Reg. D

Investment Crowdfunding Can Offer Better Investments Than Stockbrokers

Capital Markets, Investors, Issuers , , , ,
Investment Crowdfunding

Investment Crowdfunding

Someone in the crowdfunding industry should put that sentence on a coffee mug and send me one.

I have been writing about and working in investment crowdfunding for more than 3 years.  I find it interesting to watch this fledgling industry mature.  It is certainly attracting more and more new money every year and is past the point where it can be ignored by any company in search of investors.

I have looked at a great many offerings on a great many crowdfunding platforms.  I read a lot to keep abreast of new offerings and industry developments. I take the time for conversations with platform owners and their lawyers and several of the better investment crowdfunding marketing executives.

I also speak with a lot of companies who are considering investment crowdfunding to raise capital.  Any company that would raise capital in this new DIY crowdfunding marketplace wants to know if it spends the money to list its offering on a crowdfunding platform will enough investors show up and invest?  From the company’s perspective, little else really matters.

The JOBS Act was intended to be a different approach for corporate finance using the internet instead of a stockbroker to reach potential investors. The internet allows companies to reach a lot of prospective investors, very cheaply. Success or failure in investment crowdfunding is more about what you have to say to those potential investors than anything else.  

Selling securities issued by your company to investors is not the same as selling your product or service to potential customers. Investors will have different expectations and will respond to different things.  

People who sell securities for a living will tell you that any new issue of a stock or bond needs two things: good numbers and a good story. Investors want a return on their investment. 

So the best stories are always about how much money the investors will make and what the company will do to provide that return.   

There are two distinct branches of investment crowdfunding. First, there are the private placements sold under Reg. D to institutions and other larger, accredited investors.  This marketplace is healthy and growing rapidly.  Professional money-raisers have caught on that they can use investment crowdfunding, to substantially reduce the cost of capital and use that savings to enhance investor returns.

Reg. D offerings have been sold through stockbrokerage firms since the 1980s.  Most are sold to institutional investors.  Some are sold to individual, accredited investors. Minimum investments of $50-$100K or more per retail investor are common. 

Many of the retail Reg. D offerings will fund some type of real estate (construction or purchase), energy (oil, gas and alternative energy) or entertainment (films, music, and games) project. There are professional sponsors; people who package and syndicate these projects, often being paid to manage the business on behalf of the investors after the funding.

The costs of selling a Reg. D offering through a stockbrokerage firm, including commissions, run 12%-15% of the funds raised. That would be up to $1.5 million for each $10 million raised.. Most Reg. D offerings sold through brokerage firms just raise an additional $1.5 million and dilute the investors’ return.  Using investment crowdfunding a company can raise that same $10 million and not spend more than $100,000 in legal and marketing costs and frequently a lot less. 

The Reg. D crowdfunding platforms compete with stock brokerage firms for projects to fund and for investors to fund them.  The same institutions and accredited investors who have been purchasing Reg. D offerings from their stockbrokerage firm for years are catching on to the fact that they can get good offerings and better yields without the need to pay the very high commission.

The other branch of investment crowdfunding is the Reg. CF or regulation crowdfunding. This allows offerings which can help a company raise up to $1 million from smaller, less experienced investors. Reg. CF allows smaller businesses to sell small amounts of debt or equity to small investors.

The Reg. CF market was the SEC’s gift to Main Street American small businesses. There are always a great many small companies that could benefit from a capital infusion of a lot less than $1 million, the Reg. CF upper limit.

To put down a layer of investor protection the SEC required that these portals that are dealing with small investors become members of FINRA. FINRA dutifully set up a crowdfunding portal registration system and has audit and enforcement mechanisms in place.

As a reward for joining FINRA, the SEC allows Reg. CF portals to be compensated by taking a percentage of the amount the company raises which the Reg. D platforms cannot. Several of the portals also take a “carried interest” in every company in case the company is eventually re-financed or sold.

The SEC looks at Reg. CF as a tool of corporate finance for small business. It provides a mechanism where a great many small businesses should have access to a pool of capital every year, potentially a very large pool. It provides for a market structure for these small offerings and incentivizes the portals help raise that capital. All in all, not too bad for a a government regulation.

Sadly, the Reg. CF industry is still foundering. There are still fewer than 40 registered portals operating and several have closed up shop.  So why are these portals not successful? Because the people who operate them are not listing better investments than stockbrokerage firms.

When I first looked at investment crowdfunding there were a lot of people proclaiming that it would “democratize” capital raising.  They believed that the crowd of investors could discern good investments from bad ones and that the crowd would educate each other as to the pros and cons of each.  That was never true.

The Reg. CF portal websites are full of bad information and consequently, bad investments.   “Comments” about any offering that lists on a portal, if any, are always overwhelmingly positive.  Investors will not do any due diligence or other investigation of the company because they do not know how.

The Reg. CF portals compete with banks, which are the primary source of funding for small business.  Here too, a Reg. CF portal can have a competitive edge.  When you borrow from a bank you do so on the bank’s terms. On a Reg. CF platform you can set the terms of your financing.  Done correctly, you can get the capital infusion you want for your company without giving up too much equity or pledging your first-born child to the lender.

What the portals should be offering investors are bank-like products that stress the ROI that investors reasonably might expect to receive.  The portals should be telling investors how each company mitigated the risks that the investors might face. Instead, too many portals and too many people in the Reg. CF marketplace are still selling fairy tales and lies.

The big lie, of course, is that by buying equity in any of these companies an investor might hit the proverbial home run.  Suggesting that investors can or should think of themselves as VCs is patently absurd for any company that I have seen on a Reg.CF portal.  I always tell people who ask that if even one valuation on a Reg. CF portal seems very outlandish, then they likely cannot trust that the portal operator knows what they are doing. I would question anything told to investors by any company that lists on that portal.

If a company wants to raise $1 million on a Reg. CF portal, it might end up with 2000 distinct investors each investing an average of $500.  To secure subscriptions from 2000 people, the company might need to put on a marketing campaign that will put its offering in front of hundreds of thousands of investors if not more.  Success or failure of your fundraising campaign will depend on what you say to these people. 

The cost of the marketing campaign is the major upfront cost of the offering. The good news is that marketing seems to be more data- driven and more efficient as time has gone by reducing the cost of the marketing.

Sooner or later these  Reg. CF portals will wise up to the idea that they cannot succeed unless the investors can make money. They, too, could offer better investments than stockbrokers, but do not seem to have bought int the idea.    

Until that happens, I expect more portals to fail and close up shop and the SEC’s “gift” to small business to remain largely unwrapped.

BrightCOIN- The Legally Compliant ICO?

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I recently read an article citing a study that concluded that as many as 81% of initial coin offerings (ICOs) are scams. Several people contested that number but it cannot be too far off. If you have more than a cursory interest in crypto currency and ICOs it is hard to miss all of the discussion about ICO scams and what to do about them.

There is a general consensus among many in the ICO community that the ICOs need to stop kidding themselves that they are not securities and begin to seriously comply with US securities laws.  In crypto industry parlance, there is an expectation that ICOs have begun to evolve into STOs (securities token offerings).

A company issuing a securities token will need to register the offering with the SEC or seek an exemption from registration such as Regulation D.  Most STOs will be sold under Reg. D,in part because the SEC has yet to approve a registered offering and does not seem to be in any hurry to do so. US securities laws require that investors be given full disclosure of the facts that they need to make an intelligent decision whether or not to invest.

Around the same time, I came across a discussion on LinkedIn about an ICO for a company called BrightCOIN. The company is raising between $1 and $40 million to expand its tech platform which enables companies to launch their ICO in a “legally compliant” manner.

I read the white paper which is anything but legally complaint and I said so on LinkedIn. This got some brush back by the company’s CEO who commented, among other things that the company had a great lawyer who had helped prepare the white paper.  The CEO claims to be a Y Combinator alumnus with several successful start-ups under his belt. So, of course, he should have an excellent lawyer.

I offered to explain why I thought that lawyer needed to go back to law school and the CEO scheduled two appointments with me so the lawyer could tell me that he was right and I was wrong. They cancelled both appointments at the last minute.

The ICO for BrightCOIN is intended to be a Reg. D offering. I would have thought that since it was selling a service and a platform where other companies can make “legally compliant” offerings, BrightCOIN would have taken pains to make its own offering “legally complaint”. They missed by a mile.

The BrightCOIN offering document is in what is now being called a “white paper format”.  If you look at a lot of ICOs, a great many use this format. I do not know where it originated, but it does not generally make the disclosures that are required for a Reg. D offering in the format that the SEC expects. Using this format is an invitation to the SEC, state regulators and class action lawyers to come after you.

A Reg.D offering is also called a private placement and the offering document is called a private placement memorandum (PPM). There is a reason that most PPMs look alike. Back in the 1980s and 1990s regulators in several states required hands on review of every offering. I personally spent hours on the phone with the staff at these various state agencies going over specific language in Reg. D offerings. They usually wanted additional disclaimers; more risk disclosures; the words “this is a speculative investment” in the cover page in bold.

Congress eventually took away the states’ ability to comment on these offerings; but a lot of lawyers, including me, appreciate that much of what they wanted amounted to good practice. Disclosures are made for the benefit of the company that is raising the money. They are a prophylactic against legal action claiming fraud and misrepresentation.

BrightCOIN calls itself the Kickstarter for ICOs.  It is essentially a crowdfunding platform for ICOs including those private placements offered under Reg. D and registered offerings filed under Reg. A+.  BrightCOIN charges no upfront fees and will provide everything that a company needs to prepare and launch an ICO including “audited documentation”.

Of course Kickstarter does not handle any securities offerings. They operate in the world of “rewards based crowdfunding”, not securities crowdfunding, so the comparison to Kickstarter that BrightCOIN makes in its ICO white paper is meaningless.

Elsewhere BrightCOIN claims that it will become the “next Goldman Sachs” and compares itself to Goldman, Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan.  The white paper included the logos for those companies, all of which I suspect are trademarked.

Did Merrill Lynch give permission for its trademark to be used in this offering? Does Goldman Sachs even know that BrightCOIN exists?  Is there any way to read this hyperbole and not consider it to be misleading?

BrightCOIN claims that its tech platform is valuable because an entrepreneur considering launching their own Reg. A+ or Reg. D offering in the form of a token might spend as much as $500,000 to have the tech built.  By “tech” it appears to be speaking about the crowdfunding platform that they are offering.

The last time I saw a bid to build a crowdfunding platform from scratch (November 2017) the cost was $50,000 and that had some unique CRM capabilities built in. I made a few calls and to add a token capability to that would cost no more than another $50,000 and probably a lot less. Where BrightCOIN gets that $500,000 number is anyone’s guess.

In any event there is no reason to create the crowdfunding technology from scratch. If you want to open your own crowdfunding platform there are several companies that offer white label products for a small upfront fee and even smaller monthly charge. At least one that I know of comes with AML/KYC capability attached.

For any offering of securities to be “compliant” it must present information in such a way that it is balanced to point that it is not misleading. The BrightCOIN white paper is full of interesting and unsubstantiated hyperbole.

Around the world, it appears that 10% of the funds that have been invested in ICOs have been hacked. BrightCOIN claims its platform is “100% hack proof”.  I have spoken with large, mainstream financial institutions that spend a lot of money making their platforms “hack-resistant” but I do not know a single attorney who would put the phrase “100% hack proof” in a securities offering document.  The truth is no one knows if a platform is hack proof until it happens.

The white paper discusses how BrightCOIN can be used to “tokenize” assets like real estate making those assets more accessible to small investors who will be able to trade those tokens on a global basis. The white paper notes (in bold type) that there are over $200 trillion worth of assets that can be tokenized.  In the context it is presented, that statement is akin to me saying that there are 1 million single women in California implying that I will always have a date on Saturday night.

BrightCOIN claims their platform is fully functional and that they are already in business. Do they disclose how many offerings they have done and how much money those offerings have raised? They do not. They also claim that they offer consulting services to help a company prepare and market its ICO. Do they identify the people who perform these services? No.

BrightCOIN estimates that it may be able to list and sell 20 ICOs per month and might be able to take in $6.5 million per month in “success fees” if it does. The lawyer who they claim prepared this offering and who was supposed to call me and explain it to me should have told them that unless the platform is a licensed broker/dealer “success fees” are forbidden.  No where does the white paper suggest that BrightCOIN intends to become a licensed broker/dealer.

People always ask me how is it that I can spot these scams when other people cannot.  In most cases, like here, they do not pass the simple “smell test”. The founder, in my opinion, should simply stop this offering until it is actually compliant. If not people at Y Combinator should pull him aside and ask that he stop using their name.

In my opinion, the attorney, if he actually wrote this offering, which I doubt, should go back to chasing ambulances.  When you prepare an offering of securities, it is expected that people will call up and ask some questions as part of their due diligence investigation. Any attorney, who agrees to field those questions, cancels two phone calls and makes no attempt to reschedule them, should refund the client’s money.

The entire ICO market has been one con after another. Telling investors the truth is not that difficult but it seems to be the one thing that the ICOs just cannot seem to do.

 

Crowdfunding Successfully

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Over the last 3 years’ equity crowdfunding has evolved into a fairly easy and inexpensive way to fund a business. More and more businesses, including start-ups, are attracting millions of dollars from investors without having to deal with Wall Street stockbrokers who charge hefty commissions or venture capitalists who want a hefty portion of their company.

I speak with companies every week that are considering crowdfunding as a way of finding investors.  The questions they asked a year ago centered on what crowdfunding is and how does it work. Today the questions are much more practical. They want to know how to get it done and how much it will cost.

One of the great mistakes that people make when they consider seeking outside investors is failing to consider the investment they are offering from an investor’s point of view. Investors expect that you are going to use their money to make more money.  Investors want a return on their investment and they expect some of the money that you make to find its way back into their pockets.

It is very important that you structure your offering to maximize the probability that investors will actually get the return you are promising. It is equally important that you clearly tell them what you are going to do to get there.

Structuring the offering correctly is a balancing act between an investment that will stand out from the pack and be attractive to investors and one that does not promise too much of the company’s profits that would stifle its growth or cause cash-flow difficulties. You can have a great little company with a great product and a huge upside but that does not mean you can attract investors if the offering itself and the return they will get is not attractive to them.

You can use crowdfunding to sell debt or equity in your company.  If you chose debt you get to set the terms and the interest rate. You get to decide whether the debt will be convertible to equity later on and if so when and on what terms. You can also sell common stock, preferred stock, convertible preferred or preferred stock that is callable. In many cases you can keep the financing off of your balance sheet by using a revenue sharing model or licensing your IP.

To structure an offering correctly you need to understand the company’s financial situation, cash flow and anticipated growth both of revenue and expenses.  You also need a good understanding of your competitors and how they approached their financing and the market if you are going to be competitive.

Serious investors look at your spread sheet first. They expect that you will be able to support the projections you are making with real facts and rational assumptions. If you are using investors’ funds to expand your business or introduce a new product into the market, you should have a good idea of what that market looks like, how you intend to reach it and what your competitors are doing.

Unless you have a finance professional on your staff or on your board of directors, you will need someone to help you structure and correctly set the terms of your offering. Very few of the crowdfunding platforms offer this type of advice, but that does not mean that you do not need it. The failure to understand finance is the root cause of the absurd valuations that are everywhere in crowdfunding and are a primary reason that serious investors will not look at your offering.

If you do not have a finance professional to help you, and the platform does not provide this type of advice, by default it is going to come down to the lawyer who is helping you prepare the offering paperwork. I have this discussion with clients almost every time I prepare an offering for crowdfunding.  If you are thinking about using a template to create the legal documents for your offering instead of a lawyer who can give you good advice you are likely to create an offering into which no one wants to invest.

Contrary to what any platform tells you very few platforms have a large audience of loyal investors ready willing and able to write you a check. I work with one platform that caters to institutional investors. Their investors are loyal because the platform is very picky about the companies that it will allow to list. Serious investors want this type of pre-vetting. Serious entrepreneurs want this type of investor.

Some of the worst advice you will get about raising money through crowdfunding is that you can use social media to build a community of potential investors or that crowdfunding for investors is a way to build your brand and solicit new customers at the same time. This actually makes no sense at all.

Customers and investors have divergent interests. Customers want you to sell them your product at the lowest price. They are consumers and think like consumers. Investors on the other hand want you to maximize your profits. They want you to sell your product for as much as the market will bear.

There are a significant number of people in the crowdfunding community who believe that the whole purpose of the JOBS Act is to allow small investors to invest in new companies. Both Regulation A+ and Regulation CF which were promulgated under the JOBS Act specifically allow for small investors.  Both are expensive and cumbersome. In my mind neither is worth the effort.

If you want to raise $1 million using Reg. A+ or Reg. CF you might expect an average investment of $250. That means you will need to reach 4000 investors. To obtain an investment from 4000 investors, your marketing campaign might need to reach 1,000,000 distinct prospects.

If you use Regulation D and make your offering to only accredited investors, you might set your minimum investment at $25,000. That way you need only 40 investors or less to raise the entire $1,000,000 and may need to reach out to only 10,000 prospects to do so.

I have worked with several of the marketing firms that specialize in equity crowdfunding. Some are more expensive than others. I always recommend spending your money on creating a good offering and a good presentation and not spending it on trying to reach 1,000,000 people or more

There are a lot of different crowdfunding platforms. Some specialize in funding real estate, some in solar projects and alternative energy projects. Sometimes a company can benefit by being on one of the larger, national platforms; often a local platform will work just as well.

There is technology available today that allows a company to set up its offering on its own website. You can set it up with what is essentially a drop box where the prospective investors can look at your offering and supporting documents. If an investor wants to invest, it will present the appropriate documents, accept his/her signature, verify the investor’s identity and qualifications and place the funds into an escrow account until the offering is completed.

You lose the advertising that a platform would do but you may gain from the fact that your offering is not competing with a dozen others all looking for investors. The fact that this technology is available has driven down the cost of listing on a platform.

Overall, if you want to raise between $1 and $5 million for your business using equity crowdfunding, legal and marketing costs and platform fees should run in the neighborhood of $50,000 more or less. Legal fees are usually the same but marketing costs increase with the number of investors you are trying to reach. Compared to the 10% fee that a stock brokerage firm would get, you can see why crowdfunding is becoming more and more popular.

 

Any Good Business Can Get Funded

Capital Markets, Issuers , , ,

I am always amazed when I get negative feedback to the premise that any good business can get funded. This is especially true when people tell me that businesses owned by women or minorities cannot get funded or that businesses locate outside of New York, Silicon Valley or some other money center have limited access to capital.

Frankly I think that a failure to get funding demonstrates ineptitude on the part of the entrepreneur. Inexperience is a greater impediment to attracting capital investment than gender, race or location.

When I was younger a business had two choices for funding, banks or Wall Street.  Wall Street would not take a company public until it was profitable. Companies often used an IPO to pay down debt and improve cash flow to pay dividends to the shareholders. If you wanted to get funded on Wall Street, it helped if you went to Princeton or Yale or your father did. It was very much a “who you know” network.

Banks provided the bulk of the capital that was available for small business. They still do. They do not care who you are as much as they want to know that you will pay them back.

When I graduated law school in the 1970s women could not get credit cards and minorities could not get even a loan application at any bank. So you cannot tell me that it is more difficult for women and minorities to get funded today.

The US Small Business Administration (SBA) has programs which will guarantee bank loans for about 20,000 small businesses every year.  I speak with entrepreneurs seeking capital all the time. I always ask if they have tried the SBA.  Most of the people I speak with never heard of the SBA or never considered it.  If you are looking for funding for your business, that is mistake number one.

Even if you do not qualify for a bank loan the cost of capital should be your primary concern. Shopping for a loan will give you an idea of how much money costs and how loan payments would impact your cash flow.  If, for example, you intend to borrow $1 million at 6% for 10 years, then the loan will cost you $600,000 and you will need to take $1.6 million out of cash flow to pay it back.

Many people think that venture capitalists will fund their business. That is simply not true. There are actually very few VC funds and they fund very few businesses every year. Some VCs specialize, i.e. they only fund biotech companies. That is great if you are a biotech company and know where to find those VCs with the expertise to evaluate your company. Randomly chasing after VC funds is a waste of time.

The serious money in venture capital is controlled by people who do a lot of analysis and extensive due diligence. Consequently, they like to invest in somewhat larger slices of $10 million or more. If they get 10% of your equity for that amount you are going to have to sell a lot of your product to bring the real value of your company up to the point where they will make a sizeable profit.  Consequently, not many companies will qualify.

The start-up world and especially Silicon Valley are full of stories about start-ups that become unicorns that exceed a $1 billion valuation but they are few and far between. If you are going to swing for the fences, fine. But for most companies this is not an option.

What makes the statement “any good business can get funded” true is the JOBS Act or what most people call equity crowdfunding.  It affords any company the opportunity to sell debt or equity securities directly to investors.

The JOBS Act opened the door for smaller companies to reach investors.  For most companies Reg. D is best because it is the least expensive and it has the largest developed market. Over $1.7 trillion is raised by businesses using Reg. D every year. If you want to raise money for your business, logic would tell you to go where the money is.

The best thing about equity crowdfunding is that the business owner controls the process. You hire an attorney to prepare the legal paperwork for you, prepare the marketing materials, list it on one of many crowdfunding websites and use your marketing program to attract investors.  You do not have to wait for the loan committee at a bank or for a broker/dealer to put you on their calendar. You can usually start raising money in 4-6 weeks from when you start the process.

Despite what you may have heard about crowdfunding campaigns that are not successful, it is really not that difficult if you hire people who know what they are doing.  Business owners call me about crowdfunding all the time. I always ask them the same four questions.

Questions 1 and 2. How much money do you want to raise and what do you intend to do with that money?  If your answer to the second question is that you intend to “disrupt” this industry or that industry, you better be able to demonstrate that you know a lot about that industry and especially about your competitors.

What investors really want to know is that you have a good business plan and that you are raising enough money to execute it.  It is always better to stick with what you know and hire people who know what you do not.  You should be able to show that you are not just building a better mousetrap but that you are building a good, profitable business.

Question 3. What is in it for the investor?  Investors are often disrespected in the crowdfunding universe. This is partially because the crowdfunding platforms compete for issuers and partly because many crowdfunding platforms are operated by people who do not understand what investors want.  In truth all investors want the same thing; they want to end up with more money than they originally invested.

People who are willing to invest in a start-up understand that most start-ups will fail.  It is important to distinguish yourself and convince investors that your company has a better chance to succeed because you have mitigated some of the risk.

Over the years, I have used a variety of financing tools including preferred shares and revenue sharing models to help start-ups manage their cash flow and still make the investment attractive to investors.  No two companies are the same. If you are thinking that you can just download a template for your offering without some real advice about how to structure it, you are not likely to be successful.

Question 4. What is your fundraising budget?  This is what really separates successful fundraising programs from unsuccessful ones.  You should always be prepared to spend a little more than you think you may need.

What is an adequate budget?  Enough to prepare the legal paperwork, marketing materials and to drive enough potential investors to your offering to get it funded. For a Reg. D offering, few companies spend as much a $50,000 unless they are raising $10 million or more.

One of the common mistakes people make is selecting the wrong crowdfunding platform.  Several advertise that they have had 10,000 investors or more but most crowdfunding investors are not loyal to a particular platform. Only a very few platforms are right for any particular offering. You need to make a decision about which platform to use based upon a number of factors including the size of your offering, the industry that you are in and how your offering is structured.

Under the JOBS Act you can make a Reg. D offering on your own website if you wish.  Given the fact that you will be paying for the marketing costs, it may make sense to be on your own platform where there will be no competition from other offerings.

I speak with about a dozen companies every month and I only take on one or two because I do not want to work full time. If I take you on I will walk you through the process and usually get you funded. That goes for companies owned by women and minorities and those located in Toledo or Tallahassee.

Using the JOBS Act any good business can get funded. If you are going to run a business, then you have to get things done and not make excuses. That goes for financing your business as well.

If you cannot fund your business with equity crowdfunding then it is on you not the market. It is actually a lot easier, faster and more certain than chasing venture capital.

The Start-up Funding Wars-Another Dispatch from the Front Lines

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I speak with start-ups and business owners who are trying to raise capital for their businesses several times a week.  Some are my age or close to it; others are very much younger.  Most know their own business well, but few understand the ins and outs of raising capital which is why they call me in the first place.

If I take on the task of helping a start-up raise funds I can usually get them the funds they need.  That is not an idle boast. I will not even attempt to help a company solicit investors if I do not think that the company is a good investment.

That is unfortunately the case with the vast majority of the companies with which I speak.  I will review any pitch deck and offer comments and suggestions for free.  I will spend an hour of my time on the phone with any entrepreneur, no charge. Most simply do not measure up.

What I want to hear is that you have a business.  I want you to tell me that you have a product; that you know what it will cost to source your product and that you have actual customers who have bought or at least used the product and have reacted favorably to it.  If you are not yet at that stage, at the very least I want to know that you are close.

The difference between raising funds for a product that has been developed and raising funds to develop a product is huge. The number of investors who will take a chance on the latter is much smaller. It can still be done but it might take a little more time and money to reach them.

The two things that I do not want to hear is that your product will “disrupt” the market or that your company is destined to have a billion dollar plus valuation.  Neither is likely to come true.  I would rather hear that you have a good marketing and sales plan in place and have hired good, experienced people to execute it.

Please do not ask me to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before we speak.  In the first place, I am an attorney at law, so everything that you say to me is confidential if you want it to be.  In the second place, if your product or process is so novel, valuable and proprietary then get it patented.

Please do not send me a pitch deck that has no resemblance to a business plan. If your pitch is all flash and no substance it is not going to work. Investors want to see what you are going to do with their money and how and when your company will become profitable.

Please do not tell me that you have read all the books about funding a start-up and have attended several conferences featuring the best start-up “gurus”.  If you had read all the books that actually count, you would probably have an MBA in Finance.

Sometimes I can help a small company up its game by suggesting that it add some additional directors, patent its product, refine its business plan or change the terms or structure of its offering.  But more often than not, I find myself turning away business.

What I really want to hear most in that first phone call with any entrepreneur is that he/she can close the sale. If you are going to deal with investors, you are going to have to do more than tell them about the great company that you are building. You are going to have to ask them for a check. To get it, you need to tell investors how they are likely to profit from the investment in your company and why you can make it happen.

I am not a philanthropist. I charge for my services albeit less than I used to charge when I was paying rent for an office in a financial district high rise.  I will not work for stock in your business and you cannot pay me later after we raise money for you.

It takes money to raise money.  If you raised seed capital from friends and family to develop your product and did not raise enough to take you to the next level of fundraising at the same time, let me say this judiciously, you blew it.

I generally tell people to budget between $35-$50,000 if you need to raise between $5-$15,000,000.  So far none of my clients have gone over budget and most have spent less, but running out of money would be aggravating to all concerned.

A lot of people ask me to introduce them to VCs. I know a few VCs on both coasts and a few in between.  Most are serious investors meaning that they want to invest in companies that will succeed and produce a good return on their investment.  This is true of all investors, not just VCs.

For most start-ups seeking venture capital is a waste of time.  VCs actually fund very few businesses every year and each has its own funding requirements. The process is time consuming (even companies that get funded can be at it a year or more) and often political (like a lot of things in life it is often who you know that is important).

For most start-ups and small companies, equity crowdfunding would be the preferred way to raise funds.  It can be quick (90-120 days) and inexpensive ($35-$50,000).  I work with several equity crowdfunding platforms and several different marketing companies.  If you start with the idea that you are just going to slap an offering together as inexpensively as possible, put it up on a crowdfunding platform that has dozens of competing offerings and send out an e-mail or two to prospective investors, you are more likely than not going to fail.

I know a lot of people in the crowdfunding industry and I think that I know the best of the best.  I can usually direct a client to an appropriate crowdfunding platform and a marketing firm that will get the job done. I use different firms for different offerings of companies in different industries and at different stages of their corporate development.

Funding is always a team effort. That is why I like to pick the team.  I try to use the best people for each job.  Some charge more than others but like everything else in life, you get what you pay for.

To save time here are three types of offerings that I do not do.

1) Anything to do with cannabis. It is not that I am a wimp on the subject of marijuana. I was in college in the 1960s.  It is just that I can read the handwriting on the wall. Cannabis is illegal in all 50 states, no matter what the state legislature may have enacted.  The current US Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, seems to be getting ready to start enforcing federal law and closing down the retail stores and medical dispensaries.  He recently loosened the rules on asset forfeiture, meaning that nice warehouse where some company is growing cannabis might be seized and sold without a trial.  If I was an investor who helped to fund the purchase of that building I would sue the principals for using my money to participate in an illegal enterprise.

2) Any Reg. A+ offering. Reg. A+ requires the registration of shares with the SEC so that they can be sold to smaller investors. There is more than enough money in the Reg. D private placement market to fund your business. A Reg. A+ offering will likely cost you $150,000 or more to raise the same amount of money. That does not scream “look how smart I am” to any investor.

3) Any ICO. Recently I have been asked by more than one company to do an Initial Coin Offering (ICO).  These are offerings denominated in crypto-currencies. Several have raised significant amounts of money.  The SEC has declared that depending on how these offerings are structured they may be securities. Most of the lawyers with whom I spoke would err on the side of caution if they were asked to prepare an ICO. I got quotes in the range of $150,000- $250,000 just for legal fees. Again why spend that much more than you need to spend to fund your business.  And if you need a gimmick like an ICO to fund raise funds, what does that say about your business?

By refusing to fund businesses selling cannabis, any Reg. A+ or any ICO, I am leaving a lot of money on the table because these offerings, especially the latter two, pay well.  I have the expertise but I also have a reputation. I will not advise a client to use Reg. A+ or an ICO when a Reg. D offering will work just as well and cost them much less.

Good businesses get funded. While 90% of start-ups fail,  the key is to convince investors that you are among the 10% that will not.  If you are unsure, you are welcome to try to convince me first.

 

Reg. A+ Assessing the True Costs

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From the laptop of Irwin G. Stein, Esq.Many small and mid-sized companies seem to be assessing their option to raise equity capital using the SEC’s new Regulation A+, which was promulgated under the JOBS Act. The regulation allows companies to register up to $50 million worth of their shares with the SEC and then offer them for sale to members of the general public.

Until now, companies seeking equity capital at this low end of the market could only seek funds from wealthy, accredited investors using a different regulation; Reg. D, the private placement rule.

The upfront costs of preparing a private placement offering will always be less than the costs of a Reg. A+ offering. In both cases competent securities attorneys will prepare the prospectus. Reg. A+ requires that the company’s books be audited as well. This is an added expense. The true costs however, will be determined by who sells the offering and how it is sold.

It is not unusual for a private placement being sold under Reg. D to have an upfront load of 15% of the total amount of the offering or more. The issuing company only receives 85% or less of the funds that are raised by the underwriter.

One percent of the load might repay the company’s costs of preparing the offering. Another one percent might cover the underwriter’s marketing and due diligence costs. The rest is the sales commission and other fees that the underwriter is charging for selling the private placement.

Many accredited investors are currently purchasing Reg. D offerings and paying the 15% or more front-end load. There is no incentive for the brokerage industry to charge Reg. A+ issuers any less.

When you purchase shares in a private placement you generally cannot re-sell them. Even if the company does well at first, if it fails in later years, you still lose your money.

With Reg. A+ the shares are supposed to be freely trade-able, except that they are not. The market in which they are supposed to trade is not yet fully developed. It may not develop for quite some time.

How much will the underwriters charge for a fully underwritten Reg. A+ offering? The rule of thumb has always been that commissions go up as the risks go up. Shares issued under both Reg. D and Reg. A+ are speculative investments.

Since both regulations will yield securities that are speculative investments that cannot be re-sold, it is reasonable that underwriters will charge the same for both types of offerings.

Some companies will attempt to sell their shares under Reg. A+ directly to the public without an underwriter. Investors who purchase these shares will get more equity for their investment. That does not necessarily mean that they will get greater value. If many issuers can self-fund without an underwriter it might cause downward pressure on loads and commissions that underwriters can charge.

If commissions on Reg. A+ offerings turn out to be substantially less, many accredited investors may shift to the Reg. A+ market. More likely, some brokerage firms will sell both Reg. D and Reg. A+ offerings side by side. If they do, the commission structure and total load on each should be similar.

Accredited Investors-Here Comes Direct Solicitation

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The JOBS Act required the SEC to permit issuers of certain common private placements to greatly expand their marketing efforts. Issuers using the Reg. D exemption had been prohibited from using any form of “general solicitation” or “general advertising” to market their interests. The SEC has amended its rules to lift that prohibition.

“General solicitation” and “general advertising” were not defined terms, but the rule states that these may include, “any advertisement, article, notice or other communication published in any newspaper, magazine, or similar media or broadcast over television or radio; and any seminar or meeting whose attendees have been invited by any general solicitation or general advertising.”

A private placement offering is frequently structured to be sold to accredited investors only. This includes banks and insurance companies and retail customers provided the latter have either a $1 million net worth or earn $200,000 per year.

Under the old rule, a stockbroker could not address a stranger with a solicitation for a private placement. There needed to be a pre-existing business relationship between the stockbroker and the potential investor. This was always a chicken and egg problem for the brokerage industry. Many brokerage firms and issuers found interesting ways to comply with the rule and still attract “new” customers.

Under the new rules, accredited investors will likely be bombarded with advertisements for Reg. D offerings of every kind. There will be print and website ads, U-Tube videos and infomercials. Seminars will be less informational and more focused on making sales.

This rule change is likely to launch billions of e-mails. Mailing lists with e-mail addresses for accredited investors are currently available from list brokers. The lists can be sorted geographically and will identify people who previously invested in Reg. D offerings.

If these advertisements emanate from FINRA brokerage firms there is at least a presumption of compliance with the rules that require the advertisements not to be misleading. If the ads emanate from the issuers themselves, there is less oversight.

More likely than not there will be more abuses. In the last cycle, we saw issuers put out glossy brochures offering interests in “Class A” office buildings that were not “Class A” and ads for oil drilling programs with “proven reserves” that were not “proven”.

Some ads will likely target seniors. It is not hard to imagine an advertisement for a Reg. D offering that asks: could you use more monthly income? I should not have to tell you that scam artists will be especially active.

The interests sold in Reg. D offerings are speculative investments. The ideal customer for a Reg. D offering is an accredited investor who is willing to take the risk of these investments and who can afford to take the loss if it occurs. They should be sophisticated enough to understand the offering materials and to make an informed decision whether or not to invest.

General advertising will cast a much wider net. It will undoubtedly bring more investors and more capital into this market. It will also bring more investors into the market who will not understand the offering documents or be able to accurately assess the risks.

Advertising appeals to our emotional nature. Emotions are never a good tool for evaluating risky investments.

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Reg. A+ – Exuberance and Reality

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The JOBS Act mandated the creation of new rules to help smaller companies obtain funds for development and expansion. One result is the SEC’s new Reg. A+.

Many people see the new regulation as an opportunity for small companies to gain access to the capital markets. It has created a fair amount of excitement and a plethora of seminars and experts.

There are groups prepared to assist businesses owned by women and minorities to take advantage of new sources of capital. There are bio-tech companies with patents (and those still developing their patents) looking for funds. There are consultants pitching Reg. A+ to the cannabis industry.

The sales pitch for Reg. A+ goes something like this: small investors will help to fund small companies that Wall Street ignores. Reg. A+ is a way for companies that could not get funded elsewhere to raise money from Main Street investors.

Some people seem to suggest that thousands of small companies will be able to take advantage of this new regulation. They seem to believe that there is a vast pool of underutilized capital eager for this type of speculative investment.

Reg. A+ will permit companies to raise a maximum of $50 million. Many of the offerings will be smaller; some a lot smaller. These are unlikely to attract the attention of any of the large investment banks. There will be some brokerage firms that will occupy this space, but they too are likely to be smaller.

The anticipation seems to be that many issuers will try to sell the shares to the public themselves without the help of an underwriter. Direct to the public securities offerings have been around for 20 years. Raising a relatively small amount of money from family, friends, suppliers and customers has always been an option.

The up front costs of a new Reg. A + offering are likely to be high. Lawyers and accountants who take companies public are specialists and frequently expensive ones. How little a Reg. A+ offering raise and still justify those costs has yet to be determined.

Underwriters provide essential services to every offering. Underwriters conduct due diligence about the issuer and the offering. Underwriters participate in preparing the registration statement. They make the important pricing decisions and provide research and aftermarket support. All of these tasks will still need to be performed if the company decides to go it alone.

All of this will fall to the issuers, their attorneys and accountants. Issuers who do not use an underwriter will need to assemble an experienced team from scratch. The attorneys and accountants are not going to be much help in the effort to sell the shares. That is what the underwriters do best.

Liability under the federal anti-fraud statutes will rest with the issuers as well. Insurance companies are already advising management that raising funds from public investors without appropriate coverage is fool-hardy.

Proponents are looking to social media to create interest in these offerings. Reg. A+ has a provision allowing a company to use a preliminary prospectus akin to a red herring to obtain indications of interest before the offering becomes final.

As a practical matter, potential purchasers will likely be directed to a website that will allow them to read the preliminary prospectus and which will likely contain a video about the company. The latter is a modern version of what used to be called the “dog and pony show”.

The lawyers who are moving the registration statement through the SEC are likely to make certain that those videos are toned down. That does not mean that a company cannot generate some real excitement in a video. It means that the videos will need to be compliant with the regulations anbd offer a balanced presentation including the fact that investors could lose all the money that they invest.

Given the reach of social media, the video might be viewed by a great many potential investors. Success of a direct to the public offering may hinge upon how many people are excited enough to direct their friends and contacts to the website. At least with an underwriter the offering is likely to be funded.

Any investor willing to assume the risk will be able to purchase shares offered in a Reg. A+ offering. That is the point. Mom and pop can help fund a small business that might eventually turn out to be big. Investors will further benefit because sales made directly by the company will not be subject to sales commissions.

Institutions and accredited investors (wealthier individuals with $1 million net worth or $200,000 in income) are also expected to invest. Angel investors and professional venture capital funds may invest as well. These investors are currently purchasing offerings being made under Regulation D which frequently have substantial loads and commission costs. Direct from the company offerings that are commission free will certainly appeal to some accredited and professional investors.

Unlike Reg. D, investors in a Reg. A+ offering come away with freely trade-able shares, just like they would in an IPO, but not quite. The Reg. A+ market is brand new. Reg. A+ shares may be legally trade-able but if you wish to sell them the question will be: to whom? It may take a while for a truly liquid secondary market for these shares to develop.

Certainly there will be successful offerings made under Reg. A+ both underwritten and direct from the issuer. How many there will be and how much money they will raise remains to be seen.

One thousand Reg. A+ offerings per year at the maximum of $50 million each would add only $50 billion to this end of the market. I suspect that the actual amount of funds raised under this rule will be less.

 

Due Diligence and Reg. D

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Due diligence was originally a judicial construct that provided a defense for underwriters who were jointly and severally liable for fraud perpetrated by the companies they brought to market. If the underwriter could not have discovered the fraud after a diligent investigation of the issuer, then the courts reasoned that there was not much more that the underwriter could do.

The due diligence investigation fell to the lead underwriter who was well paid for its efforts and upon whom other members of the selling group could rely. The underwriter’s due diligence investigators would consult with the issuer’s attorneys and accountants, pour over legal documents, ledgers and spreadsheets and visit factories, properties and sales offices. A good due diligence investigation included a look at the company’s customers, suppliers and competition, as well.

Due diligence has been a staple for underwriters for more than 40 years. The SEC has acknowledged the process in its new crowdfunding rules. Every legitimate brokerage firm underwriting new issues of securities employs some kind of acceptable due diligence process with one glaring exception: firms that underwrite Reg. D offerings sold to retail accredited investors. .

FINRA has codified the requirement of a diligent investigation by member firms selling private placements under Reg. D. The FINRA standard is specific; the member firm should verify the facts that are being given to investors. In a great many cases, a diligent investigation just does not happen.

When Reg. D was enacted, in the early 1980s, the vast majority of private placements were purchased by large institutional investors. These firms had the ability to review and analyze the offerings by themselves. Institutional purchasers would send their own lawyers and accountants to the issuing company before they sent their money.

Reg. D allowed wealthy individuals to invest in private placements as well. The rule set the threshold for “wealthy” investors at above a $1 million net worth. Wealthy individuals, it was reasoned could afford to sustain the losses if they occurred. Reg. D calls these wealthy individuals accredited investors. At the time there were fewer than 1 million millionaires in the US. Today there are 10s of millions.

A due diligence investigation of a company seeking to raise capital from investors is not difficult. My partner and I conduct due diligence investigations for VC funds, angel investors, family offices and broker/dealers. Individual investors, unless they are making a large investment, rarely call us.

The SEC estimates that $800 billion dollars worth of private placements are now sold every year, a very significant the vast majority of the funds coming from individual accredited investors. Experience has shown that some brokerage firms, including those that sell billions of dollars of private placements to individual accredited investors, do not diligently investigate the offerings that they sell. Hundreds of billions of dollars in investor losses are directly attributable to that fact.

After the credit market crash in 2008, many companies that had used Reg. D to raise billions of dollars were shown have been frauds. More than a few were Ponzi schemes. The latter, in many cases, were facades that had no business, just a good story about how investors were going to get paid high returns.

In some cases, more than 100 FINRA broker/dealers signed on to raise money for these Ponzi schemes. If they had done any investigation of these companies, they would have seen that the represented business did not exist. Selling a Ponzi scheme is usually a prima facie example of a firm that did not conduct a diligent investigation and probably conducted no investigation at all.

FINRA, the SEC and the state regulators did not impose significant penalties against firms that sold Ponzi schemes to investors. Civil recoveries by investors against the brokerage firms that sold the Ponzi schemes have been negligible. There is nothing in the market to incentivize a brokerage firm to conduct a real due diligence investigation; nor anything detrimental if they fail to do so.

The Dodd-Frank Act requires the SEC to re-consider the threshold for accredited investors every four years. If the SEC raised the threshold for net worth to $5 million, it would simply be an adjustment for inflation during the 30 plus years since the $1 million figure was set. It would also reduce the number of potential investors and the amount of capital that is available to this market.

The SEC seems intent upon expanding the amount of capital available to this market rather than contracting it. The Commission has already approved a change to Reg. D that makes it easier for firms to solicit potential Reg. D investors. No new protections for individual accredited investors seem to be forthcoming.

Many real estate and energy companies are serial issuers; they fund project after project using Reg. D. You can spot these professional sponsors at meetings and conferences where they wine and dine brokerage firm executives to get their offerings noticed and sold.

Brokerage firms will continue to give lip service to due diligence investigations but not perform them diligently. Ponzi schemes and other fraudulent offerings will continue to be sold to investors under Reg. D. Individual accredited investors will continue to bear the brunt of the losses.

Some things about the future of markets are easier to predict than others.