Pitch for Republic

• $100 minimum

  • Avg size closer to $1000, meaningful amount

• Market to Republic’s community, bring in our community

  • Marketing as well as funding

• Accessing non-accredited investors in a compliant way

  • Registered funding portal through the SEC

• All investors represented

  • CrowdSAFE is founder friendly, they convert at a future financing round
  • No voting or info rights
  • Republic is nominee on behalf of pool of investors. We pick a nominee lead for the investors.
  • Can work in conjunction with a private round

• Can we drive 25k-50k to the campaign, or 100k?

  • Then they’ll see action from the broader public
  • Provide guidance and coaching, compliance around this

• Q: What percent of campaign is typical?

  • Typically Republic is >50%
  • Republic is driving >70%. Don’t like to push this out because it does rely on what we can do as well
    • Traction, experience, notable backing are helpful
  • Trending tag, or most-funding tag, so it goes up on the campaign page
  • Different industries, companies, people who were brought in to participate - 75% go into other campaigns as well

Campaign Steps

• Start with an investment committee review, initial approval. What is the business/community like, can we get to their goal in terms of funding needs. Can get through this quickly,

  • Review valuation, structure, making sure there is feedback. Couple days
  • Campaign agreement signed
  • Diligence check — making sure that we have no eligibility issues (US entity, etc, see balance sheet and cap table). See 4-5mo of runway. 48h max
  • Can move as quickly as we do

• Then the onboarding process: 6-8weeks — can move as fast as the review financials take

  • Dedicated campaign manager:
    1. Getting campaign page content. Pitch deck, graphics, marketing team can put this together
    2. Regulatory requirements: nonaccredited investors, we need to disclose. To raise above 1.2, we need audited
       • 1.2: Work with an independent CPA — take an independent review $3-6k for reviewed financials & form c
       • Up to 5m with a financial full audit. $5-30k for complicated audit
         • Probably <$10k, could get quotes
       • Attorney for a Form C filing
  • Would be ready to go live; campaigns typically go for 60-90 days. But would like to be short & sweet, things get stale/plateau
    • Could we go shorter? bummer: were running out of time, have to file an amendment to extend, which gets people to reconfirm investment
      • Could always close early. Minimum of 21 days, if we max out, provide notice to investors that we’re closing early
  • Once 25k in investment, will include in “recently launched newsletter”
  • Once 100k - dedicated launch email just featuring our campaign
    • The more the better, relative to max we’re trying to raise, because it’s the first time they see it
    • 2m userbase, in any given communication; 500k. Do a bit of segmenting, but have to be pretty objective
  • Other things that prep us to take advantage of
    • “most funded”, “trending” tag can change our homepage placement and capture organic traffic on site. Will provide

• Don’t feel like they have a seasonality, unlike other traditional fundraising avenues

  • Q4 historically has been a higher time of investment activity for the last 2-3 years. Tons of things can impact this

• Could also launch a reservation campaign

  • Once that’s done, everything can move very quickly. 6-8 is conservative, but if we have our campaign content done, just waiting on financials — can launch a reservation campaign in ~couple of weeks, promote to our community
    • Not an active market, but a place we can start sharing, getting ready to launch, community has first access, sign up for an account, indicate the amount to invest, put in payment info, everyone gets a notification
    • Strategic: don’t want people to hold this, and then a dropoff later

• Q: Is there an exclusivity agreement — Mikaela: no.

  • Larger checks — want to close those sooner. Help with the marketing of this campaign, to say X VCs have invested; totally fine and normal
  • If we have smaller angels — keep those on the side, to put on the boost right when we launch
  • Want to tell the story that outside funds have been raised — money through republic will show in the topbar, # investors, moves the needle with general public participating

• Q: US-only, or also intl?

  • 18 or older. 25-45 older, need to provide ID, heavier male
  • Intl is fine, as long as there are no local rules in place (eg some Canadian places)

• Q: How many hours of time on our end to set this up?

• Q: Perspective of an end user?

  • What the investing experience
  • Mikaela: just do it [A] it’s pretty easy