funded.com

No business value from funded.com

No business value from funded.com. I registered with Funded.com two years ago to draft a business proposal, cost $1000 and agreed a monthly fee to have it placed in their web site for investors to review. Their sales pitch said that it would be prominent in their web site for investors to review and I should hear direct from them. I searched their web site monthly, saw other proposals but not ours. I phoned and they said only their investors could search the proposals. So I don't know whether our proposal was ever seen by any investor, no 'number of reads' or investor reviews data is given, something they should consider if they want to retain customer confidence.In Jan 2020 we changed the credit card to be used for the monthly charge and the first week in Feb informed Funded.com the new number to use. Even so I found out that we were locked out of our account. I telephoned on 28 Feb as we were still locked out and told that we would not have access 'until at least 9th March' when their system would indent for the monthly fee again. I advised that to lose two months just at the time we were approaching investors, is not acceptable but the person on the phone just didn't appear to care and this added to my growing sense of distrust. Funded.com did initially help with the drafting of a proposal for our off-shoot business. At that time I had no idea whatsoever of what the content and structure should be, but Funded.com did charge heftily, over $1000, for a document that subsequently has proved to be worthless. It had no product definition, no technical content, no costing and a very weak sales pitch. After documenting the proposal Funded.com has since charged me $99 per month for access to their 'Investor Group'. In this time, all I have heard from 'investors' is four hard pressure sales calls from money loan organizations with preposterously high interest rates. These lenders had no idea of what the new business is, had not read the proposal document, and had only one interest – to lend money with high interest rates. I asked how they came to phone me and, apparently, they access the details of the newly listed customers and start making their calls. This is unethical and is not an acceptable business practice. I do not know for sure, but my conversations with the 'lenders' Ieads me to believe that Funded.com receives a cut from all such finance sales. In the last 2 months an IT/Enterprise Software professional drafted, structured and costed a new proposal - the difference in the two is phenomenal. Beyond phenomenal. At least I now know what a skillfully developed competitive proposal content should be and thankfully it is drawing instant interest from investors found through networking. Funded.com proposals might work for a non-technical FMCG product idea but they don't have a clue how to prepare a proposal for a Software Solution/SaaS product.In Jan 2020 I emailed to ask if there were any specialist Enterprise Software Business Angels in their listing of 'investors' so I could differentiate before starting to make direct approaches to their investor group (a very long list), no reply. That they haven’t bothered to reply adds to my distrust. These same lists of investors can be found easily on the internet.I noted a number of complaints on Trustpilot about non return of overcharged fees. We were overcharged at one time and it did take demands over several months to get the credit back.I have paid $2500 to Funded.com in monthly fees plus $1000 for useless proposal, and got zero in return.I advised Funded.com the reasons for cancelling my account but they have not responded, except to close the account. I feel as though I have been taken in by a scam but it was my own lack of experience that caused me to fall for it. I would recommend to anyone considering Funded.com to consider what it is they need, and to seek the services elsewhere.

Date of experience: Mar 06, 2020