The idea behind crowdfunding is that the crowd — family, friends and fans of a small or startup company, even if they are not rich or experienced investors — can invest in that company’s securities. For a traditionally risk-averse area of law, that’s a pretty revolutionary concept.

In order to make this leap, Congress wanted to ensure that all potential investors had access to the same information. The solution that Congress came up in the JOBS Act with was that there had to be one centralized place that an investor could access that information — the website of the funding portal or broker-dealer that hosts the crowdfunding offering (going forward we will refer to both of these as “platforms”).

This means (with some very limited exceptions that we’ll describe below) most communications about the offering can ONLY be found on the platform. On the platform, the company can use any form of communication it likes, and can give as much information as it likes (so long as it’s not misleadin...more