The crowdfunding community of investors and entrepreneurs came together for a global online conference, 2021 Equity Crowdfunding Week, with major global equity companies featuring.
The event was designed to educate start-ups, retailers and entrepreneurs to maximise returns.
Adressed aspects include equity crowdfunding, trading private shares in a secondary market via a regulated Alternative Trading System (ATS) to scale their companies and raise capital.
Speakers at the 2021 Equity Crowdfunding Week
Keynote speakers included Shari Noonan, the Chief Executive Officer of Rialto Markets.
Rialto Markets are brokers who bring private markets to the public with their Reg CF, A+ and D raising solutions, using their FINRA and SEC recognised secondary trading ATS platform.
Rialto Markets is important in facilitating the buying and selling of shares in private companies which is a vital component for crowdfunding led companies and their shareholders.
Other leading crowdfunding companies such as KoreConX, Seedrs, Crowdfund Insider, Republic, Kingscrowd, Issuance and Wefunder supported Equity Crowdfunding Week.
Notable speakers included Sara Hanks, the Chief Executive Officer of CrowdCheck and an attorney with over thirty years of experience in the corporate and securities field.
She is globally renown for her international collaboration with regulators in Europe and the United States of America to help in developing strong governance for the crowdfunding sector.
Benefits of the Equity Crowdfunding Week
The event offered a chance to hear about high growth private companies that are enjoying successful crowdfunding raises, such as Cityzenith, Atlis Motor Vehicles, and Knightscope.
These high growth companies have recently raised over $100 million between them and have successfully continued to utilise crowdfunding strategies to stay private for longer.
The United States of America’s Jobs Act legislation facilitates companies to raise up to $75 million a year in the USA alone via Regulation A+ and up to $5 million under Regulation CF.
Recent Reg A+ updates mean some of these shares can be traded on a regulated secondary trading platform (ATS). Early investors can thus potentially realise value much earlier.
ATS secondary trading platforms aim to disrupt
Private companies and shareholders wait on average 10-15 years to afford the cost of a public listing on a major stock exchange like the NYSE, NASDAQ, FTSE and other stock markets.
For instance, crowdfunding under tier 2 Regulation A+, $15m-$22.5m’s worth of share capital can be traded on a secondary trading platform ATS such as Rialto Markets and Crowdcube.
There are twenty seven million private companies in the United States of America alone and only one thousand of these companies are listed on recognised stock exchanges.
Crowdfunding and secondary trading aim to transform a multi-trillion dollar private market.
The Equity Crowdfunding Week covered various themes such as individual entrepreneurs investing in equity crowdfunding and launching an equity crowdfunding campaign.
Institutional investment into equity crowdfunding, how dealer brokers are positively changing the capital landscape and regulations that make equity crowdfunding possible were addressed.
In addition, success stories that drive the equity crowdfunding market were highlighted.
The experience offered workshops, roundtables, keynotes and fireside chats with 4k cinematic streaming, HD commercials plus on-screen promotions for partners and sponsors.
The event was streamed live through BEAM Conference which is an MIT and StartupStarter backed networking & video communications platform built around digital venues.
Participants included Darren Marble & Lauren Simmons of the Going Public Series and also Jezlan Moyet, a media personality, entrepreneur, producer and host covering many topics.
“Equity Crowdfunding took a new shape to create jobs, better technologies and broke barriers across private markets as major brands led the way,” said Lorel Scott, COO of StartupStarter.
