MyCoolClass needs urgent help. Any ideas?
John Hayes
Public
Seen by 159
Hi everyone,
My name is John, founder of MyCoolClass Co-operative. I think many of you know us as Solidfund helped us out last year when we just opened our doors. Thanks again!
Unfortunatey, we have hit several brick walls recently and it's been quite devastating. We are on the verge of having to close our doors and am reaching out to everyone I possibly can. To clarify, this is not a proposal or an ask for Solidfund, but rather a call out for any possible resources and help.
Here's the story and situation.
Online teachers are gig workers who are often heavily exploited by platform capitalism just as Uber and Deliveroo drivers are. To provide fair work for online educators, MyCoolClass has developed a democratic platform to help independent teachers provide quality education to students globally in a variety of languages, subjects, and skills.
MyCoolClass is registered as a cooperative society in the United Kingdom and has been trading since July 2021. Everything was created with little more than sweat equity and donations from supporters. Our first year has been very busy and exciting as we have built MyCoolClass from an idea to an international organization. The founding team has developed nearly all aspects of the cooperative. Our 14 team members work efficiently together from six continents and have developed a positive work culture.
While our growth has been slow due to lack funding and the ability to market, we have kept moving forward and haven’t taken any steps back. We’ve developed a solid roadmap and tested the waters of our business.
In order for MyCoolClass to truly gain momentum and become a profitable business, we must raise capital through community shares to effectively market our teachers’ services and provide working capital for our team who has been working full time for nearly two years unpaid. We launched a community shares offer in April through Fundsurfer to raise a target of £300,000. We have since been able to raise £41,050 organically, however we will not be able to access these funds until we reach our minimum target of £100,000.
Without the ability to hire a professional marketing agency, it has been very difficult to reach outside of our “circle” in terms of marketing our share offer, especially as our teachers are spread globally and not concentrated in one country. We are offering 5% interest paid annually and UK investors can seek up to 50% tax relief with SEIS.
To be able effectively market our offer, it is crucial that we obtain £15,000 to hire a marketing agency. This will give us the reach and attention needed to hit our £300,000 target. Without hiring a marketing agency or getting significant media attention, it will be incredibly difficult to reach our minimum target and fear that we cannot in good faith extend our share offer in good faith that we can reach our minimum. After two extensions, our share offer is set to c this Friday.
Over the past six months, MyCoolClass has applied for multiple funding opportunities that would have been major gamechangers for us. Unfortunately, obtaining grant funding or loans have practically impossible due to the unique nature of MyCoolClass being as international platform cooperative as we are. While we are based in the United Kingdom, these funding opportunities have turned us down solely for the reason we are not predominantly trading or physically located in the United Kingdom. The fact is that no one has ever seen an international platform cooperative like ours before and somewhat in uncharted territory. While this is quite revolutionary and we have received plenty of positive feedback, well wishes, and support, we just keep hitting roadblocks simply based eligibility and technicalities. We have been turned down from Ethex and recently Reach Fund explicitly due to eligibility technicalities and not on our merits.
Our team has practically exploited ourselves the past two years as well as our teachers who have put their faith in us and have contributed to our cause. We know we have an amazing business that works, but afraid we cannot survive much longer without the ability to raise finance. We are very confident that we can raise, however we need a marketing/pr team to heavily promote our share offer in the UK and to get media attention.
MyCoolClass has a clear and solid roadmap to get where we need to be, and we’ve been working relentlessly to get funding around the world and running into the same issue. As we keep hitting roadblocks and time progresses, we have been struggling to cover operation costs without growth. While we are holding our first AGM in two weeks, we fear that we cannot survive much longer without urgently obtaining £25,000 to hire a marketing agency and to cover operation costs for three months while our offer is being promoted. We already have a marketing agency we’ve consulted with, and we wish to retain their services as soon as possible. Our team has full confidence that £25,000 will enable us to raise our target of £300,000 in which we can become a sustainable and profitable business benefiting thousands of teachers and students globally.
To raise £25,000 immediately, we can offer investors to either subscribe to loan stock with 5% interest paid annually and withdrawable in one, two, or three year terms.
The other option is to become an investor member through our community shares issue in which investors receive 5% interest paid annually and withdraw of capital targeted from year 3 onwards. Community shareholders are able to vote in elections and run for board of directors. UK taxpayers can claim 50% tax relief on their community share investment.
I am also willing to give the 60k in sweat equity debt owed to me by anyone who can save us from collapse that can be converted to shares in addition to the offer with 5% interest and SEIS.
I have spoken with all our advisors, consultants, and have approached many others privately with our situation and it looks like we've done everything possible. No matter how great everything else is, we are coming to realize that this is just the way the wind is going to blow.
I apologize for such a last minute and urgent call for help. We had been waiting to hear back from Reach Fund but just received the bad news the other which has drastically changed our position. Again, it was due to eligibility for not trading predominantly in the UK and lack of a physical UK presence.
Here are all our documents and financial statements:
Pitch Deck: https://www.mycoolclass.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Pitch-Deck-v1.pdf
Share Offer/Business Plan: https://www.mycoolclass.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/MyCoolClass-Share-Offer-Business-Plan-2022.pdf
Financial Projections: https://www.mycoolclass.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/MyCoolClass-Financial-Projection-Sheet.xlsx
2021-22 Financial Statement: https://www.mycoolclass.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/2021-22-Financial-Statement.pdf
July-September Cashflow: https://www.mycoolclass.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Cashflow-July-Sept-2022.pdf
Governing Documents (By-laws): https://www.mycoolclass.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/MyCoolClass-Rules.pdf
If you or anyone you may know have any resources or ideas to help us in this critcal situation, I’d be happy to schedule a video call and happy to answer any questions.
Thank you,
John Hayes
Sam Toland Fri 14 Oct 2022 8:22AM
What kind of footprint do you have in Spain @John Hayes?
John Hayes Thu 13 Oct 2022 2:17PM
Thanks Billy,
We do have a registered office in the UK and Ethex turned us down in April as the majority of our teachers not in the UK and all of our students are abroad (China, Korea, Brazil, Poland, Spain). This was the determining factor. Ethex, as Reach Fund want to see a majority of members in the UK as well as trading, which simply isn't our case nor our objective.
As far as setting up chapters in each country, we have teachers in over 30 countries and many are new to the cooperative movement. Besides not having enough time, we don't have the money or resources to pull that off at this point.
Thanks for your reply :)
Billy Smith Thu 13 Oct 2022 8:20AM
I may have it wrong, but is renting a letterbox with a UK postcode not sufficient?
If it works for limited companies, then surely it should be sufficient for a co-operative.
https://www.coops.tech/ may be able to help, as they have a co-working space for co-operatives, that might be used as a registered office.
Details of the office can be found here: https://space4.tech/
The Ecological Land Co-operative,
uses an organisation called Ethex,
to do their funding offers as Bond Issues.
It might be worth talking with the Ecoland Co-op to get some advice about how they did things.
( Disclaimer: I'm an Investor-Member of two of their land purchases. )
You may have thought of this already, but another option just occurred to me:
Why not use local co-op's set up in each of the countries where you are operating?
The overall international co-op could be owned by the country-specific co-op's.
Yes, it would mean an extra administrative overhead, but the local co-op's would qualify for regional-specific funding.
Whilst they are not a co-operative, this is the approach used by Sensorica for Open-Source HardWare design.
https://www.sensorica.co/ventures
Local chapters incorporated in each country, that each qualify for their local funding, but also have the kudos of working cross-border with international organisations, which gives them extra points in the funding applications.
As each local chapter is an independent legal entity, i'm looking at a co-operative as the legal structure for the one here in the UK.
Like modularised programming, all you need is the correct API-handling for function calls for between-organisation collaborations. :D
John Hayes · Tue 18 Oct 2022 4:53PM
We have a handful of teachers and students in Spain, but not a significant amount. The majority of our teachers are from the US, UK, Canada, and South Africa.