Finders play a vital role in introducing startups to potential investors.  Yet the general requirement that persons soliciting investors must register with the Securities and Exchange Commission as broker-dealers and be subject to the SEC’s broker-dealer regulatory regime has been a source of much uncertainty for finders and companies alike and has posed a serious

On October 11, 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”) announced it filed a complaint and obtained a temporary restraining order against Telegram Group Inc. and its wholly-owned subsidiary TON Issuer Inc. (collectively, “Telegram”) relating to Telegram’s offering of tokens without registration in violation of the Federal securities laws. The action sends a strong

Real estate developers should seriously consider equity crowdfunding to fund development projects for two major reasons, one of which has little or nothing to do with money. The first reason is that new securities offering legislation enacted in 2012 creates new legal capital raising pathways which allow developers for the first time to use the

Private companies in the gig economy like Uber and Airbnb would love to issue compensatory equity to their platform participants, just like they’re able to do with their employees. The problem is that the exemption from registration for compensatory issuances only covers issuances to employees and consultants of the issuer.  Last July, however, the Securities

On June 28, 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a release amending the definition of “smaller reporting company” (“SRC”) to expand the number of reporting companies eligible for relaxed or scaled disclosure. The change is estimated to benefit nearly 1,000 additional small public companies currently outside the SRC definition. But equally noteworthy in the

On March 22, the Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Securities, and Investment of the Financial Services Committee conducted a hearing entitled “The JOBS Act at Five: Examining Its Impact and Ensuring the Competitiveness of the U.S. Capital Markets”, focusing on the impact of the JOBS Act on the U.S. capital markets and its effect on capital

The just completed IPO of Snap Inc. has received enormous buzz and plenty of press coverage, mostly about its eye-popping valuation and offering proceeds, the big winners among the founders and early investors and the millennials who bought shares. But not nearly as much attention has been given to Snap’s tri-class capital structure

On July 11, 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Securities and tesla logoExchange Commission is investigating whether Tesla Motors Inc. violated the securities laws, apparently by not disclosing timely a fatal crash involving a Tesla Model S. Tesla’s handling of the incident from a disclosure standpoint raises interesting issues involving materiality and risk factors.