opens in a new tab) gives the valuation as £500,000, an average investment of £1,500 and a largest single investment of £15,000.

The company then raised a further £500,000 from Ignite, a Centrica-backed social impact fund, UKTN (opens in a new tab) reports, so the crowd did not stay at 20%.

What happened

Europcar bought the business in July 2015, about two years after the round. The price was not published. The UK government's note on the deal (opens in a new tab) calls it the world's first successful exit by crowdfunding investors, and says the 63 enjoyed a multiple return on their £100,000.

What the figure does and does not say

The size of that multiple comes from one report. City A.M. (opens in a new tab) wrote that investors "will now receive a healthy 3-4x return". Other coverage did not go that far: Finance Magnates (opens in a new tab) said the percentage was undisclosed, and did not say whether the sale covered all the crowd's equity. So 3x to 4x should be read as reported, not confirmed, and we chart the lower end. We found no filing that states it, and nobody published what each holder received.

The claim of a first is the government's (opens in a new tab) and the platform's wording, repeated widely. We have no reason to doubt it, but no register of crowdfunding exits exists to check it against. Its importance is mostly historical: until this sale, nobody could point to a crowdfunded company that had paid its backers.

City A.M. (opens in a new tab) reported that these investors held an average of 12 investments, and that most had put money into other companies on the platform. A single winning multiple tells a reader little about how such a portfolio did as a whole. Two years is also unusually short for a crowd round to pay out; many of the other cases on this list took between five and ten years.

Timeline

  1. 2011

    Founded, with a £24,000 Smart grant. GOV.UK (opens in a new tab)

  2. 2013

    63 people put £100,000 in on Crowdcube for 20%. UKTN (opens in a new tab)

  3. July 2015

    Bought by Europcar; a 3x to 4x return is reported. City A.M. (opens in a new tab)

  4. August 2015

    The government calls it the world's first exit by crowdfunding investors. GOV.UK (opens in a new tab)

Sources

  1. GOV.UK, 11 August 2015: Crowdfunding investors celebrate successful exit from E-Car Club (opens in a new tab)
  2. City A.M., 22 July 2015: What should investors make of the first equity crowdfunding exit? (opens in a new tab)
  3. UKTN, 10 July 2015: Crowdcube celebrates first exit as Europcar buys E-Car Club (opens in a new tab)
  4. Finance Magnates: E-Car Club first exit for its investors on CrowdCube (opens in a new tab)

By Raise Sonar. Published . Sources read .

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