Equity crowdfunding presents a fantastic opportunity for early and growth stage companies to gain essential funding, raise awareness amongst the investor community and gain a tribe of loyal supporters.

To unaccustomed eyes, it might look like companies simply post their pitch on an equity crowdfunding platform, such as Seedrs and Crowdcube, and gain investment. However, that’s not the whole story – there are many preceding steps that determine whether a company can even get listed.

When investors browse any reputable platform, they can be confident that the investment opportunities are fairly sound. Investors know that giving their financial backing to any company comes with a risk but they take comfort in the fact that platforms apply their own due diligence process to every prospective campaign.

In other words, the platform looks very carefully at every claim the company makes – and I mean every claim – to make sure it is accurate, can be evidenced, and isn’t in any way misleading. This will include all the content on your pitch page, including your video and team bios. It’s only after this rigorous vetting process that the platform will allow a company to pitch an opportunity to investors.

Frequently unaware of the challenge ahead, many companies fail due diligence and end up significantly delaying their campaign. Rather than deliberately trying to mislead the platform, failure is often due to being unable to evidence claims.

Here are a few tips to give your company the best chance of getting past the crucial due diligence stage and speeding up what can sometimes be a glacial process:

Team bios – be prepared to evidence your team’s credentials

When investors are deciding whether to back your company, they pay close attention to your team’s credentials. For this reason, team bios are an essential part of any equity crowdfunding pitch.

Claims made in team bios often delay the due diligence process more than any other section of the pitch. It comes back to the fact that you have to evidence every claim you make – including your team’s career history. If any of the bios cite “20 years’ experience in marketing” or “spent two decades working as an accountant”, be expected to be asked for evidence going back 20 years to demonstrate this, including tax returns and payslips.

A better approach can be to pull out actual examples of companies your team members have worked for or concrete, provable achievements they made during their tenure. Again, these will have to be evidenced, and you can’t use LinkedIn or a CV!

So, a green technology company claiming that they used to work for the Environment Agency or the National Grid, for example, may need to show a contract or an email from the employer stating that they worked there, how long for, and what role they played.

Likewise, the CEO of a new challenger brand claiming they founded a company and sold it for £5 million will have to provide the documentation to prove the date they founded it and the sale price.

It’s also key to avoid vague statements or exaggerations, instead opting for clear, verifiable facts.

Former employers tend to take ages to get back and, as the platform will definitely ask you for their reference, it’s really worth chasing them up before you’ve even submitted your pitch page.

Know your market, check your numbers,

Unsurprisingly, investors will want to see some numbers to give them an idea of how your company is performing, a picture of the overall market, and how you can further tap into it.

It might sound impressive that you made 10,000 sales last month, or achieved a 300% sales growth in just one year, but can you demonstrate it? If you’re making claims like this, you’ll have to offer the platform a complete list of your sales and show your working.

As such, it’s important to keep your numbers in order. Even if your company is not yet profitable, you’ll need to prove that there’s interest in your product or service amongst your market. Finding reputable stats which show that X% of consumers complain about a problem you have a solution to can prove very useful.

It’s also worth locating original source industry figures which show how big your market is, including the current and projected future trends. Identifying and naming your competition in any documents you’re presenting to investors, and certainly in any docs you’ll be attaching to your pitch page, is another must.

Claiming that you have a one of a kind product or service when there’s competition out there will suggest that you either haven’t done your research or are trying to pretend that you don’t have any competitors.

Videos are not exempt from fact-checking

A key part of any pitch, your pitch video will allow you to communicate the opportunity you’re offering, the character of your brand and the expertise of your team in just a few minutes. Of course, many claims can be made in a short time, and just like any other document you’ll include in your pitch, your video will have to get past due diligence.

Companies that have made their videos in advance of the due diligence process can often fall into trouble. Any claims they can’t prove must be cut, and if they are many, the video will have to be redone, wasting time and money.

Unless you’re confident that you can evidence every claim, then it’s best to hold fire on making a video before you begin due diligence. This way you can write the script, show it to the platform, and ensure that they have no qualms with what you’ll be communicating to investors.

Obviously, you will need to highlight any claims that will feature as on-screen graphics in your script when you show it to the platform, too.

So, make sure you treat your script like any other text you’ll be submitting to the platform. Analyse it line by line, have the clear evidence to hand, and you should be able to breeze through due diligence.

The due diligence process can be tough, and at times, frustrating. It’s also a crash course in how to get your house in order and hone your knowledge of your business and market in a matter of weeks. Trust me, it’ll act as the perfect training – you’ll be vetted all over again by many inquisitive investors once your campaign is live!

If you follow this advice, be clear and transparent and start as early as possible, I’m sure you’ll have little trouble getting past due diligence. What’s more, if you have all the evidence to hand, the due diligence team at your chosen equity crowdfunding platform will absolutely love you.

Best of luck with this crucial stage!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Auckland is a crowdfunding specialist and founder of TribeFirst, a global equity crowdfunding communications agency that has helped raise in excess of £17m for over 50 companies on major equity crowdfunding platforms, with a greater than 90% success rate. TribeFirst is the world’s first dedicated marketing communications agency to support equity crowdfunding campaigns and the first in the UK to provide PR and Marketing campaigns on a mainly risk/reward basis.

John is also Virgin StartUp’s crowdfunding trainer and consultant, helping them to run branded workshops, webinars and programmes on crowdfunding. John is passionate about working with start-ups and sees crowdfunding as more than just raising funds; it’s an opportunity to build a loyal tribe of lifelong customers.

Web: http://www.tribefirst.co.uk

Twitter: @Tribe1st

Business finance is the money any business needs in order to run its operations.

Not only is finance required the moment you start up a company, but also throughout various stages of its development and growth – ensuring that there is enough money to pay your staff and for the supplies materials and equipment needed to produce the goods and services you sell.

Additional finance may also be required – often at short notice – to meet new business opportunities which might suddenly emerge and call for you to launch marketing campaigns to support a new venture, re-stock and re-equip, perhaps set up a new office in another town, or make sure your day to day cashflow is suitably balanced.

Where it comes from

So, where does that much-needed business finance come from?

In the very early days of company formation and start-up, sufficient finance might be found from your own personal resources or those of family and friends.

As the business grows and the demands for finance become more pressing, however, personal sources are likely to be exhausted and you must look elsewhere. That search may take you in one of two directions:

Equity finance

• if there is still some apparent risk in the longer-term success of your business, you might want to consider equity investment – investment made in return for a share in the ownership and decision-making of your business;

• sources of equity finance range from private investors, business angels and venture capital – but all involve your sharing ownership in your business and, with it perhaps, some loss of independence in the way that it is run;

Debt finance

• for that reason, many businesses prefer debt finance – borrowing the necessary funds and repaying the loan over an agreed period of time;

• if an especially large sum needs to be borrowed – by way of a mortgage, for the purchase of new or additional premises, for example – the loan may need to be secured against company assets and the repayment term spread over several tens of years;

• secured debt finance over a substantial term, of course, attracts a considerable amount in interest – and if the rate is variable, it may become more difficult to manage and budget for the regular repayment instalments;

• in many instances, rather less needs to be borrowed – in the range of, say, £15,000 to £100,000 – and repayments may be scheduled over the relatively short-term of between three and 12 months, so attracting a far less amount of interest;

• business finance on these terms is typically unsecured – so none of your company’s assets are at risk – and the rate of interest is usually fixed throughout the borrowing term;

• a fixed rate of interest ensures that the monthly repayments are equal and entirely predictable, allowing you to make the necessary budgetary arrangements for your expenditure with ease;

• thanks to the online systems developed by some such lenders, short-term, fixed-rate, unsecured loans may be arranged in a matter of days, with a decision in principle given by some lenders in a matter of minutes and, subject to the approval of your formal application, the requested funds transferred directly to your company bank account within just 48 hours or so.

Business finance options, therefore, are many and varied, in the form of both equity and debt finance. Depending on the amount you want to borrow and the timescale within which you want to repay it, short-term business finance in the form of a business loan may prove the way forward.

Digital crowdfunding sites have transformed fundraising in the 21^st century and have turned customers, family and friends into investors though this started much earlier – the true genius is the multitasking Mozart.  In 1793 and lacking the cash to perform three new concertos in Vienna, he made an appeal for funds and was rewarded by a ‘crowd’ of 176, each of whom received a copy of the concerto manuscripts as their prize.

However, the one problem – that has existed over the centuries – is that no matter who invests in you or how you come by your shareholders, you’ve always needed a middleman.  By default, these facilitators have controlled the fundraise, from the introductions and presentations to the length of the campaigns.  Until now. 

2019 technology offers a solution: digital is allowing start-up and scaleups to take back the reins of their rounds, with the ability to fundraise through a fully personalised platform – within an FCA regulated space. This can include an investor relations portal and the freedom to fundraise – if required or desired – all day, every day.  This means that for the first time, business owners are in charge and that changes everything. Here are four key trends that are shaping the future of fundraising.

1 ‘The death of fixed funding rounds

Traditional fundraising rounds usually last between 30 – 60 days.  However, this approach will soon be consigned to history, as the new breed of owned funding platforms enable scaleups to stay open to capital throughout their entire growth cycle, from seed to exit. 

All savvy entrepreneurs know that time is key in getting funding: finding the right investor – and vice versa, for the right investor to find the perfect deal – can be a lengthy process and opportunities can easily be missed if you’re facing a strict deadline.  Another bonus is that it allows a company to take advantage of any unexpected successes – a significant hiring, a valuable contract, an unexpected piece of publicity… anything that creates a ‘buzz’ is attractive to new investors.

A perfect example is provided by Zap&Go: BBC Click aired a feature about their superfast charging technology giving them some excellent publicity.  Through their funding platform, Envestry for Scaleups, they were able to capitalise on this by extending their funding round by six months.  They subsequently raised £500,000.

2 Investor relations – essential expertise

Investors hate being treated like an ATM.  The stories of being wined and dined during the intense windows of raising finance, only to be dropped once the money is in, are myriad.  However, if the fundraising mindset is always on, the investor relations (IR) mindset is always on, meaning that your investors are kept warm and ready to invest in your future rounds.  In order to maintain this, CMOs will need to be experts in investor relations; digital tools can help with this. By simply having a dedicated system to post regular updates to your shareholders – whether the news is good, bad or atrocious – creates an inclusive sense of community that goes far beyond just driving sales and making money.  

In particular, crowdfunded investors may well have given you their money (which can be as low as a pledge of £10) because they strongly identify with your brand and vision – these people are your biggest cheerleaders (think the Brewdog ‘Equity for Punks’ success); if you look after them, they’ll talk about it and this can will benefit everybody.  Likewise, when you’re struggling – if you actually tell them about it, they’ll be the first to offer to help.

3 increasing the international pool of investors

According to statistics released by Beauhurst, in 2017 UK scaleups received £6bn in overseas funding, with 396 deals featuring at least one foreign investor.  Trends indicate that this figure will continue to rise, with the biggest increase coming from Indian investors, up 321% from 2016. 

Gone are the days of exhausting presentations abroad and pitch video conferencing as the sole means to attract foreign investment: geography-agnostic digital platforms make it easy for entrepreneurs to fundraise beyond their own borders.  Not only do they provide a bigger pool of potential backers, they also safeguard against any political or fiscal uncertainty in the UK.  Quite simply, diverse investors from a wide range of economies, spreads – and therefore reduces – the risks.

4 Making the secondary market mainstream

Even in 2019, the investment landscape is still lacking in secondary market opportunities for early stage companies.  The primary market – companies selling directly to investors – means that an investor must have sufficient capital to lock their money in a company’s shares for however long it takes for the business to exit – an average of at least six years – before they see any returns. 

The secondary market, however, enables a shareholder to sell directly to another private party and although a few companies have started to offer this, it’s a concept that is still very much in its infancy.  However, it’s naturally very attractive to investors and digital provides the necessary tools to make it mainstream: a controlled, secure portal of reporting, agreements and accounting will allow stakeholders to communicate with each other, in turn leading to opportunities to buy and sell their shares.  We predict that this will soon become the norm.

2019 welcomes a new fundraising world where the key is control.  We believe that digital will end the dominance of the broker and hand the reins, and the control to the entrepreneur. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Scott Haughton is COO of Envestors, a fintech company that connects investors and scale-up companies.  With its fundraising platform Envestry for Scale-ups, companies get a personalised site to promote deals, raise finance and engage with their investors 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. 

Envestry has raised £100m+ for over 200 companies through its own private investor network. 

Founded in 2004, Envestors is regulated by the FCA and has offices in the UK, the Channel Islands, the UAE and strategic partners across China.

Web: https://www.envestors.co.uk/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/envestors-llp/

Twitter: @EnvestorsLondon

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/envestorslondon/posts/

In recent years, equity crowdfunding has grown to become a leading form of alternative finance. Small businesses often use equity crowdfunding to bypass banks and other traditional funding sources, connecting instead with a crowd of engaged investors.

Yet, this popularity has led equity crowdfunding platforms, like Crowdcube and Seedrs, to become saturated ‒ there are now hundreds of active campaigns at any one time. And, as each campaign had to pass the platforms’ own strict due diligence process before they can get listed, you know they will have compelling propositions.

Such a large selection of strong campaigns makes it difficult to cut through the noise. So, how can small businesses compete and win over investors?

Videos should tell a story clearly, not look expensive or overly creative

Pitch videos are essential as they quickly communicate the key aspects of your pitch, get across the look and feel of your brand, and provide that important human connection.

Getting your pitch video right, however, is a much more complex task.

Knowing how important your pitch video is, it is tempting to spend a lot of money on it. Investors, however, might see the expensive animation or glossy production as a frivolous use of money for a startup.

The good news is that you can make a pitch video look great without remortgaging your house.. In fact, often the best videos are the ones that turn on the creativity rather than turn up the production value.

A good example is a company like Gunna Drinks, which is taking on the big soft drinks manufacturers primarily using its brand. Therefore, they needed to communicate the brand, first and foremost, then their key investor messages.

Combining an engaging script with some charismatic presenting and some incredible editing, Gunna produced a pitch video that was on brand, sold the investment more than the product, and gave real insight into the founding team and their personalities.

<iframe src=”https://player.vimeo.com/video/277420162″ width=”640″ height=”360″ frameborder=”0″ allow=”autoplay; fullscreen” allowfullscreen></iframe>

Action:

Consider your brand and core selling proposition. Are you big and bold or subtle and sophisticated? Are you selling a product or service? What are the key benefits or differentiators of your business?

Then consider what investors want/need to know. Is it the size of your market? A gap you’ve identified? Perhaps you have some high-profile investors?

Finally, work with a production company to pin down how you are communicating what. With this clear in your mind, it should be possible to find low-cost ways to create an eye-catching video.

Offer unique rewards that don’t cost the earth

Early crowdfunding platforms relied on contributors donating in order to receive a reward ‒ often a product the company wanted to produce, but also experiences and other unique opportunities.

While these campaigns are reserved for the likes of Kickstarter and Indiegogo, equity crowdfunding campaigns can still utilise the same principle: offer people something unique and they will contribute.

We recommend offering rewards at specific levels of contribution and making the contribution amount an odd number. For example, offering an invite to an exclusive event for those contributing £750 or more.

Entrepreneurs often feel compelled to put these perks at nice round numbers, like £500, but investors will usually contribute a round number anyway and the point of perks is to encourage slightly higher investment amounts.

One of the best things about rewards is they don’t have to cost a fortune. In fact, quite the opposite: if you spent lots of money on rewards you may put investors off with your frivolous spending.

As an example of a low-cost yet effective perk, one of our clients, NextUp Comedy, offered investors membership subscriptions to their platform as a reward, helping the company raise 123% of their target amount.

If someone invested just £100, they would save £42 on their first year’s subscription. Great savings for engaged investors but next to free for the company to offer. It’s a win-win!

And since the product is unique, there is no competition.

Action:

Consider what makes your small business unique.

Do you have an original product or service? Perhaps you are connected with some influential or famous people?

Identify your options and consider which are feasible and realistic, which investors might want, and which will cost you the least.

Ideal perks provide investors with additional value or an experience that money can’t buy.

Host an interactive investors webinar (not an event)

Investors often appreciate the opportunity to ask questions. Just take a look at the Q&A or forum section of any crowdfunding platform.

Unfortunately, written questions and answers can often be misinterpreted or can miss the point. Clarifying can then get complicated and confusing. A much better way to answer questions and address concerns is in person. The best way is to answer everyone’s questions at the same time, helping to avoid duplication and allowing investors to learn from one another.

Hosting an investor event is often one of the first ideas that come to entrepreneurs. It makes sense ‒ gather your potential investors in one place, let them meet the founders, and address any questions or concerns in a live setting.

But hold your horses.

Events are expensive to put on and require a lot of organisation. As such, you assume a lot of risk hosting an event. What if most people can’t make the date? Does a London event exclude Northern and Scottish investors? How many resources are you diverting away from other business and marketing activities to organise the event?

Even if your business allows you to organise and host a spectacular event at low cost, investors may still see it as a frivolous expense and withdraw their investment.

One company recently held a big party to celebrate hitting its crowdfunding target. As the business was involved in the events industry, the team leveraged all their personal contacts to ensure that the event cost them next to nothing. However, they did such a good job of making the event look like a lavish affair, one investor ended up cancelling their investment.

We’ve found that a well-planned webinar can achieve the same result of informing potential investors and allowing them to meet the founders. The best time to run a webinar is around the middle of your campaign. Potential investors will have had time to read your proposition and investigate the market, and you should have received over 50% of your funding target by that point.

Simply set up an Eventbrite page with a summary of the webinar content along with the date and time, then share the page with your social media followers, LinkedIn connections, personal connections, as an update on your campaign page, and anywhere else you can think of.

Action:

Plan your event at the very start of your campaign for around the middle of your campaign and publicise it using an Eventbrite (or similar) page relatively early on.

Then take note of the questions investors ask during the first half of your campaign and build the webinar to address these concerns.

Finally, make sure there is plenty of time for questions at the end of the webinar. Never make things up ‒ if you don’t know, say you’ll check and provide a more detailed answer.

Bonus tip: Record the webinar and send it out as a campaign update.

Make every pound work twice as hard with a dedicated PR campaign

Contracting a professional PR agency is likely to be one of the more expensive options on this list, but the difference it makes can be astounding. An experienced crowd-funding PR agency comes with a list of journalist contacts as well as some established relationships. Additionally, every pound spent on PR works twice as hard ‒ raising brand awareness and gaining you investors in one go ‒ getting twice as much bang for your buck.

The benefits of good PR coverage is threefold:

1. It spreads awareness of your business,
2. It positions you as an expert in your field,
3. It can help educate potential investors about your market.

Startups, early-stage and small businesses aren’t usually well-known and any ‘expertise’ is often spread across the whole team. PR coverage flips the script, positioning the founder as a thought-leader with unique insight and your company as one worth investigating.

The ‘trick’ to good PR coverage, counterintuitively perhaps, is not to make it promotional. If you mention your company is the main body of the article, it should be as an example only and the article should also contain other businesses as examples.

The reason is, journalists don’t care about your small business or that you are crowdfunding.

Most publications want to educate and inform their readership by offering expert advice and insight. Offer them some expert content for free and they’re fairly likely to publish your article. As long as you include a bio and summary of your business, you’ll end up with a nice little byline next to your article title and promotion of your business in the footer.

Perhaps this may not feel like enough to draw in investors, but trust me, it works.

Actions:

Consider what advice or expertise you could offer that’s related to your business. What might others want to know? What might they need to know in order to want to invest? Do you have a unique story you can offer?

Then pin down 2-3 articles to go out during your crowdfunding campaign. Do some research, discover some statistics to back up your claims (and reference them), and find other businesses that exemplify your claims. Write articles around 1,000 words in length around these titles, remembering to include: an author bio, a company description, social media links, and a link to your crowdfunding campaign URL. Then hire a professional PR agency to distribute them throughout your campaign.

If, during your crowdfunding campaign, you committed to all of the activities listed above, you could spend as little as £2,000 to publicise your campaign.

In our extensive experience running equity crowdfunding campaigns, that £2,000 will result in an extra 20% or so of campaign funding. Even for campaigns at the smaller end of the scale (<£150,000) that could work out to as much as £30,000 in additional investment.

A small investment in your campaign could, therefore, result in a big increase in the investment you gain!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Auckland is a crowdfunding specialist and founder of TribeFirst, a global equity crowdfunding communications agency that has helped raise in excess of £17m for over 50 companies on major equity crowdfunding platforms, with a greater than 90% success rate. TribeFirst is the world’s first dedicated marketing communications agency to support equity crowdfunding campaigns and the first in the UK to provide PR and Marketing campaigns on a mainly risk/reward basis. John is also Virgin StartUp’s crowdfunding trainer and consultant, helping them to run branded workshops, webinars and programmes on crowdfunding. John is passionate about working with start-ups and sees crowdfunding as more than just raising funds; it’s an opportunity to build a loyal tribe of lifelong customers.

See: http://www.tribefirst.co.uk

Twitter: @Tribe1st