Communications and publicity by issuers prior to and during a Regulation CF offering
CrowdCheck, Inc.
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
Why Blockchain Advocates should join the CfPA
TLDR;
- Blockchain is a technology
- Crowdfunding is a) asking strangers b) for money c) over the internet
- When “Blockchain Businesses” use DLT to create tokens, coins, and various digital thingamajiggies 99% of the time they do so for the express purpose of raising capital by creating a security, a la ICOs, TGE, IEOs, NFTs, etc...
- The other 1% they’re creating derivatives but we’ll talk about that later.
- Otherwise DLTs would be digital products or services, with set firm, fixed prices, that Businesses could sell to users/consumers and pay appropriate State, Local and Federal sales and income taxes on.
- Blockchain advocacy groups should partner with the Crowdfunding Professional Association because raising capital isn’t the domain of “Blockchain” businesses nor Blockchain advocacy groups.
Hello Beautiful Blockchain and Cryptocurrency People!
I wrote a longer article on why everyone in the Blockchain Advocacy space should join the Crowdfunding Professional Association....more
Looking for the "right investors"?
You're looking for "the right investor". Your competition is looking for the right investor. Everyone in your accelerator or incubator is looking for the right investor. Your right investors is also looking for the right investor. Everybody is looking for the right investor! But why? Especially when customers have more money than VCs and Angels...
Oh, the reason that your right investor is looking for the right investor is that:
A. General Partners crowdfunding from a small pool of Limited Partners. Thats how you know crowdfunding works. Sharks do it all the time, with each fund they start they spend years raising money from a small pool of investors. The difference for you is, that you now know better than to pool capital from a pool and know instead to source it from the ocean that is The Crowd.
B. Funds generally want to invest after someone else has. As though due diligence gets solved because someone jumps off the cliff first, which gives them the courage to follow with...more
Understanding Accelerator & Funding Portal Partnerships
TLDR
- Accelerators & Incubators will partner with FINRA approved Funding Portals (aka Crowdfunding Platforms)
- Because the real value is in getting Founders/Businesses "Business Ready"
- Founders will not benefit from this partnership and will opt to skip the Incubators and Accelerators going directly to crowdfunding platforms.
Hello Beautiful People! Recently you may have seen how YCombinator put 40 of their Startups onto the WeFunder platform. Which was an inevitable step in the evolution of crowdfunding. On YCombinator's side it was them opening the gates to a Trojan horse of epic size. How is that? I'll explain in the following bullets.
A natural partnership - Accelerators/Incubator and Funding Portals
In all truth I don't actually know what the difference is between an incubator and an accelerator. Yes, I could google it but that would be like googling "What is the Yellow Pages?" At any rate, in my head accelerators and incubators help Founder...more
Why Raising Capital Becomes a Bottleneck
"We are currently working on new products that will be launch in the coming months. Raising capital has become one bottlenecks to constraining our growth. It seems that this might an area that you have expertise in assisting with. Is that the case?"
I get some inquiry like this three or four times a week. My thoughts are generally, "Other than raising capital, what are the other bottlenecks constraining your growth?" followed pretty immediately by, "What is my expertise?" The latter being more of an existential question for me than a concern for you as a business owner. So, with no further ado a few bullet points to help you overcome raising capital as a bottleneck.
- What are you selling? I like to start there because revenue will always be the best capital in the world. You only need to raise money if you're not generating revenue from sales. Are you pre-revenue because your product isn't ready? Or do you have a good, product or service and need to improve your sales? Note
Funding Portals - Welcome to the League!
Welcome to the League!
April 12, 2021
Hello Portal Owners,
We’re all busy people and so I’ll skip the pleasantries and focus on why this year you need to join the Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA), the group that helped usher in the age of Crowdfunding and for nine years has advocated for you and your business each and every day whether you knew it or not.
Invest 3 minutes of your time now into helping secure your portal’s future. Let’s start.
- Scale for Free. You’re busy running a crowdfunding portal and don’t have the time to personally advocate for the policy and regulatory changes that make operating your business easier, more profitable and sustainable.
- Expertise. You know that there is a regulatory, bureaucratic, and administrative process to getting policies and legislation drafted, introduced, championed, debated and ultimately passed. But again, you don’t have the time to make industry advocacy yet another full time job.
- Strength in N
HBCUs + Investment Crowdfunding
Introduction to Investment Crowdfunding
For as long as entrepreneurs have started businesses they have also needed capital to grow and scale those businesses. To that end, this article explores how HBCUs can leverage Investment Crowdfunding to help their students, teachers and alumni raise capital for their businesses, while providing HBCU community members the opportunity to be more than just customers of businesses but also equity owners in the businesses they make successful.
Investment crowdfunding is when businesses and entrepreneurs engage the general public to become investors into their businesses. Title III of the Jump Start Our Businesses & Startups Act (also known as the JOBS Act), was signed into law by President Obama on May 16, 2016. With this historic Act, it finally enabled Main Street Businesses to raise investment capital from retail investors (also known as Customers), along with accredited and institutional investors, aka “Sharks”, “Angels” and “VCs”...more
Customers have more money than VCs
Hello Beautiful People, Founders, Entrepreneurs and Business Owners! Ya’ll rock and I want you to know that I love each and every one of you. What you do as innovators and creators truly does make America Great. Did you know that because of your hard work since 2016:
- $585M has been raised via investment crowdfunding
- Resulting in a total of 88,000 new jobs and
- An economic impact of $3.2B over 1000 local communities across all 50 States
The real awesome thing is that in 2020 alone, JOBS Act Investment Crowdfunding generated $214M in small business funding, an increase of 105% over 2019, and 35,000 jobs created during the Pandemic using a regulation that is limiting for both investors and businesses alike. And don’t even get me started on how Customers and Communities have responded to the opportunity to invest in Main Street businesses since the new rules went into effect on March 15, 2021. In case you missed it as of March 15, 2021 the new limit for Regulation Crowdfunding (aka ...more
