Leading Crowdfunding Industry Analyst Firm, Crowdfund Capital Advisors, States Now is the Time to Update the Regulation to Further Enable Capital Formation
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Robert Hoskins
(512) 627-6622
@Crowdfunding_PR
By Robert Hoskins, Crowdfunding PR
Horseshoe Lake, Arkansas – The Herbal Compliance Co. announced the launch of its compliance consulting services for legal medical cannabis and hemp businesses. This unique company will also be partnering with GrowthFountain to$1 million by selling equity through a unique form of investor fundraising called Title III, Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF).
Herbal Compliance fills a need created by differences in marijuana legislation at the state and federal levels. While it is currently legal in 26 states and the District of Columbia to grow and sell marijuana for medical purposes, it is still illegal on a federal level, resulting in thousands of conflicts between state and federal regulations.
“Understanding the laws governing medical marijuana and hemp is our core competency,” explains Chuck Carpenter, Herbal Compliance’s President. “But we also offer other types of business consulting like inventory management, branding, and employee education. Our mission is to help companies in this new area of American enterprise to grow and thrive.”
To fully fund their startup, Herbal Compliance is using a new form of funding enabled by recent changes in securities law in the JOBS Act called Regulation Crowdfunding. The rules for this sort of investing went into effect May 2016, allowing non-accredited investors to participate in a funding round for a private company for the first time in history.
“We’re excited to help Herbal Compliance raise the money they need to grow,” says Abe Orden, GrowthFountain’s Operations Manager. “For the first time in 80 years, average Americans now have the opportunity to support and invest in local businesses and entrepreneurs they believe in.”
Herbal Compliance’s campaign started on June 6, 2017 and will continue through Oct. 4, 2017. Their aim is to raise between $100,000 and $1 million with a minimum buy-in of $100 per investor.
The Herbal Compliance Co. provides companies in the legal medical cannabis and hemp business with services to ensure that they remain compliant with the law. Services include design and buildout, equipment fulfillment, regulator compliance, remote inventory control and reporting, vendor relationships, brand and marketing, and tax management and education.
GrowthFountain Capital LLC is a Regulation Crowdfunding platform aimed at simplifying fundraising and helping businesses build collateral. GrowthFountain is registered with the SEC and a member of FINRA.
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Robert Hoskins
(512) 627-6622
@Crowdfunding_PR
Maryville, Tennessee – Seeking a leading edge PR firm? Whether your company needs help generating publicity for a franchise’s Ripley’s Believe It or Not event or would benefit from generating positive PR publicity for a business-to-business (B2B) home service company that installs solar, saves money with home energy audits or offers HVAC tuneup services to help homeowners save money on monthly energy bills, Front Page PR can provide a cost-effective, turnkey growth-hacking marketing program for around $5,000+tax per month.
Front Page PR Rolls Out Turnkey PR/Media Relations Service Portfolio for Franchises, Construction, Home Services (Solar & Energy Efficiency), Industrial, Manufacturing, and High-Tech Companies
Front Page PR’s team of marketing experts can help growing companies write press releases, develop online press rooms, build social media networks, plan a digital advertising program, write search engine optimized blog pages for content marketing, generate precise databases of vertical B2B media contacts, write effective media pitches, build media relationships with the management team, find trade show panels discussion for subject matter experts to speak at and harvest email addresses for carefully-tailored email marketing programs. An excellent price for a full portfolio marketing services that is hard to beat and represents one of the most cost-effective deals in the B2B marketing industry.
“One of the most challenging decisions that most small companies face is hiring their first marketing consulting firm,” said Robert Hoskins, Front Page PR’s Director of PR and Media Relations. “Regardless of whether it’s a small startup seeking to gain market traction, a small business that wants to expand their existing business operations or a large corporation that is seeking merger and acquisition partners, our team of seasoned media relations experts can help any business move mountains with words and sway public persuasion with positive trade publication and business media interviews.”
“The average rate that most PR firms charge clients is $10,000 to $20,000 per month or $60,000 to $240,000 per year. The metric or question that all firms need to measure when evaluating their PR/media relations budget is, ‘Is my PR firm capable of generating at least $1 of media publicity for every $1 I spend on their PR consulting fees?’ ” Hoskins continued. “With that said, if a company can find a PR firm that can generate a 300% return-on-investment (ROI) for a budget of $60,000 per year, that’s equivalent to hiring three professional, seasoned marketing professionals, and/or receiving a minimum of $300,000 in positive, credible media exposure. Not many firms can deliver on this expectation, but our team can.”
Have an interest in learning more? Please give Front Page PR a call at (512) 627-6622 to learn more and to receive a free 30-minute review of your website, your social media credentials and an off-the-cuff review of what first steps might be taken to generate more website traffic, produce more business leads and how to help your sales team close deals on more new business. Front Page PR wants your business and is willing to work hard to earn your business, complete with a great ROI.
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Contact:
Robert Hoskins
Front Page PR
(512) 627-6622
Jacksonville, Florida – RealtyeVest lowered their required minimum investment amount today to just $5,000 for all offerings on their real estate crowdfunding platform for accredited investors. Previous minimum investment amounts ranged from $15,000 to $50,000, depending on the real estate project. The new $5,000 threshold is intended to draw first-time investors to experience RealtyeVest’s high-caliber performance with a nominal financial commitment.
“We are seeing significant activity on our platform, however we feel there is a corner of the market we are not appealing to,” said Daniel Summers, RealtyeVest’s CEO. “So we are offering investors a taste of our service with a new lowered investment amount for all projects. Once they see the quick return on their investments, they will no doubt want to increase their contribution amounts.”
RealtyeVest connects commercial and residential real estate owner-operators with investors. Their one-stop platform, realtyevest.com, provides a simple, secure, and transparent digital dashboard for accredited investors to partake in exclusive high-yield investment opportunities. New investors can complete the simple accreditation process right on the RealtyeVest website and become accredited within approximately 24 hours.
“Our offerings generate returns ranging from 10 to 30 percent for our clients,” Summers stated. “Lowering the minimum investment amount will allow many more investors to experience the benefit of working with us.”
Mr. Summers has over 30 years of real estate finance experience. He is rapidly building RealtyeVest to the same magnitude he did with his former real estate investment firm Hastings Realty and Madison Realty Group, which he grew into a $1 Billion collection of office buildings and shopping centers.
Mr. Summers is a frequent participant on investment panels, speaks regularly at real estate and investment events, and hosts webinars about real estate investing.
RealtyeVest specializes in affordable housing and low-income community properties, as well as single family residential investments and commercial real estate rehabilitation projects. New projects are added to their platform weekly.
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Robert Hoskins
(512) 627-6622
@Crowdfunding_PR
Los Angeles, California – Crowd Invest Summit, the country’s largest crowdfunding investment conference, taking place on September 6th and 7th at the Los Angeles Convention Center, has announced that it will be expanding its focus on Real Estate Crowdfunding.
Since the signing of the JOBS Act in 2012, Real Estate Investing has been the fastest growing segment of the new Crowdfunding Industry. According to CBRE, the real estate has more than a $1.7 trillion dollars worth of dry power ready to be invested in residential and commercial real estate deals.
“We expect over 3,000 attendees at Crowd Invest Summit this September, a significant portion being investors who are looking to learn about new opportunities,” said Alon Goren, co-founder of Crowd Invest Summit. “Real Estate investing has been a major focus at the summit, and because of overwhelming demand, this September we’re expanding on the topic.”
Crowd Invest Summit will feature the crowd investment industry’s top leaders, investors and firms covering real estate investing over the span of two days in September:
“As one of California’s preeminent real estate and business law firms, we are excited to partner with Crowd Invest Summit for its first-ever discussion on the emerging issues and opportunities presented by the ever-growing real estate crowdfunding market,” said Chuck Jarrell, Partner, Allen Matkins. “Crowdfunding has become an integral part of real estate investing and a topic that will resonate well with conference attendees.”
“We are excited to be back at Crowd Invest Summit this September to discuss how we’ve quadrupled our investor base by combining technology and marketing with an institutional approach to real estate investing,” said Michael Episcope, Principal, Origin Investments.
“Commercial real estate is no longer reserved for the wealthy. Now, everyone has the ability to passively invest in multi-million dollar properties, all thanks to crowdfunding,” said Matt Schuberg, CEO, RealCap. “We are very excited to come back to Crowd Invest Summit in September to bring these types of opportunities to the masses.”
“401(k) and IRA accounts provide access to 12 times more investment dollars than checking and savings accounts,” said Todd Yancey, CSO of IRA Services. “We are excited to explain the process to real estate investors at Crowd Invest Summit how to easily access that capital.”
“Now more than ever real estate companies should focus on the fundamentals and principles in mitigating risks to investors capital. Crowd Invest Summit offers both Real Estate Companies and potential investors to engage first hand and learn more about the risks and rewards of investing in Commercial Real Estate,” said Rayaan Arif, CEO, FundingTree.
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Washington, DC – The SEC just released a white paper entitled, U.S. securities-based crowdfunding under Title III of the JOBS Act, which analyzes crowdfunded offerings during the first six months following May 16, 2016 when Title III, Regulation Crowdfunding become official. The SEC’s white paper, which was prepared for Scott Bauguess, the Acting Chief Economist and Acting Director of the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA), noted that the majority equity crowdfunding offerings to date have not utilized Regulation D as much as predicted.
The white paper does go into great detail about five largest Title III crowdfunding portals based on the number of offerings, which accounted for 71% of the offerings launched during 2016. The five largest Title III crowdfunding sites also accounted for 64% of the total amount of funds raised. And while more 20 crowdfunding sites were listed, most of the offering activity was limited to 25% of active platforms in the Title III crowdfunding marketplace. And, if you ran the numbers for completed offerings, you would see that the top five largest intermediaries accounted for more than 90% of the market share.
The table below low shows the list of the Top Performing Title III Crowdfunding Portals sorted on the number of initiated offerings and then by the target amounts of the initiated offerings, excluding offerings withdrawn as of December 31, 2016.
Many people want to know what the types of Title III crowdfunding campaigns were the most successful. Preferred Equity led the pack at 36%, followed bySimple Agreements for Future Equity at 26%, Debt at 20%, Units at 7%, Convertible Notes at 6% and Miscellaneous accounted for the remaining 5%, which included Revenue Sharing and Membership / LLC Interests.
Another interesting way to look at growing crowdfunding industry is to examine what states launched the most successful Title III Equity Crowdfunding Campaigns. In the table below you can see that California/Silicon Valley launched the most Title III crowdfunding campaigns, followed closely by Texas/Silicon Hills at 19%, New York at 14%, Massachusetts and Illinois tying at 9%, Delaware, Florida, New Jersey, Oregon, and Pennsylvania bringing up the back to the pack, all with 5%.
Because many industry experts have stated their concerns that the SEC’s decision to severely restrict the general solicitation guidelines with regards to advertising their crowdfunding deals to the masses of non-accredited investors, the white paper also took a close look at how many Title III Regulation Crowdfunding Campaigns had previously or subsequently conducted an offering under Regulation D or Regulation A.
As shown in the table below, as of January 15, 2017, approximately 15% of offerings initiated during 2016 (excluding withdrawn offerings) were by issuers that have also reported offerings under Regulation D either before or after the initial crowdfunding filing. And, approximately 3% of issuers have issued Regulation A+ filings as of January 15, 2017.
Among crowdfunding issuers, approximately 12.9% of offerings were by issuers that had filed the first Form D notice prior to the first crowdfunding filing and approximately 2.5% of offerings involved issuers that had filed a Form D notice after the first crowdfunding filing. For about 8.6% of offerings, excluding withdrawn crowdfunding offerings, a Form D filing was made within one calendar year before or after the initial crowdfunding filing. Consistent with their young age, the SEC determined that the majority of the crowdfunding issuers were more likely to be new startups rather than “fallen angels.”
Overall, these results suggest that crowdfunding is attracting issuers that have not extensively used other private offering exemptions, such as Regulation D, which is otherwise a very popular private offering exemption among similarly sized issuers as those initially availing themselves of the Crowdfunding market. The initial evidence is points to the fact that Title III, Regulation Crowdfunding is indeed providing a new source of capital for entrepreneurial and small businesses that may not otherwise have had access to capital through alternative capital raising channels.
The white paper also made a point of covering the following facts and figures.:
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Robert Hoskins
(512) 627-6622
@Crowdfunding_PR
Crowdfunding PR Shows Startups How to Build Investor Databases for Title III and Title IV, Reg. A+ Crowdfunding Campaigns to Target Precise Lists of Angel, Private Equity and VC Investors
New York City, New York – Crowdfunding PR’s new investor marketing database service allows equity crowdfunding campaign managers to drill down inside private equity and venture capital firms to find highly-qualified principals, partners, portfolio managers and family offices with the highest propensity to invest in their type of product/service and do sorts by vertical business segments, by geographical locations and by types of deals such as seed capital, private equity, series A/B, late-stage funding rounds and many, many other searchable financial database sorting characteristics, variables and demographics.
“The greatest challenge for startups, entrepreneurs and growing small businesses is finding potential angel investors, private equity investors and/or building out their own private investment syndicate of investors with a high propensity to invest in similar types deals as the one they want to pitch to investors,” said Robert Hoskins, Crowdfunding PR’s Director of Investor Relations. “The same need is present for the hundreds of new equity crowdfunding platforms that have launched new equity crowdfunding platforms in the past twelve months. Crowdfunding PR can utilize the investor database to market any deal on any equity crowdfunding platform to a very wide, but yet very precise and carefully selected list of angel, private equity and VC investors.”
The new investor database provides private investment information on the end-to-end fundraising process. From initial exits to fund returns, it offers the best information available for the complete lifecycle of private investing. This includes Limited Partner (LP) commitments, fundraising, remaining dry powder in funds, deals, company evaluations and fund performance as well as the service providers, executives, and lead partners behind the deals.
The private investor database provides clients with access to stats to build pitch books, contacts to setup road tours, run private and public comps, source co-investors, model cash flows, conduct competitive analysis, follow the entire venture capital (VC) marketplace, build and expand investor networks, target deal makers and identify private equity (PE) and VC firms actively doing deals. The quality of work that can be turned around on a compressed timeline is nothing short of amazing and will be 10 times more efficient and 3 times to 5 times more accurate than other types of private investment information that can be found online via Google and LinkedIn.
If your startup or existing business needs help building and an investor database, creating an effective pitch deck, building a direct email marketing program and/or scheduling an investor “dog and pony” roadshow, please call Robert Hoskins at (512) 627-6622 or contact him via @Crowdfunding_PR on Twitter.
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Robert Hoskins
(512) 627-6622
@Crowdfunding_PR
San Francisco, California – The IPAmediagroup announced the official launch date of www.420fundme.com, a highly anticipated crowdfunding platform to crowdfunding for cannabis, marijuana and weed related projects. The site launch is set for September 15th and will enable individuals, groups and businesses to fund a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from individuals online.
420FundMe.com Launched a highly anticipated platform for crowdfunding cannabis, marijuana, and weed-related projects, startups and business expansion
Aimed at cannabis related ancillary companies, which are not directly involved in the actual growing or selling of cannabis, 420fundme focuses on individuals that are bringing unique new products to the industry. Working within a potential $100 billion industry, according to Economist.com, since August 1st the site prelaunch has allowed registration for new projects to be listed on launch day.
“We have beat all expectations and are already seeing a large influx of highly exceptional new products that are simply going to change the industry,” Jon Greene, 420FundMe’s Chief Operating Officer confirms. “From lighting, security, paraphernalia, and grow products to research, genetics, publications and even real estate services as well as a number of artists, websites, glassblowers, and even filmmakers we can already see we created a necessary platform that is going to be well used.”
Centered on making certain each and every campaign is a success, 420fundme has implemented a number of unique solutions that are not only new to the cannabis industry but also new to crowdfunding and alternative financing. This includes facilitating inline promotional abilities and applying third-party partnerships directly through the platform.
With uninterrupted connections from the project page any campaign has direct access to high quality third-party marketing, publicity, advertising, and media services as well as packaging and branding services and solutions.
“It is a seamless partnership that will enable every campaign to create success at the same time providing our partners and advertisers a huge new market,” Greene added.
Visit 420FundMe.com to pre-register your project and to find out more about how to utilize crowdfunding to raise money to launch your cannabis, marijuana or weed related business or how to sponsor a campaign, become a partner, and explore advertising opportunities.
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Silicon Valley, CA – Legion M, the world’s first crowdfunded and now fan-owned entertainment company, announced they have raised one million dollars via their Title III crowdfunding offering on Wefunder. The Company raised the funds in less than three months from a record breaking 3,000+ investors, making it the most popular Reg CF company in the short history of Title III of the JOBS Act. At the time of closing, Legion M was also the number one company in terms of total investment interest and demand, with significantly more demand above and beyond the $1 million dollar funding cap allowed by the SEC, which leaves outstanding appetite for Legion M stock even after the round is closed.
“Legion M shareholders worldwide are celebrating this significant milestone we achieved together. We are truly inspired by their energy, passion and unbridled support. This Legion of dedicated fans have rallied behind us and our movement to make our mark entertainment industry,” said Paul Scanlan, CEO and co-founder of Legion M. “We are grateful to the JOBS Act for the innovative reforms that make this possible. Today we made history, and this is only the beginning.”
Legion M’s creative partners currently include Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, the team behind Robot Chicken, 42 Entertainment, Meltdown Comics and Alamo Drafthouse.
“I was impressed with how Legion M’s fans rallied to help them hit the one million dollar milestone eight days early,” said Nick Tommarello, CEO and co-founder of Wefunder. “We designed Wefunder for companies looking to build a stronger relationship with their most passionate customers, who are eager to help their favorite companies succeed. It was great to see how well it worked with Legion M’s well over three thousand investors.”
“With more than three times the number of investors as any other Reg CF offering, Legion M has set the bar for Title III,” says Sara Hanks, a definitive authority on the JOBS Act and CEO of equity crowdfunding specialists CrowdCheck. “The real power of equity crowdfunding is having an investor base that can increase the value of your company, and Legion M is one of the best illustrations of that so far.”
“Having raised in excess of $100 million from VCs and angel investors for previous companies, we can attest that equity crowdfunding is a game changer,” said Jeff Annison, Legion M president and co-founder. “It’s not just a way to raise money–it’s a whole new paradigm for building a company.”
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Here are some simple questions that you might ask yourself when planning a fundraising campaign to raise money in order to launch a new startup or expand an existing business:
How much money do you want to raise? And what step of the crowdfunding escalator does your company currently reside?
Do you want to target 8.7 million sophisticated accredited investors or open the offering up to 188 million non-accredited, novice investors throughout the U.S. (and Canada)?
Do you want to utilize a registered Title III crowdfunding portal or regular website combined with general solicitation (advertising/PR/social media)?
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(512) 627-6622
@Crowdfunding_PR