After Crowdcube glitches Freetrade shutters £1.9m crowdfunding round, announces new round in June

After smashing its £1m target to raise £1.98m on Crowdcube, commission-free stock trading app Freetrade has pulled the plug on its crowdfunding round early after Crowdcube was unable to handle the demand.

Instead CEO Adam Dodds wrote to investors over the weekend to inform them that Freetrade would launch a new, possibly larger crowdfunding round in June.

“It allows Crowdcube the time needed to build and test a solution to the load issues experienced,” said Dodds.

The delay to June will also push Freetrade into a new accounting year which brings an additional £3m of EIS availability and adds an extra £2m to Freetrade’s crowdfunding cap.

Last week’s crowdfund was pulled after just a few hours, but not before 1,406 investors managed to back Crowdcube with nearly £2m in fresh cash.

When asked by AltFi, a Freetrade spokesperson declined to comment on the size of Freetrade’s June crowdfund.

CMO Viktor Nebehaj posted on Freetrade’s community forum that there might be a slight difference in share price/valuation for the next round, but that it wouldn’t be “meaningfully different” from the £36m that the company was valued at last week.

“No one should feel like they missed an opportunity to invest,” added Dodds, explaining that some interested investors can still invest in the current round by purchasing shares in a private sale from earlier investors.

“You’ll have at least a week to express interest [in a private sale], no rush (we don’t want to crash the site again).”

Read more:

Freetrade sails to £2m, but technical difficulties put crowdfunding on ice

The Challenger: Freetrade’s Adam Dodds