Tag: SEC

Improving Legal Documents In Crowdfunding: Model White Label Contract

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, Legal DocumentsLeave a comment

I see a lot of contracts between would-be Crowdfunding portals and “white label” portal software providers. It would help the industry, in my opinion, if everyone used or at least started with the same agreement. So I’ve drafted a model agreement, accessible as a Microsoft Word document here.

An agreement for a white label platform is a software license agreement. I’ve drafted more software license agreements than I can count, representing both licensors and licensees. That gives me a very good feel for what’s important, what’s not so important, and what’s fair.

My model agreement is designed to be a very fair document. It protects what’s important to the white label provider, and also protects what’s important to the would-be portal licensing the platform. It is also designed to be a comprehensive document, meaning it covers what’s important without overkill. I hope it’s easy to read and understand, as legal contracts go. And it’s completely flexible in terms of what the customer gets and how much the customer pays.

Multi-million-dollar portal businesses are being created based on the relationship created by this contract. It’s not a back-of-the-napkin kind of thing.

Because there could be special situations that the model agreement doesn’t cover, white label providers and their customers should have this model agreement reviewed by their own lawyers. Also, I haven’t provided a Service Level Agreement, because response times might vary significantly among white label providers.

But using one standard agreement should make things easier for everyone. Fewer transaction costs, less friction, greater certainty, faster to market. That’s what the industry needs.

Questions? Let me know.

Improving Legal Documents In Crowdfunding: Tax Allocations

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, Crowdfunding Laws, JOBS Act, Legal Documents, Tax, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Because I started life as a tax shelter lawyer, I’m especially sensitive to how income and losses are allocated within partnerships and limited liability companies (limited liability companies are taxed as partnerships). Agreements in the Crowdfunding space leave something to be desired.

As we all know, partnerships are not themselves taxable entities. The items of income and loss of the dollar handshakepartnership “flow through” and are reported on the personal tax returns of the owners. Allocating income and losses is simple when you have one class of partnership interest and everything is pro rata, e.g., you get 70% of everything and I get 30%. It becomes a lot more complicated in the real world.

Say, for example:

  • The sponsor of a deal takes a 30% promote in operating cash flow after investors received an 8% annual preferred return.
  • On a sale or refinancing, the sponsor takes a 40% promote after the investors receive a 10% internal rate of return.
  • In the early years of the deal the project generates ordinary losses, then generates cash flow sheltered by depreciation deductions, then generates section 1231 gain.

The allocation of income and loss in a partnership is governed by section 704(b) of the Internal Revenue Code. Long ago, the IRS issued regulations under section 704(b) that use the concept of “capital accounts” to determine whether a given allocation has “substantial economic effect.” Rules within rules, exceptions within exceptions, definitions within definitions, the section 704(b) regulations are a delight for the kind of person (I admit it) who wasn’t necessarily the coolest in high school.

For years afterward, tax shelter lawyers vied with one another to include as many of the rules and definitions of the regulations as possible in their partnership agreements, verbatim. That lasted until we recognized that (1) no matter how hard we tried, it was impossible to be 100% sure that the allocations would come out right; and (2) there was a better way.

The better way is to give management the right to allocate income on a year-to-year basis, with the mandate that the allocation of income should follow the distribution of cash. To wit:

Company shall seek to allocate its income, gains, losses, deductions, and expenses (“Tax Items”) in a manner so that (i) such allocations have “substantial economic effect” as defined in Section 704(b) of the Code and the regulations issued thereunder (the “Regulations”) and otherwise comply with applicable tax laws; (ii) each Member is allocated income equal to the sum of (A) the losses he or it is allocated, and (B) the cash profits he or it receives; and (iii) after taking into account the allocations for each year as well as such factors as the value of the Company’s assets, the allocations likely to be made to each Member in the future, and the distributions each Member is likely to receive, the balance of each Member’s capital account at the time of the liquidation of the Company will be equal to the amount such Member is entitled to receive pursuant to this Agreement. That is, the allocation of the Company’s Tax Items, should, to the extent reasonably possible, following the actual and anticipated distributions of cash, in the discretion of the Manager. In making allocations the Manager shall use reasonable efforts to comply with applicable tax laws, including without limitation through incorporation of a “qualified income offset,” a “gross income allocation,” and a “minimum gain chargeback,” as such terms or concepts are specified in the Regulations. The Manager shall be conclusively deemed to have used reasonable effort if it has sought and obtained advice from counsel.

Even today, I see partnership agreements that devote pages to the allocation of tax items. The approach in the paragraph above is much simpler and, even more important, much more likely to achieve the right result.

Questions? Let me know.

SEC Subcommittee Reports On Accredited Investor Definition

On By crowdfundattnyIn Accredited Investor, Crowdfunding, Crowdfunding Laws, Dodd-Frank Act, Entrepreneurs, JOBS ActLeave a comment

The Dodd-Frank Act instructs the SEC to evaluate the definition of “accredited investor” and, if it sees fit, to modify the definition “as the Commission may deem appropriate for the protection of investors, in the public interest, and in light of the economy.”

As regular readers of this blog know, I’ve been optimistic that the SEC would not take this opportunity to kill Title II Crowdfunding and every other kind of Rule 506(c) private placement (which includes most angel investing as well) by creating an onerous new definition. The report issued recently by a SEC subcommittee, while surprising in some respects, doesn’t dent my optimism.

The subcommittee report makes two important, though obvious, points:

  • The Committee does not believe that the current definition as it pertains to natural persons effectively serves this function in all instances.
  • The current definition’s financial thresholds serve as an imperfect proxy for sophistication, access to information, and ability to withstand losses.

The existing definition is imperfect, yes. The question is, what to do about it?

Although the report does not provide a clear answer to that question, the good news, from my perspective, is that the report does not suggest merely indexing the current thresholds ($200,000 of income, $1 million of net worth) to inflation, which would disqualify most accredited investors and send the private placement market into a tailspin. Instead, the report seeks a standard that will address both financial sophistication and the ability to withstand loss.

The report suggests two specific measures of financial sophistication: the series 7 securities license and the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. Following the lead of the United Kingdom, the report also suggests that those with proven investment experience – for example, a member of an angel investing group – might qualify. Finally, the report suggests, as others have before, that the SEC could develop an examination for the purpose of qualifying investors.

Declining a suggestion from several quarters, the report does not include lawyers or accountants as investors who should be deemed to have financial sophistication.

The reports veers a little off track, in my opinion, when it speculates that, in conjunction with changing the definition of accredited investor, the SEC could limit the amount invested by each investor – following the 10% limit of Regulation A+, for example. That kind of limitation would be new to Rule 506 offerings.

In my Model State Crowdfunding law, I use a definition of accredited investors that includes lawyers, accountants, and anyone with the license from FINRA, as long as the lawyer, accountant, or license-holder has income of at least $75,000. Recognizing the imperfection of any definition, I think that strikes about the right balance. Bolt on an SEC-administered examination option and we’re right there with the subcommittee report.

All in all, it’s good to see the SEC, once again, thinking through the issues carefully. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Questions? Let me know.

CFGE Crowdfund Bank And Lending Summit in San Francisco

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, Crowdfunding Portals, Crowdfunding Real Estate, Crowdfunding Speaking Engagements, Entrepreneurs, Equity Crowdfunding, Investing, Investor, JOBS ActLeave a comment

Roderick CFGE

Since Labor Day, I’ve spoken at half a dozen events: for entrepreneurs, for intellectual property lawyers, for finance professionals, for digital marketing groups. This week I’ll be speaking at one of the premier Crowdfunding events in country, the CFGE Crowdfund Banking and Lending Summit on the 16th and 17th in San Francisco.

The conference features some of the leaders in the industry, including:

  • Richard Swart, Director of Research for Innovation in Entrepreneur and Social Finance, Colman Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership at UC Berkeley.
  • Ron Suber, the President of Prosper.
  • Jason Fritton, the Founder and CEO of Patch of Land.
  • Tom Lockard, the Vice President for Real Estate Investment and Institutional Sales of Fundrise.
  • Nikul Patel, the Chief Lending Officer of LendingTree.
  • Jesse Clem, the Co-Founder of LOQUIDITY, LLC.
  • Joy Schoffler, the CEO of Leverage PR.

Whether you’re new to Crowdfunding or an industry veteran, I’d strongly suggest you attend. I’m always amazed how much more there is to learn.

To register, click here. Make sure to use my promo code and receive a 25% discount! Promo code: Roderick

And while you’re there, please stop by and say hello. Crowdfunding and skiing – those are my two favorite topics.

Questions? Let me know.

A Model State Crowdfunding Law

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, Crowdfunding Laws, JOBS Act, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Model State CFI was asked recently to draft a Crowdfunding statute for Texas, to augment the proposals made by the Texas State Securities Board. Having done that, I have turned my Texas statute into a model law that could be used by any state, including the handful that have already adopted Crowdfunding in one form or another. The model law is a PDF here.

I drafted the model statute with these goals:

  • To balance the interests of investors, entrepreneurs, and state securities regulators;
  • To reflect the lessons I’ve learned over more than 30 years in the capital formation business;
  • To capture the current best practices of states and the Federal government;
  • To introduce new concepts that will allow Crowdfunding to flourish; and
  • As a Jeffersonian believer in Federalism, to leave space for state-by-state experimentation.

These are some of the key features:

  • The statute relies on portals that will be registered with state securities regulators. The same portal could be registered in more than one state and, indeed, could male offerings at the Federal level as well.
  • The statute imposes disclosure requirements that mirror the disclosures typically made in private placement transactions.
  • The statute expands the concept of “control persons.”
  • The statute requires that state securities regulators have 24/7 real-time access to any material shown to prospective investors.
  • The statute introduces and expands the Federal “bad actor” concept.
  • The statute raises investment limits for truly local projects, to encourage local investing.
  • The statute expands the definition of “accredited investor.”
  • The statute allows issuers to raise up to $2 million per offering.
  • The statute prohibits issuers from seeking to limit their liability for fraud or misrepresentation.
  • The statute gives state regulators broad latitude to modify in accordance with local conditions.

Everything is about balance. Without overwhelming issuers with bureaucracy, the statute protects investors and creates an ecosystem where capitalism can flourish.

I’m going to be reaching out to states with the model law. I would love to hear your input and advice.

Questions? Let me know.

Rebuilding America, By Jason Fritton, Founder & CEO Of Patch Of Land

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, Crowdfunding Portals, Guest Blog, JOBS Act, Portals, Real Estate, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Statue of Lib CF_PurchasedBy: Jason Fritton, Founder & CEO of Patch of Land

Our headquarters is in Los Angeles, but Patch of Land was really born in Chicago.

Like all American cities, Chicago is a tale of two cities: one where the streets are lined with mansions, tidy row homes, and plush high-rises; and the other where most houses, if you can call them that, have boarded up windows, loose bricks, and rotting wood.

You can’t see those neighborhoods without wanting to help, and if you’re a real estate entrepreneur, as I am, you think there must be a lot of money to be made from all those vacant and abandoned buildings.

I went to foreclosure auctions but found that the market was broken. On one hand, the same handful of ultra-wealthy individuals or companies bid on $10 million properties. On the other hand, nobody bid on the smaller properties in blighted neighborhoods even though they could be had for a pittance, $10,000 or $20,000 apiece. The problem was (and is) that banks wouldn’t touch them, even if the developer had a proven track record. So the properties stayed vacant and abandoned, basically worthless, eyesores in the community.

I had a great idea – Crowdfunding! I’d ask for money from everyone. Not just as charity, although revitalizing neighborhoods would be the goal, but also as good investments for the donors/investors. We would start in Chicago and then move across the country, helping communities along the way.

We had our motto – Building Wealth & Growing Communities – before we knew how we were going to do it.

As it turned out I was a little early. I wanted to advertise my investments to everyone but in securities law terms that would have been “general solicitation,” which was still illegal. To keep my idea alive I found myself in Washington, D.C. lobbying for the JOBS Act, where I learned how political compromise can work. Republicans liked the economic freedom the bill gave to entrepreneurs and individual investors, while Democrats liked the potential for improving neighborhoods and the boost for small business.

Both sides came together and President Obama signed the bill into law on April 5, 2012. Now, without going to jail, I could start improving those neighborhoods.

There is an old African proverb: “If you want to go quickly, go alone.  If you want to go far, go together.” I started building my team piece by piece, knowing a lot of other smart people were getting into the market at the same time. And I’m proud of the team I built, the best in the business as far as I’m concerned. We did our first deal on October 15, 2013 and within six were the leading platform in the country dedicated to real estate debt.

We pre-fund all our deals, meaning we invest our own money before asking for money from anyone else. Unlike some other platforms, we also start paying interest as soon as we take an investor’s money. We are completely transparent. We charge no fees to investors. We offer very fast turnarounds to borrowers and very competitive returns to investors. We do a great job evaluating loans, based on our credit experience to date. We’ve taken big steps toward bridging the gap between the old world of behind-closed-doors capital formation, and the new world of online transparent capital structures.

But they’re just first steps. We and the industry have a long way to go. More than anything, we need a workable Title III or its equivalent. Accredited investors, all eight and a half million of them, make up only a small fraction of American adults. To truly democratize the formation of capital, we need to let everyone into the game.

Less than a year after Title II came into effect the market is exploding, with some very large real estate players getting into the business. To me, that’s just vindication of our business model, proof that the Crowdfunding business is being taken seriously.

I don’t worry much about the competition from those companies because small, nimble companies like Patch of Land enjoy a bunch of advantages:

  • Crowdfunding is a new business. Those of us who have been here from the start know the business inside out.
  • There’s a reason Walmart can’t seriously challenge Amazon. Amazon’s business was built online from the ground up, while Walmart’s entire model, entire way of thinking, is based on bricks and mortar. For more on that, click here.
  • Our business runs on technology, and our technology is second to none. In one seamless, integrated process, we control a project from application to interest-paying loan.
  • Our cost structure is far lower, allowing us to share the savings with both borrowers and investors.
  • There are wide swaths of the American real estate market the big players have never touched and will never touch. We call that market “under-served” or “most of America.” That’s the market Crowdfunding was created to address.

Among the many transactions we’ve complete, our loan to Deborah Smith in Georgia shows what we’re about. Deborah developed a rent-to-own program where veterans with poor credit could qualify for financing from the Veterans’ Administration. Using financing from Patch of Land, she was able to get those veterans in homes they couldn’t afford otherwise. And our investors made money in the propatch of landcess. That’s a long way from solving every problem in the real estate market, but it’s a start.

I’m super optimistic about the future of Patch of Land. If you had told me five years ago that I could be doing what I’m doing today, I’d have thought you were dreaming. Wait until you see what we’ve built five years from now.

Follow Jason Fritton on Twitter: @JasonFritton

Follow Patch of Land on Twitter: @PatchOfLand

 

The Next Big Thing In Crowdfunding: Pooled Assets

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, Entrepreneurs, Investing, JOBS Act, SEC, Title II CrowdfundingLeave a comment

September 23rd marks the first anniversary of Title II Crowdfunding. The number of portals has grown exponentially but most or all portals continue to offer investments in single deals, e.g., an apartment building in Austin. Before long, I believe the market will shift to investments in pools of assets. Rather than the single apartment building in Austin, a portal will list a pool of 20 apartment buildings in the Southwest.

Accredited or not, very few individual investors have the knowledge or experience to invest in individual deals. And based on the stock market, most individual investors don’t want to. Individuals have historically preferred mutual funds over individual stocks; a mutual fund is just a form of pooled assets.

An investor can create his own pool, investing $5,000 in each of 20 apartment buildings rather than $100,000 in a single property. On Prosper or Lending Club, I bet most investors participate in multiple loans.

But that doesn’t give consumers quite what they want. What they want is a fund manager, someone who will choose the 20 apartment buildings and also decide when to sell them. A stock market investor who wanted to creat her own pool could buy 20 individual stocks, but instead she buys a mutual fund.

Do Crowdfunding investors view the portals themselves as mutual funds? Maybe investors expect Fundrise, Patch of Land, Wealth Migrate, or iFunding to play the role of the mutual fund manager, selecting only deals worthy of investment. On the advice of counsel, every portal tries hard to disclaim that legal responsibility, but maybe investors ignore the disclaimers, looking for a “brand” for investing.

I certainly expect portals to start offering asset pools. I’ll go out on a limb and say the first portal offering curated pools will have a great competitive advantage, and I’ll go further and say that Crowdfunding won’t reach its potential until pooled asset investments are widely available.

Pooling assets makes things a bit more complicated and a bit more expensive: more legal rules come into play; you have to think harder about giving investors liquidity; and, most important, you have to pay someone to make investment decisions and take the legal risk. But that’s where the market is headed.

Questions? Let me know.

The Decision-Making Ability Of Crowds Vs. Experts: A Case Study

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, JOBS Act, KickstarterLeave a comment

Ethan Mollick of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Ramana Nanda of the Harvard Business School collaborated recently on a Working Paper captioned Wisdom or Madness? Comparing Crowds with Expert Evaluation in Funding the Arts. The full Working Paper, which I recommend for everyone in the Crowdfunding space, academic or otherwise, is available here.

Professors Mollick and Nanda seek to compare the decisions of crowds with the evaluations of experts in a rigorous academic study.

Using data supplied by Kickstarter, the authors focus on campaigns involving theatrical projects, which
involve both a highly subjective judgment about artistic merit and a predictive judgment about commercial success. On one hand, the data from Kickstarter indicate which projects were funded by the crowd. On the other hand, the authors obtained evaluations from a panel of industry experts, in this case recognized theater critics. The authors were then able to compare the judgments of the crowd to the evaluations of the industry experts.

The results were illuminating:

  • There was a very high correlation between the judgment of the crowd and the evaluations of the experts. In this respect the study seems to strongly confirm the ability of crowds to make good decisions.
  • Where the crowd and the experts disagreed, the crowd tended to be more positive than the experts, i.e., the crowd funded projects that the experts would not have funded. Moreover, those projects turned out to be no less successful than projects approved by the experts. As the authors put it, “Overall, our findings suggest that the democratization of entry that is facilitated by Crowdfunding has the potential to lower the incidence of ‘false negatives.’”
  • Projects funded by the crowd tended to share certain characteristics, suggesting that “there is an ‘art’ to raising money from crowds.” According to the authors, “The crowds seem to place emphasis on, or extract information content from different attributes of the process than experts.”

I find this fascinating and instructive. For one thing, the finding that industry experts tend to be overly negative correlates with my own experience in the world of law and venture funding. More important, the study suggests that in a world where access to capital is controlled by experts the likelihood is that good projects will go unfunded.

That insight has enormous implications for the capital formation industry and the world economy. If more worthwhile projects are funded, with the accompanying economic growth, that is a strong justification for Crowdfunding. And if crowds tend to avoid false negatives, then it makes sense for the U.S. to adopt a robust Title III as soon as possible.

I want to thank Professors Mollick and Nanda for making me aware of this study and for their continuing work in this space. As this study illustrates, the academic world has important lessons for portals, lawyers, legislators, investors, and everyone else in Crowdfunding.

Questions? Let me know.

A Constructive Approach To Accredited Investor Definition

On By crowdfundattnyIn Accredited Investor, Crowdfunding, Dodd-Frank Act, JOBS Act, SECLeave a comment

crowdfunding_investorSection 413(b) of Title IV of the Dodd-Frank Act allows the SEC to evaluate the current definition of “accredited investor,” which has been in place since 1982, and to revisit the issue at four year intervals. As the SEC deliberates, alarm bells are sounding in the industry, warning that a new definition could destroy not only the nascent Crowdfunding industry but the entire ecosystem around private capital formation.

Though well-intended, these warnings are misguided, in my opinion.

If the SEC indexed the existing definition to the CPI over the last 32 years, leading to an income threshold of about $500,000 and a net worth threshold of about $2.5 million, the effect would indeed be devastating, with only star athletes and Google employees allowed to invest. However, I see no reason to believe the SEC has anything like that in mind, for several reasons:

  • The SEC could have changed the definition on its own initiative at any time over the last 32 years but hasn’t.
  • Not only has the SEC not changed the definition, it has never expressed any particular concern with Rule 506, where most private placements take place.
  • Most important, the Dodd-Frank Act instructs the SEC to modify the definition “as the Commission may deem appropriate for the protection of investors, in the public interest, and in light of the economy.” In my own extensive but necessarily anecdotal experience, I have seen no evidence that the current income or net worth requirements fail to protect investors or, for that matter, that they are particularly relevant to protecting invesors. In the absence of widespread problems, there is simply no reason to make the definition more stringent than it is today and, given the Congressional mandate to keep one eye on the economy – that is, on the economic benefits of making capital available – there are probably stronger reasons to relax the current definition.

According to the Chairman of the SEC, Mary Jo White, the SEC is considering a more nuanced definition of accredited investor, one that takes into account not just income and net worth but also financial sophistication. That sounds right to me.

For now, the best way to help the SEC adopt a sensible definition of accredited investor is to provide real data. If you have reliable information about the incidence of fraud in private placements, for example, or about the correlation (or lack thereof) between financial sophistication and annual income, the SEC would love to see it. Feel free to send it to me and I will forward it.

In the meantime, don’t worry. . . .too much.

Questions? Let me know.

Crowdfunding.Biz Interview

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, Crowdfunding Interview, Crowdfunding.Biz InterviewLeave a comment

CFBizJosef Helm runs a terrific site called crowdfunding.biz focused on the Crowdfunding industry. This week Josef interviewed me as part of his Crowdfunding Industry Spotlight series. He asked how I got into the Crowdfunding industry, my advice for those getting in today, my hopes and expectations for the future of Crowdfunding, and a bunch of other illuminating questions.

If you’re interested, my interview is here. But as long as you’re at the site, take a look at the eight other people Josef has identified as industry leaders, people like Richard Swart and Joy Schoffler. Responding to the same questions, you might find their answers more interesting.

I’m honored to have been selected. Josef, thank you for what you do in this space.

Questions? Let me know.