How Founders Should Spend Their Time With Reg CF Portal Audits

Seth Gordon: If somebody was launching their registered crowdfunding portal, what should they prepare for? Not only sort of mentally, because it can be taxing I'm sure. But also as far as documents or any sort of materials that that FINRA would be looking for.

Mark Roderick: Well, there's a bunch of stuff that they have that you have to do. You know, you have to have educational materials on your website and you have to have a big thick policy, policies and procedures manual. But I will tell you, here's my advice to anyone thinking about creating a Reg. CF funding portal. One, man now is the time Reg. CF really is about to explode is exploding as we speak. And it is going to become the focus of private capital formation in this country. And so absolutely now's the time. But the second thing about how to go about it is there and where you should spend your time. There were three legs to the, to the funding portal stool. I always say, and only one of them really requires the attention of the founder. So the first leg is technology. Have to have a compliant website, which is much easier said than done. And the founder can use you guys for that, right? The founder doesn't, shouldn't be spending his or her time. And what does the website have to do? I got to figure this out, let me read the regulations, blah, blah, blah, some people like that. And like writing, writing code, but most people should buy the darn website, meaning white label, right? So that's, that's the first stool or first leg of the stool. The next leg of the stool is all the legal compliance, the stuff, the policies and procedures, the educational materials registering with the SEC, registering with FINRA. That's also complicated, but don't spend much time thinking about it, because you can hire someone like me to do that. You don't have to be an expert. The third leg of the stool is the marketing. Marketing to find companies to be on the portal and finding investors who will invest in that. That is where the founder should spend 95% of his or her time because no one can do that for you. That's that's my advice. I, I just get in the age of the internet where we all feel as if we can become experts in all topics. Like if you had a certain, if your arm were itching your first thought would probably not be to go to the doctor. It would be to go to WebMD or, or just do a Google search. You know, my arm is itching and try to try to figure it out. And that's what I people spend in my experience so much time on the internet, try like trying to learn all the technical legal rules about crowdfunding. And it's kind of a waste of time because I mean, you don't, you don't need to do it. You can, you can buy that advice. It's like, you know, if a light, it goes out in your house or something, I mean, you don't, oh, how does electricity work? You know, let's figure out and spend, you know, 12 or 15 hours online trying to figure, figure that out. No, you call the electrician. The electrician comes over and fixes it. And you go on with things that are more important to you. And it is the marketing of a funding portal. That is the value add component. So that's where I tell people to spend all their time.