I'm sorry, but I'm not a platform expert and can't help you with those questions. But congratulations on your hard work and I hope you find success shortly. One of the benefits of joining the CfPA is access to our thought leaders, and also referral to qualified professionals who could answer your question. My best advice is squirrel some funds away to hire a good securities attorney to answer those questions. Continued Success!

I am aware of several lawsuits (including class actions) relating to the early Reg A offerings that listed on Nasdaq.

As for Reg CF, there is a case of fraud being handled in bankruptcy court.

Reg D: these cases are unfortunately quite common, both from investors and regulators.

It's early days yet for CF. Class actions aren't worth it for really small offerings.

Fabulous question, Cullen. However, without spelling out an entire path to landing investors course, I would direct you to any local VDO (venture devp org) like incubators or accelerators in your situation already matured. 

As it concerns finding the "right" investor, well, your customers/suppliers/beneficiaries would be the natural approach if you plan to CF your next offering. There are many resources for all this, both on our Twitter feed, and as a course of knowledge in our leadership at the CfPA. 

So my best advice is to continue to post questions/surveys in forums on Linkedin, look up any cannabis related investment groups in general (especially farming groups locally), and keep go deep quick.

On a personal note, as you know I'm deeply involved in Industrial Hemp, advise a Family Office investor network, and also have patented farm/processing equipment. To that effect, we're launching a national co-op to handle precisely what you're asking. So I'd love to learn more so feel free to reach out directly to Scott@RootOrigins.com or Prosperity@HMP-us.org 

All the best,

Scott

"I'm on a budget setting up my license crowd Funding portal with the FINRA/ SEC." 

It cost about $2M to set up a Crowdfunding Portal. I know that sticker price often shocks people so checkout this spreadsheet that doesn't make it any easier to accept but breaks down the expenses so you can see what you're about to jump into: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18T_lZzKby-SYwSOBOTYYxUebUlhipvAW/view?usp=sharing 

"Is there a checklist" - Yes and no. Yes, if someone has gone through the process and will share with you. No, if you haven't. But the SEC gives you pretty good guidance. You can see the SEC guidance here: https://www.finra.org/registration-exams-ce/funding-portals/register-new 

"...also is it hard to change the name of the Entity i want to add Capital at the end of the name?" 100% hard. I encourage you to full stop and retain counsel to assist you in this effort. Sara Hanks, Jenny Kassan or Maureen Murat can assist you with this. Maureen recently shared with me how she assisted a portal with changing their name and organizational structure. So, definately recommend getting a securities lawyer who has worked with FINRA before to assist you on this. 

Depends, how engaged are Issuers with their customers and communities?

Raising the limit to $5M is great for issuers whose "overnight success" has been in the works for the past 10 years. Its hubris or naivete to think that strangers are just going to flock to your deal/offering simply because it exist. 

What the raise to $5M does is allow Founders who have been actively building their business, brand and community to offer their future Investomers more space on their rocket ship. Too, when Founders are able to onboard $2M - $3M in Investomer capital then all of a sudden their deal terms look a whole lot more attractive to the Sharks, Whales, Angels and VCs. The $5M limit is a Noah's Ark of investor's opportunity. An ark where Founders benefit because the its unlikely that Founder will create terms that are not fair to them, while being attractive to customers, fans, brand ambassadors and even Sharks. 

Lastly, the biggest benefit for $5M raise is that it will give Founders more control of their businesses. Founders will be able to raise key early stage capital, on better terms, from fans/customers before having to even engage or be bothered by Sharks and Angels. Cause thats the thing. If you want money from a Shark, you've got to swim in their ocean, on their terms. Same thing with so-called "Angels". The best trick the devil ever played was rebranding himself as an investor; as "angels", VCs and Sharks all want the same 10,000X returns. Where as your customers? They want a consistantly good good, product or services AND maybe a reason to tell their network about your good, product or service.

So, yes. The biggest benefit of the $5M is that it gives Founders greater control of their destiny. Unless of course Founders are dying to meet Angels and Sharks....

In the short run, probably not too much. In the longer term, I hope so. There's too much attention on #VCs and how they fuel innovators. Moving forward, at $5 million per raise (per YEAR), Reg CF crowdfunding is poised to fuel more start-ups, be more efficient, and be more founder-friendly than VC investors. 

Don't get me wrong, if you are on the inside track with a VC, stay in that club. They like to pick winners (ie. bet on their friends) and it's not too hard to check the boxes that will free up capital. But for the other 99.95% of founding teams, it's time to take a careful look at crowdfunding. Not rewards or donation based crowdfunding - this isn't a bake sale - but regulated investment crowdfunding. VCs may still co-invest with your crowd -- and the smart ones will start seeing a crowd-raise as market validation. After all, most VCs are just taking the crowd's money through their LP structure anyway. Now the crowd can cut out the middleman.  

Some stats relevant to VCs and startups that every founder show know: 

1. 77% of small businesses rely on personal savings for their initial funds.
2. A third of small businesses start with less than $5,000.
3. The average small business requires about $10,000 of startup capital.
4. Only 0.05% of startups raise venture capital.
5. The average seed round is $2.2 million.
6. The median company running a seed funding round is 3 years old.
7. Of startups that raised seed rounds, 1% reached unicorn status of $1B+ valuation.
8. Startups with two co-founders rather than one raise 30% more capital.

(Source: https://www.fundera.com stats from 2020). 

Given that the average VC seed round is $2.2 million and that the cap on Regulation CF is $5 million PER YEAR, will a founding team want to spend their time chasing lots of VCs trying to get $2.2 million or does it make sense to convince a broad group of strategic investors / early customer adopters to invest early and continue investing as the company hits key milestones? I’m putting my bet on the crowd over VCs. Every prospective customer you get to invest has the potential to serve three objectives:

1. investment capital;  

2. revenue; and 

3. as an enthusiastic "ambassador" or marketing champion of your company.  

Today, VCs are somewhat spoiled with no shortage of quality deal flow – so as the compelling value proposition of crowdfunding becomes better known, VCs will need to differentiate and compete for the same early-stage deals. This is going to change their primary function from being filter bubbles (I’m sure many would argue with this characterization of their role) to providing something value-added, beyond just the capital, to founding teams.   

Crowdfunding won’t take off overnight because there’s still a lot of issuer and investor education that needs to first happen [see the Crowdfunding Professional Association’s (CfPA) and the Crowdfunding Ecosystem for experts, events, and companies that can help with knowledge resources] but in the long run, I expect we’ll all see crowdfunding as the leading method for early phase capital formation and VCs will have to adjust.