The MEMO below was posted for the industry by CfPA 2024 President, Brian Christie  

MEMORANDUM

TO: All Industry Participants in the Regulated Investment Crowdfunding Industry 

CC: CfPA Board of Directors 

FROM: Brian Christie, President (2024), Crowdfunding Professional Association, 501(c)(6)

DATE: February 16, 2024  

SUBJECT:  CfPA Recommended Best Practice: “Regulated Investment Crowdfunding”  

______________________________________________________________________

Dear Industry Colleague:

I am writing on behalf of the Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA) to inform you of an industry Recommended Best Practice that was adopted and approved by the CfPA Board of Directors on January 8th, 2024.

The CfPA board recommends that all industry stakeholders hereby use the term 'Regulated Investment Crowdfunding' as an umbrella term and when referring to transactions, activities, and operations that may involve non-accredited investors a...more

I wanted to share an interesting new program that I recently learned about - the Qualified Accredited Investor (QAI) certification from Doriot Venture Labs and IU Kelley School of Business.

The goal of this new certification is to evaluate an individual's expertise in venture capital and startup investing. It involves passing a FINRA exam and completing an investment simulation. Notably, this program is under review by the SEC to establish itself as a viable alternative to the traditional wealth-based Accredited Investor standard.

QAI has the potential to help level the playing field in the venture world. As the program materials mention, currently the top 20% most knowledgeable investors receive 80% of the gains. QAI could help provide a way for more people to demonstrate their sophistication.

I'm such a strong believer in what Doriot Venture Labs is doing that I invested in the company, and I'll also be participating in the first cohort for the new QAI certif...more

Cost of Investor Acquistion

Creating institutional capital investment pools with funding portals is hugely important. Honeycomb Credit has trailblazed that with a foundation. You can go to pension funds, banks, insurance companies, credit unions, etc with these kinds of proposals. Point to HoneyComb's success story, differentiate your portal.

Side-note: would love to start seeing partnerships between niche portals.

If you aren't ready to do that yet, and are starting off with founders in your direct network, I would fill your relevant social media channels (that you send to people) with accessible and engaging demos of your product from the investor's perspective. Of course, content for business owners is important too... but think about it this way: fundraising businesses will be sending your social media content to their investors as to explain how the process is going to go.

Educational content on why your niche and portal serve a critical need. Explain to investors, why their investm...more

Disclaimer: (1) the issuer is considering an exempt offering, but has not decided upon any particular exemption; (2) the issuer is not soliciting any money or other consideration and, if sent, will not be accepted by the issuer; (3) the issuer will not sell securities or accept commitments to purchase securities until the issuer decides on which exemption it will pursue and satisfies any required filing, disclosure or qualification requirements; and (4) all indications of interest made by solicitees are non-binding.

To calculate Global #TotalAddressableMarket, we needed to understand how much Raiseway will charge users in each country.

We developed a global parity-pricing model to figure that out.

According to our most recent calculations, our yearly Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) in the US will be $575, accounting for churn.

(^This isn't exactly right, we need to update the model. When we do, the TAM numbers will move by a n million, not sure which direction. 🤡 )

Dear colleagues at Crowdfunding Professional Association and beyond. We all love saying that the industry is doing great.

Math says "that's bs; CF industry is broke and dealflow is the problem." I am using funding portal data because transparency is forced upon these intermediaries.

Please don't shoot the messenger. I would like to be proven otherwise.

There are 70,000 startups in the United States within 33,000,000 small businesses. How many active Regulation Crowdfunding deals are there right now? 450.

Let's say that the average salary for a portal employee is $75,000 ($6 250 per month). Sounds like an OK living in the U.S. (unless you are in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc).

I went onto each of their LinkedIn pages and counted the number of employees. I assumed - rather generously - on average, only 50% of these "employees" are paid. The rest are advisors, investors, partners, etc.

I tried to count how much money each of the platforms will have left after receivi...more

Part 1:

You can't stop progress. Just like our ancestors couldn't put the genie back in the bottle once they learned how to use fire, we can't slow down the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It's like trying to hold back a tidal wave with a single sandbag.

Sure, some folks might be scared of AI, just like they were scared of fire. And you can't blame them even if they ironically call themselves the "Future of Life." New things can be scary. But the truth is, we're living in a world where AI is already all around us. From our phones to our cars to our homes, it's already a part of our daily lives. And with NLP becoming more accessible every day, entrepreneurs are seeking ways to deploy it in every aspect of their businesses.

And let's face it, AI has the potential to do a lot of good. It can help us solve problems, make our lives easier, and even save lives. While some billionaires make claims that “population collapse” is a greater threat to humanity than even climate chan...more

Hi everyone! Together with my co-founder - Josh McSorley - and we are building a tool to make investment crowdfunding easy for businesses raising capital.

In this 3-min Loom Video I cover our task manager view.

What do you think? Thank you so much to everyone who shares their thoughts! In the next videos we can cover:

• AI Campaign Assistant
• Investor Relationship Manager
• Funding Portal Selector

Click here to join the early access waitlist here - alpha version shall be released on April 15th!

I would sincerely appreciate it if you shared this with any business looking to raise capital with crowdfunding on a tight budget.

Thank you,

Peter Rostovsky

Co-Founder & CEO of RaiseWay

Member of BoD of CfPA