100: Crowdfunding: Building Community Wealth with Bill Huston

[00:00:00] I'm going to talk a little bit about investment crowdfunding, why call it investment crowdfunding as opposed and why some people say there are four types of crowdfunding and I say they're only three.

[00:00:08] So the third type of crowdfunding is investment crowdfunding and an investment crowdfunding, there is a security. Right? There is a legal security that is traded. It's a clear-to-be in a clean one in companies, cash flows or whatever you've been, that's the carate to you actually. Yes, absolutely.

[00:00:24] So in that right there can be equity, there can be debt, there can be revenue share models and then you know we can get into convertible notes and you know some of those different forms of securities.

[00:00:46] Podcasts will come in studios welcome to another episode of The Value, the language of business with those of you seeking to build or invest in companies that are scalable and highly valuable. I'm your host Kevin Valley and today we are talking about crowdfunding.

[00:01:06] Now this is a topic that has been narrowed there to my heart for a few years now, especially as a Caribbean person, especially in a market where we need some more access to capital from the phone to side.

[00:01:20] As well as there are many, many individuals, many, I would say working class individuals who would love to be able to have access to more investment opportunities in the Caribbean. And to that extent today we are speaking to one of Ink, Ink magazines top 19 global crowdfunding experts,

[00:01:40] a board member of the National Coalition for Community Capital, the crowdfunding professional association and sub-accroad Ink. Strategy consultants for fund lack founders one of the biggest crowdfunding quartiles for Blackhunter Paners, as well as an accelerated developer for the ASECLE capital fund which focuses on Latino founders.

[00:02:05] All of this in the form of Mr Bill, you stern, Bill, how are you doing today sir? I'm doing great thank you for the opportunity to come on to talk about crowdfunding.

[00:02:17] You know I really appreciate this opportunity to get to speak to a global market so thank you very much for this opportunity.

[00:02:25] Yeah, I mean on your speakerboard global market I love that you focus a lot of your crowdfunding support efforts in the Blackhunter Latino space and I think we're gonna get to that.

[00:02:36] But as we were talking about just before I hit record, Bill, you know in this show I love to get a little bit of background on the guest,

[00:02:46] right and when I look at your public profile, I don't really see much before 2014 so I had a dig a little deeper. I had a dig a little deeper and I came to learn that you're in your son in 2007, 2008,

[00:03:00] had a local business called city life, local food, you know, you bring food from local farmers, the west Louisville and east downtown of course, Bill lives in Louisville, Kentucky we're not sure if he's from there, you'll let us know.

[00:03:12] But Bill, before I spoil your story, I would like you just imagine if you if you're looking at a short film of your life before we get to 2014 where you started. My crowd rocks and that's not to the whole forest or crowdfunding I imagine.

[00:03:30] Can you tell us what was it like for you growing up on what really got us here to the point that we have in this conversation today? Wow, you have really done some research. Yeah, absolutely so I'll tell you I grew up in a Cincinnati, Ohio area.

[00:03:47] I live there almost all my life. I lived in a city just south and in Northern part of Kentucky called Newport, Kentucky. Newport, Kentucky was an interesting place but let me take one step back and tell you because this will add a little context.

[00:04:02] I was born in 1964. So that means that I was four years old when Dr. King was killed. I was in the first grade, two years after Dr. King was killed. So for probably many of the listeners,

[00:04:17] I come from a different place in time and you know I talked to my oldest son about this all the time and you know what one of the things it was really interesting is that like legalized segregation had

[00:04:29] really just ended it when I was beginning the school and going to school. So even though it wasn't really legal anymore, a lot of the hearts and minds and people had changed. So you know I grew up in a city that was predominantly white

[00:04:44] but I grew up in an area that was predominantly black and what's interesting is that you kind of knew your role, you kind of knew your place and you just stayed there and you really didn't make waves

[00:04:57] went through school. After I graduated from high school you know so I'm going to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth here so this is kind of funny. So a lot of people were going off to school,

[00:05:08] going off to university certainly I had scored well enough on tests to go and I just didn't know what to do and I kind of wanted out of my dad's house so I joined the US Army and after joining the army it

[00:05:20] was a great experience for me. I became a medical lab specialist that went to basic training two months then I went to AIT and this is where I always feel like my life really began to change in transform.

[00:05:32] So I went to work at the Procidio San Francisco and at the Procidio San Francisco I worked on a weekend shift in the labs so I worked 32 hours over the weekend and I got the rest of the week off

[00:05:46] when I went to the City College of San Francisco. Go rain. I was working on my Associate's degree in natural sciences. So I was taking a pretty heavy course load science, chemistry, physics, biology so one day I decided to kind of lighten my load a little bit and

[00:06:03] I took a jazz history class and in a jazz history class the professor said that we're going to take this all the way back to its African roots and I thought wow I didn't know jazz came from

[00:06:15] I was already surprised so we would talk on the class that there was this guy in his name was Rick Bale and he was from San Jose, California and he would start talking about African history

[00:06:28] and it was like he was speaking Mandarin to me. Right? Like I had no idea what he was talking about. I had never heard any of the stuff that he was talking about you know I mean I didn't

[00:06:40] learn this in high school for sure. As I started to listen to him I just became like enamored with this idea of African history you know black history in the US and globally and in one

[00:06:54] day I was in Oakland California which is only 13 miles from San Francisco across the bay and while I was there I picked up this little pamphlet it's really really small pamphlet and the pamphlet was

[00:07:05] called black people in the US economy and it was just a small pamphlet I always tried to really express there was not a ton of information in there but they really got to the point

[00:07:18] and that really kind of began to change my life so after I got out of the military I worked in the medical lab field for many, many years and then to kind of fast forward to becoming an entrepreneur

[00:07:30] and looking at what that entrepreneurial opportunity looked like and again I want people to understand that in the 80s you could not take your laptop because we didn't have laptops so you could

[00:07:42] take your laptop and sit down at your kitchen table and start a business you know so entrepreneurship was as popular then as it eventually became so after moving to Louisville Kentucky I was working

[00:08:00] as a community organizer for an organization called the Community Farm Alliance Community Farm Alliance was a nonprofit organization so I joined a community farm alliance and I worked in the urban areas and what they call urban food deserts. Urban food deserts are places where there's little access to

[00:08:18] fresh local foods since I'm speaking to a global audience here I will tell you that sometimes sometimes depending on what communities you live in in the United States it's not all that you see

[00:08:31] I'll tell them there's a different part to the US there were very few grocery stores other grocery stores did have high quality of food when big tobacco left Kentucky they left 1.75 billion dollars in a fund to help small farmers transition out of tobacco and into other crops

[00:08:53] so working with community farm alliance I worked very closely with those small local farmers to try to create markets in urban food deserts in a Westlove and East downtown and in that process

[00:09:07] I ended up starting a business with my son called city life local foods we kind of designed this idea around using this people to laugh now but at the time we were using email to actually send out

[00:09:21] a list of the food that was going to be available the next week for farmers people would order their food via email they would pass and we would actually deliver something we call the

[00:09:31] personalized local food basket so there's something called CSA is where you buy from the farmer in the farmer gives you whatever it is that I think he gives you right and to me that didn't make

[00:09:42] a lot of sense right like I would never go to crowers and give somebody a hundred dollars and tell them to put whatever they wanted to in the bag so we created the personal life local food

[00:09:51] baskets and the business began to grow and it was growing at a right where we needed to access cap. So we went to our bank where we actually had our money and we were unable to get a loan

[00:10:03] now understood understood because we are relatively new business so we ended up going to the city and asking the city for a loan while we were there working with the city the city they said well

[00:10:14] we'll write you into a grant to get some of that $1.75 billion we didn't hear anything from them for a couple of months and when the article came out of the paper we didn't get any of the grant money

[00:10:25] yeah so we we kind of went out of business, fizzled out and then the great recession hit so man maybe maybe they helped us so then during the great recession I had another opportunity to

[00:10:37] go back and work in Cincinnati and that opportunity fell through in that process you know I was actually working at a factory during the great recession to kind of make ends meet and I tell

[00:10:49] you those details because after the deal fell through in Cincinnati I was sitting in a car and I was talking to a friend of man he said bill he said I hear fear in your voice and he said something

[00:11:00] it was at that moment so profound he said you know bill what God's got for you is what God's got for you so the next day I get you to start it. Yeah that was profound it was absolutely profound

[00:11:16] so so the next day I started looking for another business opportunity and I found HubSpot I would get up at 4 a.m. in the mornings before I went to work at the factory

[00:11:28] and I would actually go through their inbound marketing training program you know I went through the program I graduated from that you know they're a little online program and then we started another

[00:11:38] company my son and I called H2 Communications absolutely still still a big fan still a big fan of it so we started H2 Communications in around 2011 and my son he was a videographer and

[00:11:57] you know and I would I would actually do the marketing for people to shoot videos so in the process I received an email from the local community college to get into this entrepreneurship program

[00:12:09] and I don't think the email was really even meant for me I think it was meant for my son but I ended up getting the email getting into the program and my son got into a program kind of

[00:12:20] at the same time called Community Action Partnership and these kind of ran along his parallel track and what was really interesting about that was that while I was an entrepreneurship program and it's going to be really important with this entrepreneurship program really did for me

[00:12:36] and I say this all the time is it wasn't that I learned so much more about business but we got 18 months of a mentorship right one-on-one mentoring with a business professional from Louisville after we graduated from the program which was really powerful because I was able

[00:12:55] to not only get mentorship from people that I would have never gotten mentorship from but I was also able to get into networks and communities that I would have never been able to get into. We

[00:13:09] were we actually shot video one of our first clients was a venture organization called Vinter Connectors this demographic leave was very different than my son and I because it was a bunch of old

[00:13:22] guys right you know who looked at deals we were able to pick up that deal because you know I was in that entrepreneurship program when I my instructors actually was on the board there

[00:13:34] so he got us the job she being videos there and and I say that and I always tell that story because there are two really important things that I find that a lot of times we think well

[00:13:44] my biggest problem is access to capital but I think that having that real mentorship and having somebody to help me avoid all the landmines that they've already stepped on and also having those networks right where people can recommend me for jobs can recommend me

[00:14:02] to different people so I can meet other people you know those things are very very important it should never be overlooked as we grow our businesses and thinking about the access to capital

[00:14:12] so I'm gonna speed this up a little bit here and so then what happened was my son was in that capital program and Rebecca Brensel I never forget she was the head of cap and she comes to us

[00:14:23] and she says there's this website called kickstarter and she said that with kickstarter if you shoot a really cool video people will fund your business so we shot seven videos on a Saturday

[00:14:37] after doing for everyone that was in the cap and she put them up on kickstarter and we did not raise a penny and I always tell that story for two reasons one is because you have to be able to face

[00:14:50] adversity and come back from that adversity and the other is because I just became just engrossed in crowdfunding because I started looking and studying this kickstarter and indie goko and I saw

[00:15:01] that you know what people are funding businesses and why are they funding businesses and for there I came with this one fundamental rule of crowdfunding out of care if it's rewards crowdfunding

[00:15:12] if it's investment crowdfunding if you do not build an excited and engaged crowd you will not get the funding you're looking for that is the one fundamental rule that I found so as I continue

[00:15:25] into the crowdfunding I said you know what I think this is going to be good for me because the skillset required for crowdfunding is a skill set that I already have number one and number two

[00:15:37] is what business is not going to need access to capital so I started working on campaigns and you know like if somebody said they needed to Twitter done somebody said they needed their Facebook done this before

[00:15:49] Facebook ads right I mean literally you are just doing this organically I started working on these campaigns I would work on campaigns and as I got better and better at the campaign

[00:16:00] and started having some success then people started to hire me and that got to be pretty good and then ink magazine named me one of the top 19 global crowdfunding experts to know

[00:16:11] I'm never really sure what that meant but it sure was good. Oh I love it so I think we does got like 2014 because I think you won that award in 2014 right? Yes 2014. All right. Yes

[00:16:25] so between 2012 and 2014 I did a lot of free work you know really just learning the space okay and so you would say your work is more like it sounds like your marketer it sounds like your

[00:16:37] marketer but you also have a passion for community because in listening to that background sorry I think you probably said it would community seven times maybe. Yes right so it seems that

[00:16:50] community is really important to and it seems like that is the impetus that or that nexus that brings us into crowdfunding right? So you got that ink magazine recognition in 2014 I know you

[00:17:06] co-founded a company called My Crowd Rocks in March 2014. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Wow this really takes me back so I actually a guy who was in the next cohort of the entrepreneurship

[00:17:22] program he was a web developer and graphic designer we decided to start my crowd rocks to help businesses actually access crowdfunding through night to time it was just called crowdfunding but it was rewards crowdfunding because there was no investment crowdfunding there was no

[00:17:40] rake ziF that had not passed yet right so I started working in that space and you know I was able to do a lot of global crowdfunding campaigns one campaign that I'll tell you about expressly

[00:17:52] that I was really proud of from a strategic perspective there was a guy in Indian gentleman and he had created a board game for cricket so you know where I grew up nobody plans cricket right

[00:18:07] I really never heard a cricket and so I learned more about cricket than I'd ever thought I would in my life but one of the things that was interesting is he lived in Boston and what we did

[00:18:19] was we targeted people in countries where they played cricket with Facebook ads and you know so we really didn't get a lot of money from people in the US because you know they don't really play

[00:18:34] cricket so we were able to use Facebook ads to target people in those countries and successfully crowdfund that campaign another part of the story that I left off was probably the first big opportunities that I had was working with a company called crowdfund Russia so for anybody

[00:18:54] out there who doesn't believe in the power of LinkedIn I was in these LinkedIn groups and I would always make comments and engage with people and I got a private message from this guy named

[00:19:04] Anthony who actually did crowdfunding in Russia so we had a partnership for a couple of years where I would help Russian companies actually crowdfund this was like before zoom we would use Google

[00:19:17] Hangouts for anyone who's old enough to remember those and they didn't have all the bills and whistles that you have with zoom you know I remember this work being so difficult because one of the things

[00:19:30] that we did was Anthony the guy in Russia who I worked with he lived in my scout and he spoke like six different languages I only spoke English and most of the people that I worked with

[00:19:43] only spoke Russian okay and sometimes a 30 minute call would take two hours because Anthony you know he had to interpret from English to Russian for Russian to English but it was a great experience

[00:19:58] it was a great learning experience I did that as my crowd rocks but that was the partnership that I actually worked with and then moving in to 2016 investment crowdfunding regulation crowdfunding where XF became legal finally on May 16 2016 and you know nothing was

[00:20:19] really going on there there were not very many deals I had the opportunity to fly out to Los Angeles and to speak on a panel about marketing in PR at the crowd invest summit it's a time

[00:20:35] they said it was the largest crowd investment summit again I don't know what that meant it was pretty big it was really nice it was really expensive but you know it was that was a real turning point for me that

[00:20:45] was a real turning point my life before a couple of reasons one is if you follow me on LinkedIn you know then I'm very close to Devon Thor and the super crowd and that was the first time that I actually

[00:20:58] met Dev was in Los Angeles in 2017 and I met Linda Linda P Smith she was the first black woman to have a regulation crowdfunding platform it's called by the block right yeah you know so

[00:21:14] yes yes so so I started working with her as a consultant and I would help people get there offering documents together help them create marketing strategies strategies around the crowd funding and that was really interesting work it was really really hard to grow it and I tell you

[00:21:34] this is going to be one instance and and I'm going to give you a few examples of what the lack of access to capital looks like right people say it all the time but this is what it looks like

[00:21:45] in 2020 by the block was one of the top ten platforms for dollars raised they raised over $1.5 million and when 2021 they were gone and the reason they were gone is because there was no venture funding

[00:22:02] right so I worked with Linda I didn't necessarily work for Linda I worked for a closely with her she would recommend me to people and then I would work with those people you know what was

[00:22:12] interesting is she never really had the capital to be able to hire people she didn't have the capital to be able to upgrade the technology like some of the other platforms in a really interesting

[00:22:23] campaign that I worked with as a consultant was with a woman named Ena Jones and she had a company called Rootton Vines from the South Side of Chicago and I love to tell the story you're going

[00:22:34] to get this right because she was doing something very similar to what we did with city life local we were unable to access capital so our business kind of died on the vine part of the

[00:22:46] one there she was able to go to her community raise the capital that she needed directly from her community and get her business off the ground started she was able to get a space

[00:23:01] and then she got some add-on funding from some nonprofits foundations and then she met a pastor and the pastor actually gave her a second location you know today she is organized black

[00:23:15] farmers in Illinois to get that food into the urban food deserts on the South Side of Chicago as you can tell that story really let me know the power that investment crowd funding could have

[00:23:28] especially for black owned businesses right because I experienced that I experienced the lack of lack of access to capital I know what it feels like I know what it feels like to have your business go out of business when you are successfully running your business but you can

[00:23:44] know it no longer grow because you can't access capital I experienced that with with Linda and by the block I still from time to time communicate with Miss Jones because you know that that's something

[00:23:56] is really powerful and in the reason community is so powerful to me you know I told you I read that pamphlet about black people in the US economy and one of the things that I understand is

[00:24:07] one reason that it's hard for us to access capital is because we're very low wealth community in the United States right that doesn't mean that we don't make money that doesn't mean that there

[00:24:16] aren't people with good jobs that means that there aren't people with wealth right there are not people who are going to be able to say hey you know what you want to buy a house here's the

[00:24:26] $20,000 for your down payment now you have to do with pay for the house right you know there are not people who are able to say hey I know you want to go to a really good school so I'm going to be

[00:24:36] able to pay for it and and I don't think sometimes the people kind of understand the difference between wealth right and income and you know if the amount of money that you make and the amount of money

[00:24:47] that you have in the amount of money that is it's kind of passed forward from generation to generation and when I think about investment crowdfunding one of the things it's really powerful to me

[00:24:57] is that not only our founders real estate developers able to access capital for their businesses but there's also a wealth building opportunity for the community through inclusive investing and in the United States that didn't exist for 80 years right after the stock market crash in

[00:25:18] 1929 legislators and their infinite wisdom solve it you know we really shouldn't have regular people working class people really shouldn't have the opportunity to invest in private companies because they're too risky I say that a little bit sarcastic because you know they don't

[00:25:37] they don't care if I go to casino and gambling money away they just they just don't want me to what we're going to do but in the US I spent some time in the US you can do buy so many other systems

[00:25:50] be it healthcare be it let's say let me not go but there's so many systems out there that let me not say do it do pin your right but so many systems out there that they set up for consumerism set up

[00:26:03] to get the most out of your money you know what I mean so why not and able us okay if we want to invest in a business that we like a business that we support so instead of being a regular consumer

[00:26:16] how about we also be an investor in that business absolutely and that opportunity really doesn't it really doesn't exist and you should think about how the internet itself has really democratized

[00:26:30] business as we know it or business as I knew it right because I came from a different place in time and the people who determined what I read they either worked for big publishing houses or

[00:26:42] they were particular newspapers right to have the money to actually you know have a piece of that industry and that's what I read we you and I when I was coming up we would have never had this opportunity

[00:26:54] to have this conversation right in you know in in this context because if we weren't important enough to be on CBS news where we weren't going to have this conversation right and today not only does

[00:27:06] the internet actually provide that democratization but it it's a backbone obviously of crowd funding and you know what's online capital formation and it again provides the democratization but you know we talk about that all the time at NC3 about community capital and the power of community

[00:27:26] and having seen the power of community capital have been able to work with companies that actually were able to tap into and utilize that power there was a company that that came to me and they had already

[00:27:40] raised a significant amount of money and they were kind of at a stuck point and they wanted to know how how they could move further right so I took a look at it they're marketing and started analyzing this

[00:27:50] and they had a thousand people who followed their LinkedIn page but they never thought to reach out to the people who followed their LinkedIn page right and you know and you know and you know and just yeah

[00:28:04] absolutely absolutely and just you know really thinking about that in that process and what that process is like but in I've had I would say for me a unique opportunity to come from the rewards crowd funding space

[00:28:19] into the investment space I of course I've had to upscale right to learn more about finances and compliance and those documents that I didn't have to really know about in rewards crowd funding

[00:28:31] and I've had the opportunity to work on many many crowd funding campaigns and many many different industries. No can I give a shout out to what to Renee? I'm ready, King. Renee King yeah absolutely

[00:28:45] can I give her a shout out last year we did harm my issue walker de Borra I forget to Borra's last name as part of the fun black founder team drew and learned holiday social impact fund we did 45 black

[00:29:02] owned businesses right we took them through our crowd fund accelerator and you know raised well over 200 thousand dollars for those businesses. I mean that's huge and a lot of times it doesn't

[00:29:15] seem like a lot of money but if you were in the situation where we were you know if we had had 30 thousand dollars we would have been able to grow our business right we didn't need a million

[00:29:26] dollars we didn't need 10 million dollars you know if we had 30 thousand dollars in a lot of times you know crowd funding gets you exactly where you need to be but not only does crowd funding get

[00:29:37] you to finances that you need it helps you to market you know it's my issue walker used always say it helps you to use that muscle to exercise that muscle it teaches you how to market who to market

[00:29:50] too how to talk the marketing talk how to center right your investors when you talk to them right nobody cares about what I want to be cares about what I'm thinking about they only care about

[00:30:01] what they want what they're thinking about and being able to you know to tap into that and to understand that and I tell people all the time that there is nothing that I would ask you

[00:30:12] to do as a crowd funding consultant that we've bad for your business even if you never crowd fund even if you never try to raise the capital it's going to help your business. I don't know I feel like

[00:30:22] I'm just not a ram with all that I love you everything you see and everything you see and it's so important you're not babbling yeah I'm in the ordinary I'm taking notes from what you've been seeing

[00:30:35] and a few things I want to highlight here only we're going back to that cricket crowd funding campaign that you run there what I love about that is that yes cricket is not as sport as

[00:30:46] widely known in the US but it's heavily known in highly populist countries like India Pakistan, New Zealand or Australia throw the Caribbean region or not and I think it is so interesting

[00:30:57] that you're able to crowd fund for that outside of the US so I love to get to international crowd funding later in this conversation what I want to talk about though you alluded to it is it

[00:31:12] difference between rewards crowd funding with this investment crowd funding all right so to somebody was not really in tune in the crowd funding space men and I sure you know too much about it they may

[00:31:22] not understand there's a difference like what are all these types of crowd funding some people might be like hey what is crowd funding any in the fullest place right now I know you have a great

[00:31:31] example that really drives this point home drives this delineation home using the Oculus Rift crowd funding example can you just walk a truly difference between rewards crowd funding on investment crowd funding yeah absolutely so the Oculus Rift is really interesting but

[00:31:55] I want to take this a back a little bit further and I want to talk about there are three types of crowd funding basically in a very general sense there's donation crowd funding a donation crowd

[00:32:06] funding is just you know the only thing that the person who donates money to that campaign gets is they get a good feeling to know that they did something to help someone or to help a cause

[00:32:18] you think go find me a lot and it's good that's really good I think the only go-fundee campaign I did was for funeral for somebody that I knew really well so I don't really

[00:32:30] operate in that space too much but the rewards crowd funding space even though I talk about investment crowd funding a lot today that's why I started crowd funding really came of age and really

[00:32:40] became a part of my life and with rewards crowd funding it's a very strict sense it is donations because what you're doing is you are literally giving for something but unlike just straight donations

[00:32:54] you get something in return right but what you get in return is not a security and I'll come back to that so in the beginning of crowd funding on a tool 2000 2009 2010 what you normally received was

[00:33:11] maybe a t-shirt maybe a mug something that had some value and letting people know that you had participated in this crowd funding campaign but you know again you didn't get a security you weren't

[00:33:24] able to make any money from that as rewards crowd funding continued to to evolve what happened was a lot of people started to to use crowd funding to test the market to test the product market fit

[00:33:39] so let's say I had created this really nice iPhone case right I didn't have the money for but I did have an idea for it you know maybe even have the specs so what I would do is I would go up on

[00:33:51] you know and he go go kickstarter and I would actually raise the money in a pre-sale and I would say to you basically if you give me the money today in six months I will provide you with the product

[00:34:08] now that sounds kind of crazy encounter intuitive but that is worked to the tune of about $26 billion gold right so it works people do it kind of understanding the motivation for why people do

[00:34:20] is really really important and that's a little bit more of the marketing I'll just kind of put a pin in that but understanding the motivation of why people invest why people go through rewards crowd funding

[00:34:31] is very important but that's all you get right so when we talk about the Oculus Rift they raised millions of dollars on kickstarter and people got some really cool goggles right I mean like

[00:34:45] at that time it was state of the art right state of the art you know I guess it's not such a big deal I got my son some and I don't even I haven't seen him out of the air so I don't know what he did with them

[00:34:57] but the really interesting thing about that and it's like the perfect story is that so those people from Oculus Rift who they were able to put in I think it was like $2.4 million into the Oculus Rift what happened was two years later meta Facebook came through and purchased

[00:35:18] them for $3 billion so the founders of that company got $3 billion minus whatever debts they had the people who built that company through their capital got to keep their really cool

[00:35:39] goggles that just hadn't used in a very that was it you know that was it and I think that that's really a great story to tell you the difference between rewards crowd funding and investment crowd funding now I'm gonna talk a little bit about investment crowd funding

[00:35:59] why I call it investment crowd funding as opposed and why some people say there are four types of crowd funding and I say they're only three right so the third type of crowd funding is investment

[00:36:08] crowd funding and an investment crowd funding there is a security right there is a legal security that is traded it's a security being so a clean a clean one in companies cash flows or whatever you

[00:36:20] be that that's a carry to you absolutely so in that right there can be equity there can be debt there can be revenue share models and then we can get into convertible notes and some of those

[00:36:33] some of those different forms of securities but there is a security and the reason that's really important so for instance if you had purchased the Oculus Rift with a safe right then you know

[00:36:49] you just kind of had a IO you right that it really wasn't worth anything right because you know that's kind of what a safe is but then when there was this equity event which was an enormous

[00:37:01] equity event right you would have been able to cash out and had actually had that stock did you would have been on the same level with the founders right you would have had money from that

[00:37:14] so probably you still would have had some really cool gobs because I'm sure they would have given that as a reward but also you would have had a claim to sum of the profit that that company

[00:37:25] made when they were purchased when they had their equity event and that is such a powerful story and that's why I think that investment crowd funding is really really powerful today especially in communities that are low wealth communities and in a lot of times we forget

[00:37:42] to talk about this but not only does it provide access to capital but it provides the opportunity for wealth building through inclusive investing right so now you have the ability to get in on

[00:37:54] those deals before they go public right while those deals are still private right while you're buying Facebook stock for 30 cents as opposed to you know to buy it for $300 right today or $30 or $50

[00:38:09] $50 when it goes public where you think about the amount of wealth created if you had held Facebook at 30 cents and when it went public you know you think about the amount of wealth that was created

[00:38:24] you know with that one event and that's why investment crowd funding is so powerful when it can be such a powerful tool and that's why I really love it and I really push forward there is definitely

[00:38:37] a space still for rewards crowd funding for really early stage companies who may have a concept and there's a value to it but if you if you have a company especially a small business if that

[00:38:49] small business has has revenue if you have customers getting your customers to invest in a business right they're already partying with their money for your product or service right so think about

[00:39:02] what that looks like if I'm a customer and I have another story for you I love to tell you it's right so if you think about you think about what that looks like is that if if I like

[00:39:14] going to your coffee shop and now I am sharing the revenue with you how many cups of coffee do you think I'm gonna drink a day? How many of my friends, neighbors and family do you think I am going

[00:39:27] to tell to come to your coffee shop according to Honeycomb credit which is a crowd funding investment crowd funding platform based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania companies that successfully crowd fund the following year increased their revenue on average by 60% 60% and that's because your investors

[00:39:49] become customers and brand ambassadors for your company one of the raises that we did in 2020 we actually oversubscribed so we were raised a $250,000 we raised $268,000 and you can see that

[00:40:02] you could go all we funder and you know I didn't make that up but what you can't see is that year over year we were able to increase sales by over 150% for that company because during that process one of the

[00:40:16] things that we did is we would offer to the investors special offers but they were also allowed to pass those special offers onto their friends and family that's what I like to call the return on

[00:40:29] crowd and you know the return on crowd obviously everybody knows and thinks about the return on investment but their return on crowd is going to be a return on investment because you have your investors

[00:40:41] you have your customers you have your branded ambassadors all rolled into one. Kevin this would be a great place to ask me a question right. Thank you all right so that's what I go about really quick

[00:40:52] of this clarification question here right so you might just see if right on the safe for those of you may not know it's called a simple agreement for future equity this is happens a lot in early

[00:41:03] stage funding in the US in particular where just as Bill said it's not necessarily you get equity now you have a promise note that says okay once we have some sort of event some sort of an liquidity

[00:41:17] event then you're going to receive equity at a valuation capital as a discount or what have you and now in saying that going back to the Oculus Rift example would the three billion dollar financing

[00:41:30] from metal or the purchase from metal would not not call to as an equity event to say okay if I put you just a safe and I need to tell me all right I invest that a valuation of 2.4

[00:41:42] and you tell me that upon the equity event you're going to get a discount of 20% so you're going to get your investment of valuation of 2 million or whatever that works out too and if you receive

[00:41:52] three billion then that's a you invested two million dollar valuation and then boom the companies with billion not what happened for the see-fullless right that yes that absolutely would have happened and again that's the perfect deal because I guarantee you had they been raising they would

[00:42:10] not have been raising but a valuation of three billion dollars guaranteeing you know they they didn't have a valuation but I guarantee it would have been bill below five million dollars right and yeah

[00:42:21] absolutely so so you really cashed out there you really would have done well you know with that opportunity so my next question would be given everything you just said and everything we both understand I could tell me share this passion for crowdfunding maybe a little bit more passionate

[00:42:37] about it and I am you know a lot more about it I'm trying to send gender it's a lot more especially in the Caribbean region but my question to you is why is there not more crowdfunding happening

[00:42:48] especially given what you described as the return on crowdfunding the ability to invest in products within your community that you love support businesses that you love what is stopping more crowdfunding from happening is it the whole jobs act 2012 title three who's our credit investor this is not a

[00:43:05] credit investor what is stopping this from really just exploding it's hard it's hard crowdfunding is hard it is not simple there are a lot of moving parts if I can do a shameless plug here

[00:43:22] I'm actually a co-founder and a company called raise way and our goal at raise way is to take the information that I know and that I have a co-founder knows from our experience actually taking people

[00:43:35] through this process and put that on a digital platform so the people can go through it in a very cost effective way and also go through it in their own pace right kind of a do it yourself platform

[00:43:48] and the market that we're targeting are the sub one twenty four races you know one twenty four is the limit where capital gets after a hundred twenty four thousand dollars under reg cf capital gets a

[00:43:59] lot more expensive because you have to have a third party come in and review not audit but to simply do a review of your financials even if you don't have that's a fiddren fidd party and you just have to find

[00:44:12] your own yeah you have to find your own this yeah a third party CPA firm that's called significantly right especially for a company that's a small business is doing a sub one twenty four race so

[00:44:22] that's why we made the cut off there is because you as the owner or founder to just sign off on the financials and you don't have to have a third party review so with that being said apparently

[00:44:33] United States there are thirty three million small businesses and ten million of them in twenty twenty two ten million of them actually were looking for capital and point zero zero seven four

[00:44:46] percent of them used crowd you know how to do it's not but so yeah you're looking at something good I'm impressed well I mean I'm saying it off the top of my head because because my co-founder he

[00:44:58] like he really digs into data and it gave me this and we've talked about it so much right that yeah that that I actually I'm in a museum now full it's incredible when you think about

[00:45:14] that right all of those companies that needed to access capital you know and none of them thought about you know instead of going to the bank turning their community into the bank turning their customer base and vendors into the bank they they never thought about that right

[00:45:30] and and that's an opportunity and in another thing it's hard another part of crowd funding that it's hard is asking friends and family right to invest now a lot of that is the way that you frame it

[00:45:42] right so I always tell people that you don't you don't say hey will you invest 100 bucks in me but you know what I'm giving you the opportunity to invest 100 bucks in dot dot dot right

[00:45:53] so you know a lot of it is in the way that you frame it but crowd funding is hard it's difficult it can be very difficult it can be very time consuming I'll give you another statistic

[00:46:03] the average person who learns about crowd funding right we call to discover the discover crowd funding phase it is 14 to 18 months between that discover crowd funding phase and the time that you actually start raising capital start raising capital actually start raising the capital you go live

[00:46:26] right it's that long of a process now the value proposition that I bring to founders is I'm able to reduce that to somewhere around four to six months between the time that you engage with me

[00:46:40] and the time that you start raising capital because I'm going to be able to cut through a lot of the things that you have to learn because I've had some those experiences we're going to be able

[00:46:49] to get right to the media potatoes what it is that we need to do but you still have to build that crowd right that fundamental rule never goes away so it's still gonna take you some time to engage that crowd

[00:47:03] you know even if you kind of have the crowd you still have to get them warmed up engaged sometimes you have to educate them about crowd funding and that's why it hasn't really exploded the applications

[00:47:16] for crowd funding are just enormous you know with the crowd funding professional association the president Brian Christie he is right now circulating a petition for for football American football right which is you know it's crazy huge right I mean I love football like I'm a big Cincinnati

[00:47:37] Bengals fan even though the Bengals have not necessarily been a great franchise but I'm still a big fan what if the Bengals did a community round every year where where they raised five million

[00:47:48] dollars from their fans man the applications you know here in the US you know we're in the midst of this silver tsunami where baby boomers are retiring from their businesses and these businesses are already successful they already have customer bases but they don't necessarily have the children

[00:48:06] are grandchildren who want to get into those businesses so these businesses are just disappearing a magic in the community was to go in and purchase those businesses right that that already exist in their communities and now they get an ownership stake in those businesses or some type of

[00:48:22] debt relationship to those businesses so the applications for crowd funding are enormous we haven't even really talked about real estate I'm working with a real estate developer who's focused on affordable housing right now you know he's absolutely killing it but even working with me we have

[00:48:40] running to difficulties getting the offer up and ready to go so it's hard right and in and I'll tell anybody that if you want to make the leap in the crowd funding be prepared to do a lot of learning

[00:48:53] some management because there are a lot of moving parts you're probably not going to be able to do them all yourself so you're really going to need a team that's the reason that crowd funding

[00:49:02] has really not exploded and then there aren't a lot of small dollar investors I'm going to give one more quick shout out to the 10k project you know see so why not now where do you know where to

[00:49:15] water live and we've looking at talking right no we feel we do some crowd funding right yeah so the 10k project of which I'm a member not really an active member but I'm a member of the

[00:49:29] 10k project and you know what they're doing is it's going to be very very important as crowd funding grows especially in the black community but the 10k their goal was to get 10,000 small dollar

[00:49:43] investors who were looking they were already educated and they were doing due diligence and looking for businesses to invest in and if you have 10,000 of those businesses and each person invests 100 bucks you out of million dollars right probably a lot of businesses don't even need a

[00:49:59] million dollars right but that's the whole goal behind the 10k project which I think is I think that's a huge idea and I love the work that to want to is doing it actually co-created of course with them

[00:50:12] called the road to crowd funding but you know what they do with the 10k project I think is something that really needs to happen that you have people educated because a lot of people

[00:50:23] and I found this out what I was working with Linda and by the block is a lot of people especially in our community have never invested they really don't know anything about investing and then I'm

[00:50:33] going to come to you and I'm going to say hey invest in my real estate deal invest in my company and we're just kind of looking at me like huh so that education piece is very necessary

[00:50:43] for for issuers as for and also investor. Yes man yeah shout out to Tijuana and Tolisha have actually yeah actually recently became a member of 10k project and I'm going to be looking with them we're going to invest us on how to value company especially for the

[00:51:01] investors so I'm looking forward to that and we're probably going to have to run on the podcast if she will to talk about the 10k project because it's really noble what she's doing okay it's vital it's vital it's vital for the growth of investment crowd finally

[00:51:19] so build you've pioneered what we call the crowd fit investment crowd funding strategy and through this you've been able to successfully raise over 1.5 million almost two million dollars for on the surf owners since 2020 especially 2020 we talk about a pandemic here right

[00:51:39] could you explain what this crowd fit investment crowd funding strategy entails and how does it differ from other crowd funding approaches approaches which tend to not work as well yeah so a lot of times

[00:51:55] when you think about the communities right when you think about underserved communities a lot of the issues it some of them that we just talked about right people don't have a lot of money people are not necessarily savvy investors they don't really understand investing

[00:52:09] that they surely don't understand that if I give you 100 bucks today you're talking about giving me back $300 five hundred dollars five years from now right so that that's a really hard

[00:52:21] sale so with the crowd fit what we do is we really focus on and drill down into educating and engaging with your closest networks really really drilling down into people who are going to

[00:52:38] support you maybe not even your business right but they're going to support you because if if you're not able to get that initial push I'm able to get to that minimum goal in crowd funding

[00:52:50] so overwards crowd funding there's kind of you know all or nothing right with Kickstarter some of the indie go-go it's kind of all or nothing but with investment crowd funding you set a minimum

[00:53:00] goal and you set a maximum goal now sometimes that maximum goal it's capped at five million but that doesn't have to be your maximum goal you know unless you're willing to pay for a review

[00:53:12] then you're probably going to set your initial maximum at one 24 right but you're going to set your minimum goal at a goal that you can actually reach and that's going to come in and I like to think

[00:53:24] about crowd funding investment crowd funding in two phases right this is speaking directly to the crowd fit program is hitting that minimum right you have to hit that minimum and that minimum

[00:53:35] is going to be hit through your network primary secondary right networks right so that's going to be me reaching out to you Kevin asking for an investment right because you don't me I know you there's a

[00:53:48] level of trust built there and then that secondary network is going to be people that you know Kevin that I may not necessarily know but they trust you they know you and they trust you so they're

[00:53:59] going to take a look at at that campaign and really being able to energize and educate that primary and secondary network that's where we focus with the crowd fit program because if you're not going to

[00:54:13] get that money if you're not going to get those investments then all the Facebook ads in the world is not going to help you and then the other part of that and why we focus so hard on that is because

[00:54:22] once you hit your minimum then you can draw down some funds and you can change your marketing strategy but initially especially in low-wealth communities the only way I'm going to really be able to

[00:54:34] reach out to people is via email via text messages, DMs, phone calls and really educating people about investing about what it is that you're doing and not so much about the investment itself right

[00:54:49] because people do business with people who they know like and trust and these are people that you already know like and trust you I always give the example of our because and who's done really

[00:54:59] well for himself he's not necessarily a sophisticated investor but if I ask him for an investment he's going to invest in me he doesn't even care what I'm doing he doesn't even want to hear that right

[00:55:10] but sure he's going to make that investment and those are the people that we really focus on and that crowd fit strategy is getting to that minimum because if you never reach the minimum

[00:55:22] you don't have to worry about growing beyond the minimum so that's the real focus of the crowd fit strategy is education activation and engagement of your closest networks so are there particular types of products and services that are more ideal for crowd funding than others

[00:55:45] so if you could build a crowd you can crowd fund anything right so let me start there absolutely there are if I have a consumer facing product that's going to make a lot of

[00:55:58] sets right because I'm going to be able to provide people with access to the product for their investment some platforms that I've been able to raise capital for we kind of do that

[00:56:10] that to for two for one thing and that is that I ask you for an investment but also I give you access for a year or six months to the platform right so I am demonstrating traction on the platform

[00:56:25] while also collecting investment dollars so you know I think the platforms are really good I think in sewer facing products and you know where I really like to focus is the small business

[00:56:37] space and and within that small business space you already have customers you have people who are with their dollars already and simply having the conversation with them right the whole crowd that whole crowd fit conversation is really important and that's where a lot of times

[00:56:55] small business owners they don't think about having that conversation it's like hey thank you for buying a cup of coffee you have a great day you know obviously if you're still there six months later you're probably making money right so now you offer me the opportunity

[00:57:12] to make some money alongside you right then I have a financial interest tied to that business and again that's where my real community focus comes in it is because not a single person that I know

[00:57:27] that owned a business right there were a few guys who owned a couple houses in real estate but I didn't know anybody who owned a business and you know when you when you look across across the United States

[00:57:39] you know especially and black communities one of the things that you find is if there are any black businesses then they're really not generating a lot of revenue right there's some really small percentage of them but they're really not generating any revenue investment crowd funding is an

[00:57:56] opportunity to really build wealth and I think about wealth when I talk about wealth there are two types of wealth in my opinion right one of them is obviously the individual wealth that I build

[00:58:06] myself and then the other is that community wealth having those businesses in my community what is that look like in other communities right so if I want to buy a pair of shoes for my son to go

[00:58:19] back to school then I have to travel eight ten miles to a completely different part of the city in order to get some high quality shoes right because there are no retail outlets that exist

[00:58:31] in the part of the city that I live in there are no real outlets where I can get fresh healthy food options and a lot of those businesses that are small they can handle those one twenty four so one twenty four

[00:58:43] raises if if I could tell a really quick story here again and I like to tell these stories because this is really allows people to see what it looks like so in 2018 I met with some guys and we were

[00:58:58] talking about creating an opportunity zone for real estate and opportunity zone fund for real estate in West Louisville and I felt pretty good because these were some some pretty big hitters

[00:59:08] and they said hey let's meet in the coffee shop in West Louisville and coffee shops in West Louisville man what are you talking about right you mean McDonald's you want to go to you want to go to

[00:59:20] McDonald's there are no coffee shops so fast forward to working with fun black founders there's a coffee shop called black coffee and it's a BLK K O F F E right and they are wildly successful

[00:59:43] do they have great Colombian or Ethiopian coffee I don't know I care right I don't care what kind of coffee they have but now there is a place where you can go and you can rub shoulders with other

[00:59:55] entrepreneurs you can go and you can sit down and you can jump on the Wi-Fi all of those places only existed east of NIME Street but now there's one west of NIME Street and so to get community support

[01:00:08] wasn't hard at all right somebody just had to be willing to do it and then promoted and talk about it again that is the power of crowd funding and that's why it's so important with any marketing

[01:00:19] but it's so important to understand the motivation right because I said I wanted to clean safe place where I could go you know potentially meet with clients potentially do some work outside the house

[01:00:30] and you know you may won't Ethiopian coffee right so there you know they're going to be two different reasons that we invest right so it's important that you understand that but at the end of the day

[01:00:42] you know we were both willing to invest in a coffee shop in our community and and I think that's what's really really power I love that I love the we're going to do it I wish everybody could

[01:00:53] was with you so that they could get their crowd company and go in so that people can invest in businesses that they support you know this is free that we use here in Trinidad where like all

[01:01:04] so for me I'm somebody if I like your product for example if it's a food product or whatnot I'm just going to be going there every day every day every day every day and people blind so

[01:01:13] have any of shares and I play so it and it'd be great if I could say yes I do as a matter of fact you know it would be great okay so I want to go back to international crowd for

[01:01:26] name of crowdfunding outside of the US alright I love the cricket example but I want I want to know how we can make this happen in a practical sense what will you it will take

[01:01:36] excuse that in the non-US markets as well as your thoughts we probably may not have spent much time in the Caribbean if any but oh do you think that crowdfunding could work in a market like the Caribbean region so interestingly enough right it can work in the Caribbean

[01:01:55] because you can you can legally use rags CF in the Virgin Islands US Virgin Islands you can legally use it in Puerto Rico it could definitely work there but to your question and and to the

[01:02:08] substance of the question you're asking me it's all about the compliance right so one of the things that rags CF did was it solidified investment crowdfunding in the United States there were all

[01:02:22] kinds of laws where you could raise capital from people who lived in Kentucky in Louisville under intra state crowdfunding regulations that existed while they were working on rags CF and maybe that if you're doing a really small local raise maybe something like that works so some of the

[01:02:42] suggestions that I would have coming from the experiences of rags CF coming to market is if you could do it Caribbean wide that would be absolutely great right because you're not going from each jurisdiction trying to figure out you know what what works what unfortunately

[01:03:02] unfortunately the onset's up like that but you know we have different regulators in eastern Caribbean different regulators in Jamaica different in Trinidad, Guyana where I wish it could just be

[01:03:15] reach and wait I would get all the regulators in one room I'd say guys maybe there's the one please you know but please continue yeah so I mean that would be the first thing that I would really look at

[01:03:27] personally and a little skeptical of Fendra and the SEC's focus on investor safety it's just hard for me to believe that's really what they're concerned with you know I love it yeah I just

[01:03:47] find it hard but you know there so it has to be a certain level of compliance and regulation I think it breaks CF here is really over- over-regulated I don't think that it needs to be

[01:04:00] that regulated and maybe if you're raising less than a million dollars less than half a million dollars it just it doesn't really need to be that regulated I think the fact that there are limits

[01:04:10] on the amount of money that I as a non-acredited individual can invest I just don't think there need to be many more regulations besides that right you know so I'm not going to lose everything right

[01:04:22] like the most I can lose is like 2500 bucks right a per year so that you know that would be something else that whatever particular place you're in in the Caribbean if you don't have Caribbean wide looking at the regulations because what happens what all those regulations

[01:04:38] is it drives up the cost of the capital to where it almost doesn't make sense to raise the capital and the only people raising capital through crowdfunding are people who are desperate

[01:04:50] who can't get it anywhere else one of the things that I try to talk to people about here in the US is why did you come to me last why did you come to me after everything else was exhausted

[01:05:02] if you already had clients why didn't you go to them firm I mean customers why didn't you go to them first and another thing is like you know the technical assistance the way it set up

[01:05:11] here in the United States SBDC my no-rely business development corporations there are focused on a real 20th century model where you come in we're going to sit down we're going to work on this

[01:05:24] 40 page business plan we're going to do all of these financials and we're going to spend six months doing this and then you're going to have this really beautiful document that you're going

[01:05:34] to take to the bank and they're going to turn you down for a long right and and I'm just like why do that right and and one of the reasons that they do that is because they they don't know

[01:05:45] about crowdfunding they're not aware of crowdfunding they're not aware of the power of crowdfunding and the government's pretty much not aware of the power of crowdfunding so those government organizations that they provide the technical assistance here they they can't teach what they don't

[01:06:00] know so colleague Kathleen Monogue Scott Batson and crowd fund better they're working really hard to get into that market where they're able to to literally teach those those TAs right the technical assistance about crowdfunding and look at that is a primary option look to your crowd first and

[01:06:22] if you can't raise money from your crowd yeah I don't want to be harsh here but I'm going to have to be if you can't raise money from your crowd how you're going to do business if you can't raise

[01:06:34] money from these people who who's going to buy your products and services yeah so some of the things that we talk about it raised way is what does it look like to be able to go to financial

[01:06:45] institutions and maybe even other investors larger investors LPs and say listen we were able to raise 40% of what we need through crowdfunding right we we have a thousand investors who invested in this

[01:07:00] is that not due diligence enough is that not due diligence enough for you to kick in some money here is that not enough for you to go to the bank and then get alone if you have a thousand investors

[01:07:13] who have brought you half a million dollars two hundred fifty thousand dollars is that not enough to get some additional capital those are some of the things that we're working on and when you think about the Caribbean being able to educate the banking system venture capitalists angels

[01:07:31] you know for angels and venture capitalists man you could do a lot of their work for them right because a company that's going to crowdfund is going to heavily derisk your investment here right really getting the word out and educating people in the financial fields

[01:07:51] getting them to understand that you know the goal here is economic growth and economic development and in our particular country but it's not that you get all the money or I get all the money but

[01:08:02] if there are more businesses and there are more opportunities to invest there's more opportunity to make money if more people have jobs and money then there's there's more opportunities to do better and understand that this is a financial system that can work together right that for all

[01:08:17] the people who are unable to get venture capital for all the people who are unable to get bank loans why don't they take a look at crowdfunding right they may not be able to crowd fund either

[01:08:27] but why not take a look at crowdfunding so really getting that crowdfunding education out there having people become aware of that and having some of those financial institutions actually invest in training people about crowdfunding how to use crowdfunding investing in raceway and

[01:08:48] getting some free access I think that the essence of what we do it raceway the essence of what I do it doesn't change no matter what country it is right you still have to build a crowd you

[01:09:03] still have to have a business plan and what I say of business plan that could be a canvas right in lean camps it doesn't have to be the enormous business plan but you still have to

[01:09:12] understand what it is that you're doing with your value proposition is so most of what we do is not reg CF compliant now some of the things are right so we take you through a process we

[01:09:25] have to fill out a form C so you may not have to fill out a form C and then it's ready right you may have something different and I mean it may not just be called something different it may be a

[01:09:34] completely different document that has for different information but you know building out your crowd understanding who your target investors are how do you reach to where do you reach to that's not going to change doesn't matter what country you're in right all those things are going to remain

[01:09:48] the same so I don't think there are that many enormous differences in crowdfunding again when you get down to things that are regulation driven and regulation specific you will but most of the

[01:10:02] basis for crowdfunding is going to be the same no matter where you are the Caribbean Africa the it's going to be the same and it's going to be the same fundamental rule right and that's

[01:10:13] being able to build an excited and engaged crowd. I love it man I love it so also when I be a little my crowdfunding platforms in the Caribbean region I'm definitely going to send

[01:10:23] folks your way just to make sure that their campaigns are solid and that you're able to guide them through our process we definitely love to send someone out of business your way.

[01:10:31] Right now I want to tip my heart that's why I tip my heart to the Eastern Caribbean securities and regulatory commission I hope I didn't mess up that acronym they actually look into pilots and test out of a potential crowdfunding platform for the islands of the Eastern

[01:10:47] Caribbean so that's like saying loosers, saying kits, saying vincents, months or at and a few others so I really want to shout them out for for could be any pioneers in the Caribbean region in that space

[01:11:00] all right build so I probably have like one or two questions left for you before I like to go ahead and get back to your evening. I first question for you would be when you look ahead right what do

[01:11:10] you see as the future of crowdfunding how do you see it evolving over the next few years? Oh great question so I'll answer this in levels right so I think there's going to be

[01:11:27] this bifurcation in the industry which we're already starting to see here in the US right they're going to be those small businesses to sub one twenty four raises hopefully we're going to get that number up to two fifty hundred dollars where it's not heavily regulated and then

[01:11:43] you're going to have and you already do it and I say that because I think I work with that part of the market you're you know you're going to have the guys raising five million dollars you're

[01:11:52] going to have the guys coming out of white compensator and they're coming with money they're coming with VC backing they're pretty far down the road they're there kind of raising five million bucks for a different reason right I mean nobody's going to turn down five million dollars

[01:12:06] but but they're looking for you know market product fit they're looking for other things right where at the bottom end of the market people are looking for enough capital to grow their business to expand their business you know maybe black coffee wants to open two more locations

[01:12:23] and and if they're able to raise you know half a million dollars quarter of a million dollars then they're going to be able to do that right so I think that the first part is going to be

[01:12:32] this bifurcation I think that as people become more sophisticated investors and I'm talking about not accredited investors here right as they become more sophisticated and get a better handle on this I think they're going to start looking at other opportunities they're going to start working with

[01:12:50] large real estate developers right and having a community round so if you think about the gentrification that happens in the US what could potentially happen is because it's going to happen

[01:13:04] right I mean like they're like no illusions from me here right it's going to happen so if I do have to move at least I can make a little money on the way out you know doing community rounds so

[01:13:15] anytime there are big developers big projects that are happening in a community make sure there's a community round where you set up a rake CF and allow people in the community to invest right

[01:13:26] so that not only do they have the opportunity to invest and it build wealth one of the things that Devon always says after you make that first investment it's not so hard you know I think that

[01:13:38] communities are going to see the value of coming together and creating these not accredited syndicates to buy real estate I think they're going to start attacking the affordable housing program

[01:13:50] coming crisis here in the US I think they're going to be able to look at let it buying some of silver synamis I think communities are going to be able to actually buy these commercial

[01:14:02] corridors rehab them and put businesses in there at at the local level so I think that there are many innovative uses for investment crowd funding that we had not even thought about one of

[01:14:15] the innovations that one of the lawyers at in C3 is made is what they call the diversified community investment fund which allows you to use rake CF to actually create a fund and you know

[01:14:29] 60% of that fund has to be deployed into real estate 40% of that fund can be deployed as you see fit into businesses or whatever so I think as we see new bottles new innovation coming to the table

[01:14:41] and people understanding that they can make those investments and they can make a return I think that if you're not making money on your investments especially not accredited investors and I

[01:14:51] have money to invest right so if you're able to make money you're able to keep that pool going and you're able to see larger and larger community based impact all right bill

[01:15:01] is there anything that we have not covered this evening I've given you open mic open forum open platform say anything that you want to get to see audience that we have and touched on yet

[01:15:13] floor is yours you know and not really that could be that could be dangerous for me you know if we had done this in the morning that could have been a really dangerous thing but no I think I think

[01:15:26] you know that people should get educated about investment crowd funding educated about the opportunity that they should get educated about business and how business works and everybody's not an entrepreneur but in the era of investment crowd funding everybody who has a job can be an investor

[01:15:46] I love it right that's the thing that I would want to drive home is that you know everybody's not going to be a real estate developer everybody's not going to be founder but everybody can be an

[01:15:57] investor and everybody can be well podcast will there you have it getting funding from the crowd with bill useful subscribe to the value at the value dot show subscribe check us out on apple podcast google podcasts youtube Spotify wherever you listen or watch your podcast 100 that's bill

[01:16:20] oh thank you yeah there were a lot of people bit that you as a hard podcast world cabinet studios we are out