Our client (investment company) decided to run a crowdfunding platform with a focus on small businesses after a long record of working with hedge funds, credit unions, and due diligence companies.
The main goal was to help local businesses grow and get enough funds to expand and enter new markets. Likewise, the client aimed to build a secure and easy-to-use system for non-accredited investors.
Two primary goals of the client were as follows. The first was to provide a way for small businesses to present themselves and reach out to potential customers interested in their products. And the second goal was to build features for business owners so that they can effectively raise funds to satisfy their companies’ needs. Additionally, the company intended to provide educational material and educate potential customers. Apart from the tasks listed above, we were requested to create a simple and transparent system to show investors all relevant legal information, business description, product goals, and growth expectations of the company they can invest.
Unlike many other investment companies, the client wanted to make a focus on funds security and transparency. The client intended to build a system in which all possessions of any funds from investors and all committed capital was held in the third-party FDIC insured FBO account.
Once an investment company reached its minimum fundraising target, capital was transferred from the third-party FDIC insured FBO account to the investment company. Afterward, the company issued purchased securities to each of the investors.
If a company would fail to reach its minimum goal, all commitments were returned from the third-party FDIC account to the investor. The product did not include any hidden fees or accrued interest.
It is natural that for every startup everything starts with big challenges and it’s crucial solving them correctly within the given amount of time. Before starting with any software development, we had to coordinate our working plan with the legal team to receive correct legal requirements and limitations.
In 2016 Obama signed a JOBS Act. His speech during the law’s crowdfunding provision:
This bill is a potential game-changer. Right now, you can only turn to a limited group of investors - including banks and wealthy individuals - to get funding. Because of this bill, start-ups and small business will now have access to a big, new pool of potential investors - namely, the American people. For the first time, ordinary Americans will be able to go online and invest in entrepreneurs that they believe in.
Although it was really a game-changer, there were no legal frameworks around the law by the time we started a project. We had to be flexible enough so that we can tweak the development process once lawyers provide detailed information.
Dealing with funds always requires high-security standards. In addition to all technical security best practices, we provided consultations to clients’ employees and contractors. We set up a secure email service, discussed how to avoid social engineers’ hacks, how to keep sensitive data, and provide an additional layer of network security in the company office. The next step was to provide security for the investor funds and create protection from unfair businesses. From the technical side, we integrated escrow accounts and used additional third-party providers to secure investor funds. In addition, to protect investors, we developed software to help the company to complete the due diligence before listing the business on the platform
The client raised an angel round and we had to hit important milestones in order to close seed and then series A rounds. At first, we provided a fully remote team which helped to raise a seed round. After the seed round, we were able to find local talents that fit the client’s goals and can increase the development process.
In 3 months we were able to provide a fully working MVP product. Fully working MVP gave a lot of trust for investors and also provided general feedback for the idea and values of the company. Having an MVP in place helped us to improve the product and business processes. Gradually, we built technical solutions ready for the public release which were fully focused on investors’ features and company owners’ requests. The platform was good enough so that the client managed the partnership with multiple credit unions and provided them a white label solution of the platform we created. Among these credit unions were such that had more than 2 million users and this forced us to do extra work for the platform optimization.
During the first year, the client was able to list 54 different companies and raised more than $1.2 million to help local U.S.-based businesses to grow.
Duration: 5 weeks
Team: Lead Engineer, Designer, Fullstack Engineer
Duration: 18 weeks
At the time when the project started, the law around Reg CF was not clear and the client spent a lot of resources to build reliable legal workflows.
Duration: 10 weeks
The main focus on this big milestone is approval from FINRA and receiving all required licenses to operate.
Duration: 2 weeks
We primarily were focused on quality assurance and communicating with the legal team.
Duration: 4 weeks
The client entered into the partnership with credit unions and launched white-label platforms for them. That resulted in extra efforts for us to re-design the architecture for the project.
Duration: 2 weeks
Team: Lead Engineer, Designer, Two Frontend Engineers, Backend Engineer, DevOps, Quality Assurance. We proposed to use the microservice architecture in order to have 10+ white label solutions with custom functionality.
Duration: 6 weeks
Demo of our platform to investors, friends, family members, and first users. The primary goal is to get real feedback from company owners and potential investors.
Duration: 10 weeks
We identified needs for improvement from the real users’ perspective. In order to fix the inconveniences, we needed to elaborate more on the design, UI, and UX which were based on the initial legal framework.
Duration: 12 weeks
Publicly launched platform. Press releases on TechCrunch, Business Insider, and other popular websites were published, advertisements placed and more users received.
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