RCS Capital Announces Initiative to Establish Leading Crowdfunding Investment Platform

Acquires Assets of Trupoly, White-Label Investor Relationship Management Portal and Adds Key Executives to Crowdfunding Initiative

By Robert Hoskins

New York, NY – RCS Capital Corporation (NYSE: RCAP), announced that it is establishing a crowdfunding investment platform which it will brand under the name, “We R Crowdfunding.”

In connection with this initiative, RCAP acquired substantially all of the assets of New York based Trupoly, Inc., a white-label investor relationship management portal, which will be integrated into RCAP’s new crowdfunding investment platform.  RCAP also announced the hiring of Trupoly Founder and President, Ryan Smith, as well as other key Trupoly executives.

RCAP expects “We R Crowdfunding” to launch in September 2014 as part of RCAP’s integrated financial services platform under the direction of Michael Weil, RCAP’s President. “We R Crowdfunding” will deliver high-quality investment offerings by utilizing RCAP’s existing broker-dealer infrastructure, which includes investment banking, due diligence, compliance and research, as well as technology developed by Trupoly. “We expect ‘We R Crowdfunding’ to provide investors direct access to public and private offerings, including Regulation A and Regulation D offerings, mutual funds and closed-end fund offerings, in a variety of industries and sectors,” said Mr. Weil.

Mr. Weil continued, “‘We R Crowdfunding’ looks to the future of securities sales by adding an important element to our full-service retail financial services firm. The crowdfunding investment platform will permit investors, whether working with financial advisors or exploring investment opportunities on their own, to access, investigate and participate in a wide range of offerings from a vast pool of asset classes. We are making a small capital investment at this time to gain access to a significant potential market that we expect to develop over the next several quarters.”

“We are pleased to be joining the RCAP team and look forward to creating the market leader in direct-to-consumer investment offerings,” said Ryan Smith, Trupoly’s Founder and President.  Also joining RCAP are Charles Crnoevich, Trupoly’s Head of Sales, and Melanie Eitel, Trupoly’s Client Relationship Manager.

Crowdfund investing was established by Title II of the federal JOBS Act in 2012, which directed the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) to relax rules prohibiting the general solicitation of investments.  Crowdfund investing relies on general solicitation, often via the Internet, to inform and attract capital to specific investment opportunities.  A 2013 study by the World Bank predicts that crowdfund investing could grow to become a $300 billion annual market in the U.S. over the next ten years.

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IgnitionDeck Acquires Crowdfunding Assets Fundify and CrowdPress to Power Star Citizen-Class Fundraising Campaigns on WordPress

The growing software developer has embarked on a strategy to buy up  and integrate the world’s most powerful crowdfunding tools on the WordPress platform in order to build best-of-breed fundraising platforms

 By Robert Hoskins

Apollo Beach, Florida – IgnitionDeck, Inc. announced that it has acquired two of the most popular and powerful tools that offer customers a  no-commission-fee crowdfunding platform. Fundify was purchased from Astoundify and CrowdPress was purchased from BoxyStudio. These assets position IgnitionDeck as a powerful force in the crowdfunding industry and gives the company a dominant position within one of the leading online publishing platforms, WordPress, which accounts for more than 60 million websites worldwide.

IgnitionDeck – The Crowdfunding Industry’s Most Popular WordPress Platform Templates

IgnitionDeck’s No-Commission-Fee crowdfunding tools let fundraisers host their own donation pages, keep all of the money that they raise, and control their relationship with users. Self-hosted campaigns offer a professional-looking and money-saving alternative to sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, which charge commissions on all funds raised, limit fundraising time periods, impose their own branding, and control the communications between fundraisers and donors.

A crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter campaign that raises $2 million would pay a platform commission fee of 5% or $100,000 for doing nothing more than allowing a client to upload a video, write a crowdfunding profile and add up to 20 perks.  A similar campaign running on Indiegogo that falls $1 short of its goal would pay a 9% commission or $180,000.

For example, Star Citizen, one of the most funded crowdfunding campaigns in history utilized a Kickstarter campaign, running between October 19th and November 19th, 2012. It raised $2,134,374, but had to pay a Kickstarter commission fee of approximately $106,718.

Roberts Space Industries, Chris Robert’s  Star Citizen is the Most Funded Crowdfunding Campaign in History, Dwarfing Kickstarter and Indiegogo

To circumvent paying this fee for their second crowdfunding campaign, Star Citizen’s Chris Roberts turned to IgnitionDeck to help him host his own fundraising campaign using his video game’s website, Roberts Space Industries, versus going with Kickstarter.  Star Citizen used IgnitionDeck for the first $13 million, thus at 5%, saved ~$650,000 by going IgnitionDeck direct.

After that, Star Citizen hired Turbulent to further customize the Star Citizen/Roberts Space Industries site and as of July 13, 2014, the Star Citizen campaign had raised approximately $48,050,064 from 498,029 pledges, which is more than any Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign.

Customers that have a large community of followers and feel comfortable in setting a goal of $2 million or more on Kickstarter would save a minimum of $100,000 by hosting an IgnitionDeck crowdfunding campaign on their own website. The more money raised, the more IgnitionDeck will save them.

After the experience with such a successful crowdfunding campaign, the IgnitionDeck management team realized that they needed more functionality.  Of all the tools they analyzed, it was clear that buying the functionality that the Fundify and CrowdPress themes provided would be strategic to the future direction of IgnitionDeck’s WordPress crowdfunding platform.

Launched in 2012, Fundify soon became one of the most popular tools for hosting multiple crowdfunding projects simultaneously, enabling people to “be their own Kickstarter.” The CrowdPress design theme provides a customizable front-end to Fundify’s functionality. All of these solutions– IgnitionDeck, Fundify, and CrowdPress– let hosts avoid the typical 4% to 9% commissions levied by commercial crowdfunding sites, have sold thousands of copies, and enjoy active user communities.

According to IgnitionDeck co-founder Nathan Hangen, “The IgnitionDeck and Astoundify teams have had multiple positive interactions. During one recent conversation, we began toying with the idea of bringing Fundify into the IgnitionDeck product suite. Within weeks, both teams knew it was the right thing to do, agreed on the terms, and shook hands.” Says Astoundify co-founder Adam Pickering, “We’re proud of Fundify, and all of the success and good will that it has generated. We are glad to see it become part of the IgnitionDeck family– it’s a perfect match.”

In January 2014, Indiegogo announced Indiegogo Outpost, which replicates IgnitionDeck’s ability to embed a crowdfunding campaign on a host’s website. The Outpost feature was scheduled for release Q1 2014, but it has not yet been delivered as of this writing.

The Fundify theme only costs $60. IgnitionDeck yearly license fees range between $79 and $349. WordPress hosting for a 90-day campaign costs about $20.  All forms of online crowdfunding incur transaction fees from a payment processor such as Amazon, PayPal, Stripe or WePay.

WordPress is a robust publishing system that takes most non-computer literature users a day or so to learn. The other option is to hire  a WordPress consultant who is familiar with off-the-shelf tools like IgnitionDeck and Fundify to create and launch a custom crowdfunding site for you.

In addition to standalone crowdfunding platforms for single campaigns, the IgnitionDeck Enterprise Edition allows anyone to build a full-scale, white-labeled crowdfunding site that can be branded and setup to compete directly with Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

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Crowdtilt Rolls Out White Label Crowdfunding Solution that Removes Time Limits and Offers Advanced Campaign Formats

CrowdtiltOpen offers flexible and customizable tools so people with little to no expertise in crowdfunding or payments processing can launch a crowdfunding campaign for free with no restrictions on project type, time limitations or fundraising goals

By Robert Hoskins

San Francisco-based crowdfunding startup, Crowdtilt, unveiled CrowdtiltOpen, its open source white label crowdfunding solution, which

CrowdtiltOpen offers flexible and customizable tools so people with little to no expertise in crowdfunding or payments processing can launch a crowdfunding campaign for free

is now available to all businesses, brands and project creators who want to launch crowdfunding pages on their own sites. CrowdtiltOpen offers flexible and customizable tools so people with little to no expertise in crowdfunding or payments processing can launch a crowdfunding campaign for free with no restrictions on project type, time limitations or fundraising goals.

“CrowdtiltOpen was built with a clear purpose in mind: to allow project creators to host their own crowdfunding campaigns on their own websites,” said James Beshara, CEO of Crowdtilt. “Coin, Tile, Star Citizen — some of the largest crowdfunding campaigns of all time — have all been self-­hosted. I believe they had such success because they controlled their brand, user experience, and customized their campaigns with advanced analytics, retargeting advertising and fully­owning the SEO rush that comes with crowdfunding campaigns.”

CrowdtiltOpen offers project creators and businesses the most robust feature set of any crowdfunding tool in the world:

• Recurring Billing: Allow backers to automatically contribute on a subscription basis;
• Bitcoin Integration: Add the ability to accept Bitcoin payments;
• Whitelabel: Build out the whole web page and keep your brand’s unique look and feel;
• Customization: Create a unique theme or choose from customizable or packaged themes;
• Analytics Integration: Embed basic CRM technology, as well as integrate third party sites like Google Analytics, AdRoll, Optimizely, etc.;
• Reward Tiers: Customize reward levels and add images to incentivize contributors;
• No Time Limitations: Launch a 30-day, 3-month or ongoing campaign and have the flexibility to extend or shorten the campaign at any time;
• FreetoUse: Pay only standard credit card processing charges at 2.9%+.30 per transaction
• Direct Payments: Secure payments through third party with the ability to accept international payments through VISA, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express;
• Secure: Certified to PCI Service Provider Level 1, the most stringent level of certification available;
• Nonprofits: Accept donations to a crowdfunding campaign with the ability to give backers tax deductible receipts if you are a registered nonprofit;
• Multiple Campaigns: Easily run multiple campaigns at one time;
• Open Source: Improve, modify and customize the platform to fit your individual needs.

CrowdtiltOpen, previously called ‘Crowdhoster,’ launched in beta in August 2013 and has helped hundreds companies and project creators reach their crowdfunding goals through customized, hosted campaigns. Some of the biggest crowdfunding campaigns in their categories have used CrowdtiltOpen, such as Soylent, a nutrition substitute that raised over $2.1M, GNS3, a software company that raised over $300,000, and Immunity Project, the largest health crowdfunding campaign that raised over $450,000. Additionally, many campaigns, such as The UT.LAB, experimented with unique preorder and retail models to mitigate inventory and boost sales.

“We’re still in the very beginning of what crowdfunding will become, but we predict 15% of commerce on the web in five years will be powered by crowdfunding. What we’re witnessing is the economy beginning to reverse itself,” said Beshara. “When consumers are empowered to vote with their dollars, business and civic institutions will have to listen. With CrowdtiltOpen, we plan to bring crowdfunding to the commercial, civic and political arenas.”

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CommunityLeader Launches 85% Finance Program for Qualified Broker/Dealers that Want to Launch a Turnkey Crowdfunding Platform

By Robert Hoskins

CommunityLeader, Inc. announced it has secured the necessary capital resources to provide financing for the development and launch of turnkey crowdfunding portals for qualified broker/dealers.  CommunityLeader is an industry leading full-service provider of custom and private-labeled crowdfunding platform solutions for individuals, organizations and businesses seeking to sponsor, host and run their own crowdfunding portals.

CommunityLeader Launches 85% Finance Program for Qualified Broker/Dealers that Want to Launch a Crowdfunding Platform

“Our complete portal solution provides a community-focused business professional or organization everything they need to launch a compliant crowdfunding portal,” said Joseph Barisonzi, CEO of CommunityLeader, Inc. “As of today, no longer should cash flow be the barrier to building a crowdfunding portal.”

“Launching a crowdfunding portal is much more than an investor-facing website,” stated Jennifer Amys, CommunityLeader’s CIO. “It is about having the systems in place to effectively solicit and promote a qualified investment opportunity to a qualified investor, manage the settlement and fulfillment process, and then provide transparent ongoing support. A CommunityLeader crowdfunding portal has the power to manage all of the required and necessary steps.”

CommunityLeader’s financing option provides qualified portal partners the opportunity to minimize their upfront financial outlay so they maximize the resources they have for recruiting quality businesses and educating investors. CommunityLeader is offering three financing packages designed for individuals and organizations seeking to launch an integrated community-based crowdfunding portal.

“Everyone who wants to launch a portal has to consider whether to build their own system or to partner with an experienced platform provider,” said Scott Bachman, CommunityLeader’s CMO. “The CommunityLeader Portal Platform solution makes this an easy choice. For probably less than 20% of the cost of building out a proprietary solution, we can deliver a personalized portal with everything needed to solicit and sell securities in today’s regulatory environment.”

CommunityLeader is seeking portal operators who have deep connections in their chosen community. Communities may be geographic, industry, affinity or business model; and will evaluate qualified operators on depth of their business plan and their personal and professional attributes. With as little as 15% down, CommunityLeader’s financing packages cover the upfront license fee, configuration, custom development and training.

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