At $25bn market cap, would it be worth Tesla/Elon's time to just buy Ford - get the E - and then sell Ford to Renault or another European manufacturer looking to get scale through mergers?
[TBD - negotiating domain] | Designer who can code (node/python preferred)| LONDON, UK | Onsite, full time | http://linkedin.com/in/Ray5D
Hi, I’m Ray.
I founded Unmortgage, the new way to buy a home without a mortgage.
After securing a partnership with Allianz for an initial fund of £500m and also the largest seed round in Europe (probably ever) of £10m, I’ve stepped down as CEO to work on something new.
I have designed a new business that adds such value to people’s lives that they trust us for buying essential financial services: mortgages, insurance, high-Speed broadband.
I’m looking for someone to work side-by-side with me.
The goal is to be up-and-running within a few months and generating several million pounds worth of profit by this time next year.
I have several potential venture and private equity backers to help us grow, but I’m keen to get as far as we can bootstrapped.
There is additionally an opportunity to roll-up 7 existing businesses which generate over £1bn in revenue today. They would cost c.£200m to acquire. Hence lining up private equity.
Just to provide a flavour of my ambition.
Happy to chat and answer any questions - I tend to be an open book, as I find that is the best way to learn and build trust: [email protected]
Unmortgage | London, United Kingdom | Frontend, Backend & Data Engineers (all Senior) | Full-time | Onsite | https://unmortgage.com
Millions of people are stuck in the rent trap, with no way to own a home. At Unmortgage we are reinventing homeownership to bridge the widening gap between renting and buying with a mortgage.
We are funded for the next 3 years after the largest seed raise in Europe and are looking for people to join us at this early stage.
We work in a Agile (XP+TDD) team in a stunning office above Bank station, London. The Stack is React, Python running on Kubernetes in Google Cloud. Everyone gets their hands dirty and there are no silos allowed.
I'm the CEO and would love to hear from passionate developers who believe in making a difference. Please contact me on [email protected]
I posted this article because we’re planning to do the same and wanted to gather thoughts from the tech community (the financial community has commented on this sufficiently to help inform our process).
I thought it might help to share our motivations for eventually listing our company vs taking more VC:
a. The public markets force transparency. This aligns with our values.
b. Governance enforced by VCs (especially in the UK) is largely founder-unfriendly. There are no prefs, investor majority consents or other unfair terms in company governance when you’re public.
c. Secondaries - shares sold by employees or early investors - can be sold at any time, at fair market value.
d. Capital raising - debt or equity - as a public company comes with fewer strings.
e. Friends and family and supporters can participate - especially from their retirement accounts. This is really important - the wealth creation being broad has a real good-news feel. Sharing the wealth.
f. Trust is built with the public - I feel - more when you’re publicly listed and ‘established’.
The ‘downsides’ of quarterly market updates I’m sure are more intense than it feels from the outside, but I’d like to think our growth story happening in a public sphere will help build trust so when we do need more capital a broader base of investors feel confident engaging with us.
So I wanted to try Neos after meeting a Zoopla exec who said they had invested.
But when the premium came out at over 4x my existing renewal quote I became less enthused.
And then I saw the Excess Charge (for making a claim) was £1,000 vs the £250 norm, I ran away to the nearest comparison site to find vanilla home insurance.
I think the conversion process might need looking at to make the benefits less nakedly focused on cost.