Summary of Calum Brannan's activities to date

Calum Brannan started a company at 15, called PPLparty, he then rolled that into Youmeo with some funding.

Calum wasn't making money, but he'd met James Leavesley, so they got some more money from investors known to James through IOD West Midlands and created Red Brick Labs, as a way to make money whilst trying to get Youmeo off the ground.

If Calum is to be believed, they weren't making money (again), so they sought alternative funding and received this in Spring 2009 and put Youmeo and Red Brick Labs into receivership, paid for by the new funder, which still hasn't been wrapped up! - is there a pattern emerging yet?


Now we come right up to date - Calum and James then walked out of Inormas and are now (apparently) using the names "Social Helium", although there's no website up yet and have a new Limited Company called CBJL Ltd, (Co. No. 07055592) - clever name, don't you think?  CB=Calum Brannan and JL=James Leavesley.  They also appear to be based from The Quadrant Business Centre at 3 The Quadrant, Coventry, CV1 2DY, which looks quite nice!


So they've now abandoned 3 companies, one way or another, leaving many tens of thousands of £'s of debt behind them in the process and achieved all this in about a year and the 2nd company (Youmeo/Red Brick Labs) wasn't even fully wound up before they'd already moved on to the 4th company!


Where's the money coming from to fund this company?  Well, that's a story for another day, and there's much, much more besides!!

Social Helium - Hot air or just pure "bulls**t"? Part 2

We heard this week that Michelle Stott-Leavesley (i.e. James Leavesley's wife) had an accident around Christmas and that it was "allegedly" the fault of this blog!

Apparently, she'd had sleepless nights worrying about all this information being in the public domain and the fatigue and stress caused the accident.  We were very sorry to hear this until we learned that the accident in question was actually whilst away skiing for Christmas(!!).

Now, I don't know about you, but sleepless nights aren't the most common cause of accidents whilst skiing.  They are usually caused by a conspiracy between gravity and slippery stuff under-foot.  Michelle is no virgin when it comes to skiing accidents, as their blog demonstrates.

We're glad you're OK, Michelle, and had such a great time skiing!  Perhaps you'll have returned in a frame of mind to authorise payment of the Birmingham County Sports Partnership invoice that is apparently hugely overdue.  You remember the one?  We previously highlighted it in the Conflict of Interest post a while back.

Now, when it comes to hot air, spin, waffle and downright bulls**t (to quote Calum Brannan) then this has to be a prime example.  Let's face it, when you're hurtling down a frozen mountain on two planks of wood, a bad night's sleep doesn't have much impact on your concentration.

If you're worried about embarrassing information being in the public domain, Michelle, then it's usually best not to do things you don't want people to know about, or to associate yourself with people who are likely to impact your reputation in a bad way!

Sleep well.

James Leavesley - Conflicts of interest?

James Leavesley was apparently discussing the possibility of creating a Social Media solution for Birmingham County Sport Partnership "CSP" .  His contact at Birmingham CSP is/was a consultant called Michelle Stott.

This is a commercial solution designed to meet the needs of the CSP and James seemed to "win" the deal without too much trouble, which is always interesting when dealing with Government departments and the civil servant types, don't you agree?

The fact of the matter is that Michelle Stott's full name is Michelle Clare Stott-Leavesley  and she is (apparently) married to James Leavesley - check out their blog!..... Hmmmm.  Now, I wonder how James was apparently awarded the deal so easily.

Then we get to the fun bit - apart from the potential for a huge conflict of interest when a wife, acting on behalf of her client, can influence the awarding of a contract to her husband's company, as a supplier!!  

The other interesting angle is that James did this whilst acting for Inormas, but seems to have transferred the deal across to his new company CBJL Ltd Registered 07055592 at MILTON PLACE 30 TENBY STREET, BIRMINGHAM, B1 3EE, which is (coincidentally?) the same address that Michelle's company is registered at - I wonder if that's their home address!

So, James was going to get paid for bringing in the Social Media solution and Michelle was being paid, as a consultant, to select his company as the supplier - surely there's a conflict of interest there......?  What do you think?  In this period, he was presumably claiming salary from Inormas for the business generation activities and expenses for going to see his wife and he did so with (apparently) no intention of allowing Inormas to benefit financially from a deal they funded.  That sounds like it's verging on fraud.

Michelle is a Director of Sportoptima and here she is on the IOD Website and she also sits on the Board of IOD Young Directors Forum with her husband, James.  She also runs a company called NXO Strategic Marketing, although she doesn't seem to be a key member of the senior team.

Calum Brannan's apparently unethical approach to business

More than one person has described Calum Brannan as, to paraphrase, "lacking in integrity" and some of the descriptions I've been given were far less flattering.  "He'd sell his Grandmother for the bus fare home, even if it wasn't raining" was another I was given - I'm simply repeating what I was told!

In this context, it's not hard to see why he (apparently) finds it so easy to flit from one funder and company to another.  PPLparty became Youmeo and not, as Calum suggested on his About page something he "successfully exited in 2007" - this is simply not true, he transformed PPLparty into Youmeo and took a large amount of investment.

Then according to Calum's About page

From the pioneering early days of consumer social networking, Calum founded Inormas in 2009; a business focused on providing social tools and communities for charities, corporate firms and global brands.

In fact, Calum was not the "founder" of Inormas, and according to Companies House, he wasn't even formally made a Director.


This is correct, but only after he'd put his old businesses, including Youmeo, into receivership - you'll notice that Youmeo STILL has pride of place on his website, despite the fact that it is in the hands of the receivers!  Not only that, but he was actually still operating it until very recently, hosted on the servers of his most recent employer without their knowledge or consent!

There's more!

He also had a few other companies hosted on that server without their knowledge - appointment toolkit was one example, but there were others!

Calum and James also used the funding from the Inormas investor to stoke their pipeline for Social Helium, including claiming expenses for trips to see potential clients...... only to take this pipeline with them, when they left Inormas.

The question is this: "If you build a pipeline of business on company time, claiming salary for your work and expenses for the trips and purporting to represent a company, when you have absolutely NO intention of allowing them to benefit from that business - which Section of the Fraud Act covers this?  False representation?  Fraud by abuse of position?  Or is it just plain Theft?

There's more!

It would appear that, as far back as late Summer, Calum and James had hatched a plot to create a pipeline of business, funded by Inormas, that they had absolutely no intention of allowing Inormas' investors to benefit from.  In other words, it appears that for up to 3 months before they actually left Inormas, they were already planning to take the business that Inormas had funded and paid for in order to set up their new company, Social Helium!  Bear in mind that everything they've done so far has FAILED!

We can reveal the names of these clients, but won't be doing so at the moment.

However, there's MORE!

It would appear that one of their larger and longer-term clients wasn't just aware of this, they were actually complicit in it happening.  We have seen emails between Calum Brannan and a senior member of this client which agrees the basis upon which it will happen!!

And there's MORE yet, but that's for another day......

But, referring back to the points made at the start of this post, it's possible to see why some people might be motivated to make disparaging comments about Calum's integrity and trustworthiness, if the information above is even partly true.

 

A bit more background about Calum Brannan

On Calum Brannan's Twitter Page, he describes himself as a, "20 year old, coffee drinking, technology entrepreneur. Straight from the classroom to the boardroom!"

With the warm glow of success behind him (perhaps he was still sitting in it, in fact) he moved on from PPLparty to other ventures.

He created youmeo, about which he says "Descrption: Youmeo, a simple utility to bring together all your social websites and friends into one place. You can update them all at once, we support the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Be sure to e-mail me for an invite code. I’ve been luck enough to work alongside some great people on this project including Angel Gambino (ex VP of content at Bebo, MTV and BBC)."

When that didn't make any money, he went into business with James Leavesley [Note: exact dates are unknown] and, together, they set up Red Brick Labs, funded by a couple of James' contacts at the West Midlands IOD. These eminent local businessmen each invested 5-figure sums into the business, according to my sources.

As RBL, they managed to pick up a few decent pieces of work, including Christian Vision and LighterLife to create social media platforms for these companies.  Christian Vision, Registered Charity 1031031 (wikipedia entry), was set up and (as we understand it) substantially funded by Bob Edmiston.  According to their entry on the Charity Commission website, their Charitable Objectives are:

1. ADVANCEMENT OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 

2. RELIEF OF PERSONS WHO ARE IN CONDITIONS OF NEED, HARDSHIP OR DISTRESS ARISING THEREFROM WHO ARE AGED OR SICK. 

3. ADVANCEMENT OF EDUCATION. 

4. OTHER CHARITABLE PURPOSES BENEFICIAL TO THE COMMUNITY WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE PROMOTION OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP AND MORAL VALUES WITH THE EMPHASIS ON HONESTY AND INTEGRITY IN EVERY DAY LIFE AND IN BUSINESS.

Remember these, especially #4, as we'll come back to it in the future.

Back to Red Brick labs:

Earlier in 2009, our intrepid entrepreneur realised that, having come straight from the Class Room to the Board Room, he hardly knew how to run a bath, let alone a business and RBL went bust, leaving the funders with significant losses.  Both Red Brick Labs and Youmeo were still in receivership at the time of writing this.

Unperturbed, Calum Brannan sought new sources of funding, which he found in the Spring of 2009 and he started again under the brand name of Inormas, having retained Christian Vision and LighterLife as clients.

To be continued......