The Month in Context
February 2026 was the most competitive screening month SBC has had. Five companies cleared the initial filter and made it to full four-pillar evaluation. One received capital. Four did not. This is the record of why.
The investment: Koios Medical, £500, WeFunder. AI-assisted ultrasound diagnostics, FDA-cleared, GE and Philips distribution, KingsCrowd Capital co-investing. The decision was straightforward once the framework was applied. The harder decisions were the four passes.
The Four Passes
HEVO — Wireless EV Charging
Platform: WeFunder | Valuation: $60M pre-money | Security: Preferred Stock
The thesis is genuinely compelling. HEVO has built a pad-based wireless charging system that embeds beneath pavement, allowing EVs to charge by parking over it. The analogy to Wi-Fi displacing ethernet is apt and the long-term direction of travel is clear. The company has executed partnership agreements with Stellantis — the world's fourth largest automaker — targeting integration across seven new EV platforms between 2027 and 2029. KingsCrowd Capital has invested $20,000 in this round.
So why did I pass?
Three things, in order of weight. First, revenue declined 20.6% year-on-year. For a growth-stage company raising at a $60M valuation — implying a ~185x revenue multiple on $325K of FY24 revenue — that is a serious red flag. The bull case requires the Stellantis contract to convert to production-scale revenue, which is a 2027–2029 event at the earliest. Second, this is HEVO's fifth consecutive crowdfunding round since 2021, raising over $4M in aggregate without achieving profitability or institutional follow-on at scale. Repeated crowdfunding rounds without a clear exit catalyst are a pattern I have learned to treat with caution. Third, the round was only 14% funded at the time of my evaluation — slow progress on a $4.8M target.
I want to be clear: the Stellantis partnership is a genuine differentiator. If those vehicle integrations ship on schedule, HEVO could become the de facto wireless charging standard for a significant portion of the global EV market. That is a real outcome. But it is a 7–10 year hold on a hardware company with declining revenue and no institutional follow-on. The SBC framework scored this at Tier 2 with caution — investable in principle, but not the best use of this month's capital when Koios was available.
Decision: Pass. Watch for 2027 when Stellantis integration milestones become clearer.
Quantic — Mobile-First Graduate School
Platform: Republic | Valuation: $53.68M SAFE cap (20% discount) | Minimum: $2,500
This one was the most frustrating pass of the month, and possibly of the year so far.
Quantic is an accredited, mobile-first graduate school with $22.6M in revenue, 18,000+ alumni across 100 countries, and an 81% gross margin. The founding team took Rosetta Stone from $10M to $236M in revenue and a NYSE IPO. The company is backed by Emerson Collective. The SAFE cap of $53.68M with a 20% discount is a genuinely attractive entry point for a business of this quality.
The framework loved it. The wave is real — the US higher education market is structurally vulnerable to a mobile-first, AI-native alternative and the timing is strong. The surfer is exceptional — one of the most credible founder teams in the equity crowdfunding space. The moat is genuine — accreditation is a multi-year, capital-intensive barrier that new entrants cannot shortcut. The valuation is reasonable.
But the minimum investment is $2,500. SBC's hard limit is £1,000 per position. The rule exists for a reason: no single deal should be large enough to materially distort the portfolio, and no deal should require me to break the position sizing discipline regardless of conviction level.
I passed. The rule held. It was the right call even though it was uncomfortable.
Decision: Pass on minimum investment grounds. Watch list. Monitor for a future round with a lower entry point.
Pluto7 — AI Supply Chain Platform
Platform: Republic | Raise cap: $1.24M SAFE (20% discount) | Minimum: $250
Pluto7 is a bootstrapped AI company that has built an agentic operating layer for complex industrial supply chains. Its customers include AB InBev, Cisco, Levi Strauss, and Leaf Home. It is a Google Cloud Premier Partner. Gartner and Forrester have both recognised the platform. The company has been operating since 2005 and has been largely self-funded — an unusual and genuinely positive signal for capital discipline.
The framework scored this as a Tier 1 position — a small, speculative bet worth £250. So why didn't it receive capital this month?
Simple: Koios Medical was the better deal, and SBC deploys one investment per month. Pluto7 didn't fail the framework — it was outcompeted within the month. The concerns are real: a three-person team is a significant execution risk for an enterprise B2B product, revenue is not publicly disclosed (which makes valuation assessment genuinely difficult), and the company has been operating for 20 years without achieving significant scale. But the Google partnership and the enterprise customer list are legitimate differentiators.
This is the kind of pass that is hardest to write up, because the company did nothing wrong. The framework said invest, but the framework also says one investment per month. When two deals clear the bar in the same month, the higher-scoring deal wins.
Decision: Pass this month. Koios Medical took the allocation. Pluto7 remains on the active watch list — will re-evaluate in a future month if the round remains open.
BLOK London — Premium Boutique Fitness
Platform: Crowdcube | Valuation: ~£13–15M | Security: Equity (EIS eligible)
BLOK operates premium boutique fitness studios in London — reformer Pilates, HIIT, yoga, sauna and cold water recovery. The brand is genuine, the community is loyal (1,800+ returning investors), and the reformer Pilates category is one of the strongest growth trends in UK consumer wellness. The EIS eligibility is the key financial differentiator: a 30% upfront tax relief effectively reduces the cost basis from £500 to £350, materially improving the risk/reward profile for a UK investor.
The framework scored this as a Tier 2 position — £500 EIS. The wave is real. The surfer is credible. The moat is the EIS wrapper plus brand loyalty plus the operational complexity of replicating a premium studio experience at the same quality level.
But BLOK has raised on Crowdcube eight times. Eight. The company has taken approximately £6M from the crowd since its first round, without achieving a liquidity event or institutional follow-on at meaningful scale. The valuation step-up from £11.9M (seven months ago) to ~£13–15M is modest — the company is not growing as rapidly as the narrative implies.
I have a personal rule that sits outside the four-pillar framework: I am cautious about companies that have raised more than three times on equity crowdfunding without institutional follow-on. BLOK has raised eight times. The EIS wrapper makes this more attractive than it would otherwise be, but it does not resolve the fundamental question of when and how this company achieves a liquidity event.
Again: Koios Medical took the allocation. But even without that constraint, BLOK would have been a borderline decision.
Decision: Pass this month. The EIS case is genuine and I will revisit if BLOK opens a future round with stronger evidence of a path to exit.
The Pattern
Looking at the four passes together, a pattern emerges that I want to document clearly.
Two of the four passes (HEVO, BLOK) were companies I would have invested in under different circumstances — the thesis was sound, the framework scored them as investable, but the combination of a stronger competing deal and specific structural concerns made the pass the right call. One pass (Quantic) was a rules-based decision that had nothing to do with the quality of the business. One pass (Pluto7) was a pure allocation decision — the framework said yes, but the monthly cadence said only one.
This is what the framework is for. Not to find the perfect deal, but to make the decision process explicit, defensible, and consistent. The month I stop following the rules because a deal feels compelling is the month the portfolio starts to drift.
Koios Medical received the capital. The four passes are documented. The record is clean.
Research conducted across WeFunder, Republic, and Crowdcube campaign pages, KingsCrowd analyst reports, SEC EDGAR Form C filings, and Companies House records. All financial data as of 1 March 2026.
