We spun out of our investor, partner, and sister company AngelList in 2016 after the SEC enacted Reg CF—the regulation that allows for everyone to invest in startups. Our CEO Kendrick Nguyen previously was General Counsel at AngelList. Republic’s portfolio of companies has raised more than $200 million from angels, VCs, and—through our platform—their users, customers, partners, and supporters.

Our most common fundraising instrument is the Crowd SAFE, and for that agreement we typically let founders and companies take the first stab at setting the most important term: the valuation cap. Our investment team reviews the proposed valuation cap and justification and may work with the founder to amend it if necessary. 

In cases where a company is raising a private round concurrently with their Republic campaign, we ask that they mirror the terms of that round.

The average on the platform is just over $500,000 for 2019. Keep in mind most companies use Republic to complement (not replace) the capital they’ve raised from VCs.

Upwards of 90% of campaigns on Republic meet their minimum funding goal. The average raise on the platform was about $500,000 for 2019.

In order to run a Regulation CF campaign, companies are required to file a Form C with the SEC. This form will include some basic high-level information about the company’s financial history from the past two years: balance sheet, income statement and cash flow. It also will include risk disclosures and cap table structure, but individual investor names don’t need to be shown.

It’s actually pretty inexpensive. Most companies spend about $3k-5k before launching their campaign on making their Form C filing. 

Republic takes a success-based commission at the end of a campaign: 6% of the money raised in cash, and 2% of the securities issued. For example, if you were to raise $100,000 on Republic, we would take $6,000 in cash and a $2,000 Crowd SAFE. In the unlikely event a campaign doesn’t meet its minimum target, Republic does not take any fees. 

Companies pay for the escrow agent and payment processing at the end of the campaign. This typically comes out to about 1.5-2.25% of the capital raised. (The final cost depends on the volume of investment through different sources like credit card, ACH, or wire transfer.)

Investors are represented as a single line item on your company’s cap table, and there is no limit to the amount of investors who can participate. We’ve designed the platform and process to eliminate operational overhead and optimize for efficiency with subsequent fundraising or an exit event. Your success is our investors’ success, which is ultimately Republic’s success too.

We’ve designed the platform to be as seamless as possible—even after a campaign. Since we use a Crowd SAFE, investors aren’t equity holders and don’t require K-1 reporting. They also don’t have voting or information rights. While these investors can be pretty powerful from a marketing perspective, we’ve kept them passive from a legal point of view. That said, we do highly recommend that companies use our dashboard to draft and send a twice-yearly updates to investors. It can be pretty top-level, and it’s a great way to let them know how they can help drive the company’s growth: sharing promotions, making introductions, hiring, etc. 

Almost all companies make only one additional disclosure filing post-campaign. Companies file a light refresh to the Form C—the Form C-AR. It’s filed at or before 120 days from end of fiscal year, which means it’ll be filed by April 30, 2020 for you (assuming your fiscal year ends in December). It takes about 1-2 hrs to complete, and most companies can do it themselves.

Almost certainly not. We’ve had companies that have raised $10M, $17M, and even $50M before running an investment campaign with Republic—from more than 200 top names in venture like Founders Fund, Lerer Hippeau, Bain Capital Ventures, and Greycroft. For companies at this later stage, a Republic raise is usually more about the campaign’s marketing value than it is about the capital itself. B2C companies often see huge increases in product sales, user acquisition and LTV directly attributable to the campaign, and B2B companies use campaigns to source partnerships and drive inbound sales leads.

Our community is comprised of hundreds of thousands of investors and a strong network of ecosystem partners. We tend to drive the majority of investment volume through our user base, partner network, and performance marketing efforts. 

Throughout your campaign, we provide exposure to our network through a launch email announcing your campaign, a weekly opportunity to appear in our newsletter, and our ongoing communications with our community and suite of ecosystem and media partners. 

In addition, we launch your campaign by creating, managing, and paying for Facebook and Instagram ads that promote your campaign while working closely with your team to create a marketing strategy that fits your company’s unique circumstances. You have a dedicated marketing campaign manager to walk you through this process beginning to end.

Regulation CF, or Regulation Crowdfunding, refers to part of new legislation enacted in May 2016 by the SEC. The law enabled non-accredited investors (the majority of the U.S. population) to invest in private companies for the first time.

Aside from marketing the campaign to your networks and communities, your primary responsibility post-launch will be fielding questions from investors and potential investors. During the campaign, interested investors can ask questions on a public forum for your team to answer. This forum has the benefit of preventing prospective investors from asking the same questions multiple times. You are not obligated to interact with this forum, but the data shows that the team’s engagement level and quality of answers is a key driver of campaign success.