Intellivision have had their fair share of issues since announcing the Amico back in 2019, but things have seemingly continued to spiral out of control even after Tommy Tallarico stepped down as CEO.
The company recently started seeking funds on the crowdfunding website StartEngine, but even that has seemed to take a nosedive very quickly. Most of the replies to comments left by current/potential backers have come from Intellivision COO and CFO Nick Richards. In a comment posted just hours ago, Richards replied to serious of questions posted by Kevin F a little over a week ago with all of them being great questions that one would be asked on an episode of Shark Tank. This includes questions about why they went the crowdfunding route and not venture capital, payment systems for online store, and selling copies at retail.
For the reply to why they chose the crowdfunding route, Kevin said the global disaster caused by COVID-19 back in 2020 was an issue, but also went on to claim that critics derailed their current crowdfunding efforts. Stating:
Kevin, the company launched its first major funding round (post seed round) at the beginning of 2020. Then the pandemic broke out. At that time we were pursuing a traditional venture capital path but when the pandemic broke out many venture capital firms stopped making new investments to take time to assess the potential impact on their existing portfolios. The venture capital firms we were farthest along with were no different. This required us to change our funding strategy so we began to look at alternative options which led us to work with Fig/Republic on a Reg A+ on their platform.
The strategy for our next round of funding has been both crowdfunding via this CF offering as well as more traditional investment through venture capital and strategic investors as was laid out in the offering documents. Given the pervasive activity of critics on this site, it has become obvious that this offering has been permanently derailed. This will now require the company to focus its efforts on other sources of investment to continue to push forward.
Many across the internet have combated this claims with their official SEC filings which showed they were in huge financial trouble with the company having a reported $8.7 million in debt and months away from closing down permanently.
Intellivision launched their fourth crowdfunding campaign via PressEngine back on February 7 and despite raising over $30,000 in a matter of hours, it has stagnated and even dipped below the $60,000 mark it once held currently setting at $58,001 raised by 54 investors.
