BRAD SMITH | Braaap Motorcycles
Brad Smith is the Founder/CEO of Braap motorcycles. He’s been named as the Australian Young Entrepreneur of the year twice, International Young Entrepreneur of the year and runner-up and young Australian of the year of his state. Brad has served on the advisory board to the Reserve bank of Australia for small business and in 2013 rode his Braaap to a 4th place at the world title in Las Vegas.
We spoke about how he recently completed a round of equity crowd funding and what it means for his business.
“Most people don't have early stage investing as part of their portfolio. You know, even talking to older people that invested with us, the vast majority of them might have a COMMSEC account, might have some shares, that type of thing. But nearly all of them don't have early stage investing or didn't even know what equity crowd funding was, which effectively it allows a private company like us that used to be limited to, I think it's 50 shareholders to now under the equity crowdsource funding legislation go out to retail investors. As long as we raise less than 5 million and our, we have less than 25 million in assets go out and limit each investor to a maximum of 10,000 and and raise money from our crowd.”
It's in stark contrast to some start-ups that raise money on a promise without having to manufacture a single motorcycle.
"I get jealous of those guys that they, yeah, I mean I have to produce a profit every month so I can pay my bills and yeah, I have competitors who don't make any money. But yeah, it's incredible, especially competing against American companies. One of our American competitors lost 19 million last year, haven't sold a bike yet. They're a startup. Lost 19 million, raised something like 25 million between debt and equity at a 60 million valuation. So their company's worth more than double what mine is and they haven't yet, you know, produced a, a profit or sold a bike is incredible"
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