with you know what on everyone's minds, I'm interested in investing in the funeral home on the front page. Seems like a pretty stable place to put one's money regardless.
- It was founded in September 2019, but has not even acquired a lease on a suitable location yet.
- The presentation states they will use the money raised to take over an existing funeral home, but the "risks" section in the data room says it "is a newly established entity and has no history for prospective investors to consider." If they are taking over an existing funeral home, surely the numbers from that funeral home would be available.
- Later on in the presentation slides on the first place, they state that the funeral home they are looking to take over has about 200k revenue forecasted for FY2020. On the data room "financial forecasts" section projected revenue for year 1 is almost double that at 380-390k. Also despite the funeral home presumably existing for some time already, they think they'll be able to grow revenues almost 50% in 2-3 years.
- The president has over 20 years experience in death care which is nice. The vice president seems to be his wife and is currently working as a dental assistant.
- The risks include that they might not have sufficient accounting controls in place (!). You won't even know if they are doing well or not.
- They offer "guaranteed" (provided they still exist in 2026) return of $1800 on 1/1/2026 on $1000 invested. That is an annualized ROI of more than 11%. That they are offering interest rates this high means that all the providers of lower interest rates have rejected them. A highly speculative startup in electric scooters here in Amsterdam recently offered 8% and that was more than enough to get enough interested investors. You should ask yourself why they are offering such high interest rates and what it means for the (perceived by the market) chances of them not existing in 2026 to pay back your money.
To summarize: there are a number of "red flags" that warrant extreme caution.
I also thought this was weird, "Mizen will also showcase local art, host a weekly support group for veterans, and offer conference rooms to be used by local nonprofits."
I wasn't aware of conferences in funeral homes.
Getting some equity in the business always made more sense to me. Sure, I want the thing, but for the amount of risk I'm taking on, I want a percentage of your company and future profits!