Episode 1 – Breaking Down Borders: How Platforms Can Enable Global Deal Access and Visibility

Theme: Cross-Border Collaboration
Moderator: Konstantin Boyko (CEO, LenderKit)
Panelists: Eric A. Cox II (COO, Netcapital); Jānis Blaževičs (CEO, CrowdedHero); Jason Fishman (CEO, Digital Niche Agency)

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Moderator — Konstantin Boyko
CEO & Founder, LenderKit; CEO & Founder, CrowdSpace; GECA Steering Committee
Konstantin Boyko is a product strategist and ecosystem builder in investment crowdfunding. He leads LenderKit, a white-label investing software provider for crowdfunding and private markets, and CrowdSpace, an industry hub mapping platforms and trends across Europe and beyond. As a GECA Steering Committee member, Konstantin champions cross-platform collaboration, practical compliance, and scalable tech standards that lower go-to-market friction for issuers and portals. He moderates high-signal discussions on cross-border deal access, secondary markets, and digital identity.

Jason Fishman
CEO, Digital Niche Agency (DNA)
Jason Fishman is a growth strategist specializing in investor acquisition for equity crowdfunding. Having supported hundreds of campaigns across Reg CF, Reg D, and Reg A, he brings a quantitative approach to audience research, message testing, and conversion optimization. Jason’s teams design multi-market funnels, creative localization, and KPI frameworks (ROAS/MER) to turn awareness into committed capital. His POV: global expansion succeeds when strategy, disclosures, and creative are built for comparability and trust.

Jānis Blaževičs
CEO, CrowdedHero (Latvia)
Jānis Blaževičs leads CrowdedHero, an ECSPR-licensed European equity crowdfunding platform connecting growth companies with investors worldwide. With a background in international brand building and investor relations, Jānis focuses on pan-EU execution, language/localization, PSP/KYC orchestration, and practical uses of DLT (blockchain) for share registers and bonds. His core theme: regulation and sensible tech can reduce bureaucracy and unlock scale, while liquidity and simple onboarding drive sustained investor participation.

Eric Cox
COO, Netcapital (USA)
Eric Cox is Chief Operating Officer at Netcapital, a U.S. funding portal and broker-dealer enabling retail participation in private companies. A corporate and securities attorney, Eric blends operations with compliance leadership—advocating “compliance is the pathway to profitability.” He’s led initiatives around escrow flows, disclosure quality, attribution, and secondary-market enablement via ATS partnerships. Eric is a board member of the Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA) and a frequent voice on global investor access, AI risk, and cross-border collaboration.

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Andrew: Hi everybody. Welcome to our Architects of Change – Think Tank Series. This is a series of five round table discussions, all with subjects that align with one of the GECA core pillars. Now, GECA stands for Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance, and our supporters all share one vision, which is for a truly borderless global equity crowdfunding ecosystem.

One of the pillars that we’ve got is cross-border collaboration, the notion that the crowdfunding industry must collaborate and work together to be able to compete as a viable investment class. This meeting’s going to dig a little bit deeper into that subject, and we’ve called it ‘Breaking Down Borders’, how platforms can enable global deal access and visibility today.

That’s enough from me. I’d like to introduce our moderator for today’s discussion, the man who’s going to guide our participants through this valuable discussion. Please welcome Konstantin Boyko. Konstantin is CEO and founder of LenderKit, who provide flexible investing software for crowdfunding platforms.

He’s also CEO and Founder of Crowd Space, which is an educational hub for the crowdfunding industry, main players. And on top of all of that, he’s also a valued member of the GECA steering committee. So welcome Konstantin, and I’m going to pass over to you. Thanks so much.

Konstantin Boyko: Thank you, Andrew. So I’m Konstantin. I’m the moderator of today’s session. This is the first of our GECA round tables. It’s called, as we already know, Breaking Down Borders. And over the next hour, we are going to explore how we can actually make crowdfunding globally possible. And that includes technical side from blockchain to payment rails, and also trust frameworks that give investors confidence across borders.

And for that reason, we are joined today by three remarkable panelists. Each bring deep and different expertise from also different corners of the crowdfunding world. So please meet Jason Fishman from DNA marketing in the United States. He’s a growth marketing strategist and crowdfunding expert with over a decade of experience helping startups and scale-ups plan, launch and optimize their equity crowdfunding campaigns. Jason has worked on over a hundred campaigns, guiding founders in reach and conversion global investor audiences.

From another continent, we have Jānis Blaževičs, CEO at Crowded Hero and Equity Crowdfunding platform based in Latvia, focused on connecting European startups with investors worldwide. Jānis has a ground in international marketing, brand positioning and investor relations with experience bridging cultural and market gaps.

And also from the US we have Eric Cox, co-founder of Netcapital, a US based equity crowdfunding platform enabling entrepreneurs to raise capital from a broad investor base. Eric has deep expertise in compliance platform operations, and creating investor access to diverse high potential deals.

Thank you all for being here. Let’s start with maybe short explanation or discussion. What global crowdfunding actually might mean. What it is about, why we even talk about global crowdfunding, because a lot of people, when they hear crowdfunding, they think about Kickstarter, for example. And Kickstarter is global by default, right? So anybody can, pretty much, anybody can support a campaign on Kickstarter. But today we are talking about equity crowdfunding and equity is the word, which actually makes it much more difficult when it is compared to Kickstarter and reward and donation. So let’s discuss why we even have these challenges and maybe even jumping into some practical examples because I’m sure every, each one of you has some cases where you saw that actual cross border investment is possible. So if you could touch on those examples, it would be really nice. So whoever wants to start first, please feel free.

Jason Fishman: Happy to hop on to that Konstantin. First of all, it’s an honor to be here. Andrew, thank you for putting this together. Excited to speak with everybody who’s tuned in. As Konstantin mentioned, I’ve worked on over 500 deals. Some of those have been Reg CF, US only targeting others have been Reg D, Reg S. International by nature. I’ve also worked on other forms of investor acquisition for FinTech apps. Some we have to exclude the US where I’m based here in Los Angeles, and we can’t just use the word global at that.

As a marketer, I have to look at three markets, five markets really determine who is the audience there? What creative should I be using to resonate? What call to action? What funnel, what portal are we pointing them towards? And then have to measure the results comparatively. We’ve worked on a good amount of campaigns that are US targeted, that have different broker dealers, different partners, different filings to bring in investors from Canada, Europe, Asia, different places in the world.

And I, Konstantin, that really is the future. Sure, the legislation, everything on the compliance side can be more tricky right now. Over time, I anticipate more avenues that are straightforward for issuers to be able to launch and raise capital effectively, and more seamlessly. But my expertise on the marketing side, what I would tell you goes back to the audience. It goes a step further or begins with marketing strategy, marketing approach, not just, hey, this is how much we’re looking to raise. Here’s our minimum entry point for each investor, as much as an algorithmic roadmap that shows based on what’s happening in these markets, based on what competitors are doing to reach my target audiences.

Here’s who we’re targeting. This is how we’re targeting which channels we’re using. This is the creative, the messaging that’s going to go into each one of those mediums. We can have strategic partners help accelerate it, and in these different geographical areas, we then need to move to projections. The only way to measure is with numbers, impressions, clicks, conversions. I don’t want to just launch in a new country. I want to know what I’m going to produce from that country contingent on a strong conversion rate, the most important digital metric for these campaigns. But I encourage anyone who’s looking at one of these campaigns, especially if they’re going to be in various different areas here, put together a marketing plan. So many groups skip it. I could speak about this at length, but to start out the conversation, I believe it needs to begin with the strategic approach.

Konstantin Boyko: Sounds good. Eric, do you want to jump and continue from your perspective and then we go to Europe?

Eric Cox: Yeah, that would be fantastic. Thanks again, Andrew and Konstantin for leading this conversation. I’m Eric Cox, I’m a member of the Netcapital team, and as the COO, like really kind of hands on seeing how a couple hundred companies have raised just about a hundred million dollars through the portal. One of the things I’d like to say is I’m super grateful for the leadership of our European counterparts. The United States was late to the party per usual. Our regulatory framework for this is less than 10 years old. So, I like to say we’re very much in the education phase of this journey. But we’re very fortunate to have folks have been leading the charge in Europe and beyond.

And while the regulations in the United States per SEC guidelines, especially Reg CF is restricted to US-based entities doing the raising, we do allow investors, investors internationally can participate. So we love seeing folks from all parts of the world participating in these deals, and we want to continue to do that. And then also under Reg A and Reg D, there is a little bit more specifically on the Reg D. There’s much more flexibility in international companies raising through US based portals like ours.

So for me, when I think about what does global deal access really mean, it’s not only the idea that everyday folks from all over the world can participate in these deals, but that we get really cool entrepreneurs willing to allow those investors to participate in those deals. The supply side is super important, so always grateful for when entrepreneurs believe in the community element. They really support the idea of users being owners, investomers, if you will. I know it’s a little corny, but it is true. You can invest and be a customer of the company. That’s what I think about when I think about we have global deal access beyond just the United States scope. I’d love to hear Jānis perspective as well.

Konstantin Boyko: Yeah. So just to summarize, do I understand correctly that in the US it’s not an issue to get international investors to invest in the US deals, but it doesn’t happen very often when companies from outside US are raising on the US platforms.

Eric Cox: Yeah. So it depends on what regulatory exemption we select. So if we select truly Reg CF 4(a)(6) Title three of the Jobs Act that precludes international companies from raising under the Jobs Act, it is only for US based entities. However, one thing we’ve also seen that is a really good point, Konstantin, we’ve seen folks that have had success building a brand in Europe and create a United States subsidiary. That will operate in the United States, and that entity can raise under Reg CF as well. So different exemptions would allow international companies to raise in the United States. But also if you are interested in expanding to the United States, one great way is to create a US based entity, raise capital under that entity and use that to expand throughout the United States here.

And of course that has a big digital media presence if you’re not super involved in the region already. So we definitely would encourage you to work with the DNA to help market your product market, the offering, here in the United States as you grow here. But yeah, that’s exactly right. It depends on the exemption. We’d love to sit down and kind of guide you through that. We’ve had great success with companies that have done incredible traction in Europe and beyond. And then we help them kind of set up the United States entity and raise capital here in the States. So that could be an option.

Konstantin Boyko: Okay. Clear enough. Let’s hear from Europe now and compare how it is.

Jānis Blaževičs: Yeah. Thank you, Andrew and Konstantin. I think it’s a very great topic and I think it’s very not a problem. Huge, but still, I would like to start, I mean, just a little bit from a different perspective. I mean, not all the companies are meant to be a global one. Okay. That’s the biggest problem when you are thinking not all the companies are meant to go globally and raise the capital in the States and attract investor from the States. So there are some of the companies who might be a global one and they will be successful if the company is really scalable, it’ll be successful in Europe, it’ll be successful in Asia, and it’ll be successful in states, whatever, if this company is meant to be global.

And so, yeah, I would like to start from this perspective, not even from, and there will be the small companies, like small breweries who will always be just meant to be for the local investors because nobody, nobody cares about these companies. I mean, only the locals one. And of course, and the next big topic is the, I think, and I see this one as well in Latvia, is the marketing question of marketing. How accurate guys are looking for these questions, how they, how the entrepreneurs are ready to speak about themselves, about the business plan and how attractive might be this business. So I think, when you really, when we talk about this global equity crowdfunding, so everything starts with the project. And then it goes from the regulatory you can look for to raise capital in the states. You can look for capital in Europe or in Asia, if this product meant to be in, if this product is scalable. So I think this kind of answer for the global crowdfunding. So, and everything starts, I mean, from these first steps. And then, then it comes to the marketing. How proper is the marketing plan? And then you decide wherever you go to the crowdfunding or VC or any other way you can raise the capital. But yeah, so I would like to touch a little bit more that the biggest issue is the projects and the challenge.

Konstantin Boyko: Okay. So you make a valid point that not every project actually, or every company needs to raise globally. And that’s a fair point. But on the other hand, I know that on your platform crowded hero, there are not only Latvian projects, so I’m sure you have success cases with actual cross border flow of funds. So could you touch on some success stories maybe or some examples which stand out?

Jānis Blaževičs: Yes. So when the project is, I mean, so European Union is quite enough market. I mean, like, Eric was telling, so according to European license, investors across the globe can then register and invest through the European platform. So it’s a little bit slightly differently with the project. So, when you launch the platform, so when you have a good campaign, when you target the campaign, whatever, in Austria, Portugal or Spain, there will be investors from Slovakia. So we are having that thing from the 50 countries. The investors already, like with the baby diapers and vice versa with the Portuguese project, and again, always it comes a little bit more to the local equity crowdfunding is more to the entrepreneur. And their size of the network. I mean, it not always depends on the crowdfunding platform because you can use any platform where you want. If you have your community international, this will be the success story.

Konstantin Boyko: Okay. So yeah, still the point that every project is as global as the community or basically as every fundraiser. Exactly. Community and yeah, all comes from there. Makes sense. Can I add one point to that, Konstantin?

Eric Cox: Yeah. I think in terms of examples for the cross platform success, I think that’s a really good point. It really, strategy is everything. We are facilitators at our core when we’re running portals. We’re trying to enable your success and your success is based off of your vision. One thing I’d really like to keep track of is that these corporations are multinationals and a lot of the multinational corporation have investment arms, or they’re interested in finding really unique solutions.

I like to joke around every once in a while, but Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, they’re not in the business of creating new products so much anymore as they are acquiring successful brands. So building your brand strategy into corporate appeal to these broader corporate venture arms or corporate venture in general, I think is really interesting.

We had a company that Jason, actually with DNA and NetCapital worked on called Avadain. And they actually were backed by Panasonic out of Japan. Very much a US-based entity company, but solicited and ultimately attracted investment from a Japanese multinational. So in this more global universe that we live, I don’t want to lose track of the value of these corporate investors as well, because not only can individuals invest our portals, but folks can invest in their retirement accounts. Corporations can invest as well. So it’s more than just targeting any individual investor. I think we want to keep that corporate framework in mind as well. Sorry, I hope I didn’t cut you off Konstantin.

Konstantin Boyko: Okay. Yeah, no problem. It’s, that’s great. One thing Jānis is, you mentioned that on your platform, basically anyone can invest from any country. Is it really the case or you still have some limitations? Because my understanding of ECSPR framework is it’s open to European Union nationals or residents, basically, but it’s not so open for other countries. How does it work in practice for you?

Jānis Blaževičs: No, I mean, everything is with your payment service provider, as European Union equity crowdfunding platforms are not the AML compliant. So our AML officers are basically our payment processing company. So depending on the payment processing company you are using, there is no limitations for, according to our license, to onboard investors across the globe. Of course, we are not talking about black countries from the compliance perspective and so on and so forth. I mean, right now there is some new countries joining that list. But I mean, so globally, yes. From China, from the states, from Venezuela. From Nigeria, you can onboard in platform and do the investment. I mean, there is two ways right now through the direct payment or through the card. So there’s no limitations. The ECSPR license only limits on the European Union so that the company or SPV should be located in European Union.

Konstantin Boyko: Okay. So it’s only a limitation on who can raise, not who can invest, in this case. Exactly. Yep. Okay. And basically, whatever your payment service provider and KYC providers can do in who they can onboard. This is your limitation in terms of investor base depend on their risk appetite.

Jānis Blaževičs: Yeah, I think that’s the, it’s a slightly, a little bit different on the lending. But on equity crowdfunding, yes. The only AML officers are the payment service providers. I mean, so, yes, that’s our limitations or that’s the cooperation with the partners.

Konstantin Boyko: Okay. Alright. Well it sounds like you don’t really have a lot of challenges when it comes to cross-border crowdfunding, maybe your partners, and in this case payment service providers they have. But for you, it sounds quite easy. Let’s ask how US participants, how do you see it from your perspective? US perspective? What actually stops or slows down this global deal flow? What are the regulatory or operational hurdles.

Eric Cox: Yeah, and I don’t want welcome Jason into follow up here, but one of the things, so we do similarly, we are restricted by our banking partners, our escrow partners, our custodial partners. The regulatory framework is kind of robust. But yeah, as long as you could pass AML/KYC counter-terrorism checks generally that allows you to participate. There are a couple other fun, interesting wrinkles that can keep folks from being able to invest in some of these deals that are unique challenges.

For example, we have worked with companies that were backed by United States Department of Transit or State Department, or, there are some certain restrictions if you get grant money from certain government entities. Department of Defense specifically, we’ve done fundraisers with companies that did take DOD money and were not allowed to allow international investors to participate in that round.

So that’s kind of a unique one. I think it’s rare, but it’s kind of an interesting one and in that instance it was really kind of the company’s restrictions by virtue of their pre-existing investments. So that’s kind of a fun, unique one. But besides that, we are always super excited to see, we do the conversions internally. So I remember one time really early in our, in the platform’s journey, we started seeing some Yen being transferred and I guess some news outlet picked up the opportunity to invest and that attracted a group international investors and we’re super excited to see that. But we’d love to see Latin America participate. We haven’t seen as much of African participation as we’d like to, but there are some deals that might change that.

So yeah, we think it’s really important for the broader economy to participate in these types of investments because there’s, we talk about the wealth disparities in the United States. Wealth disparities globally are even more stark than that. So if we talk about accredited investors, that’s only three to 9% of the United States, depending on how you would use the accreditation status. But globally it’s less than 1% of investors globally are accredited.

So, we really want to, if we want to see more people be able to have access to what could be the greatest wealth generation engine that is early stage investing, then we really need to think more than just the United States investor, but the global investor participating in these deals. And then Jason, yeah, I’d love to hear your perspective on some of the challenges.

I think the marketing element might be even more interesting, and I think there’s some technological developments that allow this to be especially with translation elements, AI components. But yeah, I’d love to hear your thoughts on some of the challenges that you face.

Konstantin Boyko: Yeah. Just one thing, sorry, Jason, before you jump into marketing, just to comment. So I had a question which I wanted to ask Eric, but you already answered it, in a way. So do you see US market has not enough market alone for investors there. So because we hear a lot in Europe from a lot of platforms that if they only stick to their own home country, then the market is very small. So they need at least European market, like common European market to be successful. And ideally, of course, more than that. But if you look at the US market, it’s big enough. So maybe it’s enough to just focus on the US market and don’t look beyond it. So it looks like international expansion or like global market is part of your strategy anyway.

Eric Cox: Yeah, I think we’re very fortunate. The United States does have kind of a two things, access to capital and risk seeking behavior. I think the American investors is uniquely risk seeking. But I also think, so maybe technically there’s enough dollars in the United States, especially the coastal cities. But I do think that in terms of the evangelists, there’s never enough of those. I’d love to see having people championing your brand, not just domestically here in the United States, but beyond globally. I think that’s really important and I think having perspectives, unique perspectives from all over the world ultimately can make you a better company. I think when you’re thinking about the way that you, your corp, all the way from corporate governance to resource allocation, to environmentalism. If you think about those things have global impacts. It’s not just a uniquely US issues. So I think having perspectives from around the globe I think is very, very helpful.

And we’re really proud, we’ve had most states, more than half of the United States, we’ve had an issuer represented from more than half of the United States. So not just San Francisco, Boston, New York, but middle of the country as well. And I think that’s a really cool diversity element. And having Appalachia represented and the middle of the country and the South represented. And then I think through Reg D, we’d like to see even more international projects. It’s a really cool project that we want to work on. And that should really have input from the people in the region. So maybe technically from just dollar standpoint there’s a good amount of dollars in the United States, but I think unique perspectives and evangelists around the globe, there’s just no, in my opinion, there’s no better way to have somebody support you than putting some small amount, having a vested interest in your success and then them sharing it with the people around them as well. It has this real kind of empowering network effect that I think is irreplaceable and that should be global.

Konstantin Boyko: Great. Sounds good. Now Jason, let’s look at it from marketing perspective.

Jason Fishman: Yeah. Sorry, I gotta have challenges. Sure. Well, we work with groups that are in planning, groups that are plateaued and groups that are scaling. I tend to put it in one of those categories so I can get a sense of where they’re at in their process if they’re in planning. I regularly see the filings, experience delays. As a marketer, I want to see compliant marketing take place around audience building during that period of time. And you could be testing out which markets you’re getting the strongest response from where you’re able to build.

The word community was used earlier, and I have assumptions going into a campaign. I need the data to show me what’s physically working. Our clients issuers need tangible results. They need this campaign to work for them. They need to be effective at raising capital. So regardless of where we start in terms of marketing, in terms of the initial plan, which audiences where they’re located, I’m going to need to optimize over time towards the performance, towards the results, towards the pockets of conversions of investments. If I’m able to see one country, one city, one region performing stronger than the other, I want to reallocate the advertising, the outreach, the traffic generators to where we’re getting the actual responses, where we’re seeing completed investments occurring.

And with advertising, we can be very targeted in, down at the zip code level in the US I have some data partners where I can look at an individual building and the IP addresses the mobile. Laptops that have been in that building over the past six months. You can be hyper geo-targeted with advertising, but it’s a matter of setting up the right tests so you can contrast the metrics that come in from there and be able to say, hey, this audience this day and time of week is working best, we’re going to do more of that. So although the idea of working globally is very attractive, I still need to optimize towards what the performance is. There’s cases where we’ve targeted countries where the traffic, the visits to the offering page from investors is very inexpensive, but the performance isn’t there. I’ve worked on campaigns where countries in Asia, countries in Europe are the top performers and we want to spend a lot more there. And as Eric was mentioning. With AI translation, creating content that feels more personalized for the target audience you’re going after is easier than ever. We could have a different creative, a different ad, a different set of messaging running for each of the variants of audiences that we’re targeting.

And again, look at the numbers to determine what’s performing best, where to optimize and eventually where to scale. That’s what I love about the digital tools and the fact that these offerings are online. We could pinpoint in the analytics what’s working best, do more of what’s working somewhat systematically and take it to whole new levels. We’ll see clients, initiate rolling closes, take portions of the capital, reinvest it back into marketing and get to much higher spends. But at that point they know, hey, I’m getting a good return on ad spend. I’m getting a good marketing efficiency ratio for every dollar I spend. I’m getting 10 back in some cases, 20 back even more.

On some of the other campaigns we’ve worked on, some of the case studies that we’ve published, so making use of the time during the filing process for audience building and then allowing the reports to show you what to do more of during the live campaign, especially on a geo-targeting basis.

Konstantin Boyko: Okay. Well, you touched on interesting point about translations. And I want to direct this question back to Europe because Europe, unlike US, has a lot of languages. So I know that for many European platforms it’s a real issue because you need to translate documents and other things to multiple languages, otherwise you wouldn’t be compliant in certain country. So, Jānis would you share some experience from that perspective, how you deal with translations?

Jānis Blaževičs: I had exactly the same questions other the Jason speech, so. Yes. This is, I think, the biggest issue when you are talking about the European Union, regarding the national marketing campaigns, because there’s limitations on that. So you cannot target Malaysia. So with the European project, like we were having, we were having a, I think the dairy milk product. We wanted to target the Malaysia and you’re not able to target the Malaysia, and to target crowdfunding investors. I mean the retail investors because it’s not allowed, just, it’s not allowed according to the local regulations, to target the, with the specific marketing campaigns, these regions, even though it’s, in most of the countries.

So, in, so. There’s a lot of countries where you can use the English language. So, in European Union, like, I think the Spanish is quite different. German is quite accurate on that. You cannot target the German market once you haven’t received approval from the from the BaFin. So there is some specifics on that. I mean, on the marketing and I think it’s more related to the MiFID. So in this case, so yes, we are having seven languages in a platform. Just operate in the countries where we are looking for.

Konstantin Boyko: And what about key information, key document where you need to list all the information about offering. Do you also translate it to all those languages or depending on the deals, maybe on this?

Jānis Blaževičs: Yeah, on this we’re using right now we are using AI. I mean, so it’s getting more, more easier, but still it’s not always accurate. It’s getting more and more, but it’s not always accurate. And we are just mentioning this information. But yes, if you are targeting, for example, the German, you should have the key information, key investment sheet translated into the German language. Yes. That’s absolutely true. But if the business owner is having their community and they’re having these investors, you don’t need for that. So there’s no limitations to, for international investors to join, but you cannot specifically target. I mean, there’s limitation on the marketing activities.

Konstantin Boyko: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a difference. That makes sense. Okay. We already touched on technology side with automatic translation. So maybe let’s talk a little bit about how technology, or different new standards or frameworks or new technologies? Well, maybe not so new already, can help with all this cross border investing. So for example, of course blockchain might be one of the solutions. And it’s been in there for many, many years already, and it was always expected that blockchain will do many things easier and more transparent and so forth.

So do you, from your own experience, do you see blockchain helping in any of the ways, not only maybe from cross border perspective, but in general to make crowdfunding more transparent, more stable, or more anything basically. So whatever example related to blockchain you can share that would be interesting to hear.

Jānis Blaževičs: Maybe I can give. So we started, I think, couple of months ago the implementation of the DLT technology. I mean, first of all, I want to make sure that the blockchain is not the same as the crypto. I mean, this is just a technology which will be run up and running, but definitely blockchain will help to reduce the bureaucracy in the markets. I mean, now we are talking about the blockchain ledger technology to register property or share rights into the company. Right now, we see a lot of European countries like Germany, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Italy, France is already using and approved the DLT technology as one of the solutions to run the shareholder registries.

And definitely, yes, this will, I mean, in the next two years, I mean, part of the company registry will be run on a blockchain, and this will definitely, first of all, reduce the bureaucracy and speed up all the legal processes.

Konstantin Boyko: So in your case, you are issuing shares on blockchain, right? And this reduces certain paper?

Jānis Blaževičs: No, I mean, in our case, we we’re talking about two products, bond issue and a share registration process. So in both cases everything remained the same. Just the, as a classical LTD company in previously mentioned countries, the company’s share books can be run on a blockchain. And this will, of course, always ease and speed up the process. And the same in the. On the bond issue right now, you don’t need to have custodian banks or issuers, you can issue the bonds through the blockchain and run the books through the blockchain with just the walleting system and stuff like that. So, I mean, so we’ll see the blockchain, sooner or later, I mean, I think sooner than we are expecting.

Konstantin Boyko: Okay. And Eric, how is it working or not working for you?

Eric Cox: Yeah, we felt like blockchain and crypto would be so important that we actually formed a blockchain and crypto advisory board for our company with some experts to help guide us on that. From a regulatory and strategic standpoint, it is fully integrated. We do believe that is an important piece of the future. Right now just making sure that through our transfer agent, we track every share, what issue price, what type of security they that was offered, issue date, grant date, all the maturity elements that are required or important.

We want to make, we’re always tracking that. But we think in the future it’ll be even more important. Our goal is to very soon through virtue of some of our partnerships with alternative trading systems is to roll out secondary transfers. So right now we’ve done a bunch of primary offerings, where people could invest it directly into the company. But we know that the true value for the investor would come from selling those shares. And companies are staying private longer, if not forever. By virtue of access to capital and the kind of the overwhelming burden that comes from public offerings. And so one thing that we’ve really always built our technology around was the ability to do the primary offering and then list those shares for trade on secondaries.

So we partnered with alternative trading system. We hope to roll that out sooner than later, to where owners of those securities could then have free trading in those private securities. We’ve done alpha and beta testing on this. We’ve had over a million shares exchange hands in one of our technology rollouts. And then we are really working closely with finra on the SEC to make sure that everything is in a way that they’re comfortable with. This has never been done before, through liquidity in private securities. So you imagine that this is a really kind of a difficult hurdle to overcome. But we think blockchain and will be an important element of that. And we do believe in terms of allowing international investors to participate better. We think crypto is important. We’d like people to be able to, right now debit card, credit card, ACH wire transfer, all accepted through the portal.

We think there’s a demographic of people that would like to be able to buy and sell securities with crypto assets. And we think that could be pretty fun. And then the digital IDs you mentioned as well, the name of the game is understanding exactly who owns which shares, and then making sure that we can account for each of these offerings in a way that doesn’t get, that keeps everybody comfortable. All the regulators, all the regulators comfortable. Internationally we do have to, we have to deal with passports versus state and local IDs. That adds some friction for people, unfortunately. But that’s the hurdle that makes people comfortable and avoid any potential money laundering issues.

So there are some pretty cool hurdles that come with these advancements in technologies, but we do think that there’s going to be even more opportunity by virtue of integrating blockchain crypto specifically. And digital IDs, digital wallets.

Konstantin Boyko: Alright. Jason, how do you see using blockchain and crypto does it impact any marketing for the campaigns?

Jason Fishman: There is a funny saying few years back of, the first rule of enterprise blockchain is you do not mention the word blockchain. And I’ve been working Web3 since 2017. I’ve worked on crowd sales in a variety of formats, have worked on reg CF campaigns that bonus tokens, with the shares, have worked with cryptocurrency exchanges and a variety of different groups, in Web3 as a whole. Very excited about. Some of the topics Eric and Jānis brought up, in terms of secondary trading, what that means with the digital asset and the liquidity that’s available there.

For us, the biggest part of the conversation for blockchain is blockchain clients and how we simplify the messaging because the end audience, the perspective investor needs to not only understand the company, the team, the deal, they have to be able to market it themselves. These are crowd campaigns you’re playing for the crowd effect. So being able to explain the underlying technology in as few words as possible, again, so that an investor can not only grasp it ’cause they’re not going to put funds in if they don’t get it. But they can then repeat it. They could be evangelists to their friends, their family, their coworkers, their partners, their neighbors, their golf partners, what have you.

It’s easier said than done that there’s approaches where we do the 3-1-3 method where we break company’s offering down into three sentences and then eventually going through a process to have it live in one sentence. And even in three words, people can remember three words. It’s tough for them to remember a whole white paper. So I would say those are some of the biggest obstacles and challenges and where we’ve seen successes, as a marketing agency is around the creative itself even more so if we have to talk about what to do with the tokens long term and how that they should look at this investment, how they should perceive it among other offerings.

Konstantin Boyko: Okay, makes sense. And one other application of blockchain could be potentially, because blockchain is built for establishing trust between parties, which by default don’t trust each other. So how do you see potential for using blockchain for establishing partnerships or collaboration between different platforms? Does it make sense to use blockchain for that purpose and increase trust and allow to exchange some things between platforms, maybe offerings, maybe investors, maybe sharing some.

Eric Cox: I think one kind of natural opportunity. The funny thing, and it’s unfortunate, reg CF is designed to where each offering for Reg CF, for true equity crowdfunding, for the broadest market, can only live on one platform at a time. I get what they’re going for. They don’t want different messaging in different places. Now, do I think that there’s a solution to where we can just write that in to where each platform has to have the exact same language? I think that could be kind of a nuanced solution here.

But as is written right now, the regulation prohibits the exact same Reg CF offering being on multiple platforms. Reg D unfortunately, very fortunately, does not have those restrictions where by virtue of us having not only a funding portal, but also a broker dealer. Our broker dealer can work really closely with other broker dealers, which is fantastic. And I do think that blockchain could be used to really account for who drove what transaction volume. So being an account for which investor participated, how much they invested, how, but also where that investor came from doing, kind of using technology to do attribution of these investments.

I think there’s a lot of value there because then we can all kind of like, we’re all swimming the same direction. We want this company to raise as much capital as possible. And the investors that you bring, that’s great. The investors that we bring, that’s great as well. Ultimately, we just want to get these deals funded, so us using technology for attribution so that we can all kind of help market and support the same offerings across multiple platforms. I think that ultimately benefits the investor, and issuer. But for that to happen, there need to be some changes in the regulation, right? If we’re talking about US participating in some kind of exchange, if they go through Reg CF, there would have to be some changes. Currently under Reg D, fortunately, multiple broker dealers can work on the same deal. So that’s very fortunate.

Konstantin Boyko: Okay. Makes sense. Jānis, what do you think exactly?

Jānis Blaževičs: So, like Eric was telling at the beginning, so in European Union there’s also limitation for one platform only, but the blockchain can really give us this opportunity like we are seeing in the stock market, whatever, Clearstream, for example, and use this blockchain as a technology who joins different kind of entities across the globe. By this I mean, so you don’t need to use anymore any kind of escrow accounts or share registration in a blockchain. Everything is, blockchain is designed to be global. So this will help us, I mean, to do the same, I mean, to share the deals through the blockchain. You can share one coin in the states or in Europe or in Asia.

Konstantin Boyko: Well, one other thing which we need to overcome, I think is also identity management. Because right now you need to go through different KYC procedures on every platform. And if any of those partnerships happen and there is an exchange of deals, then there will be a question of how to exchange KYC or maybe the investor will have to go through the same procedure with different platforms, different providers and so forth.

So, I’ve heard about this topic for many years actually, but I still don’t see a solution to this problem because identity management and KYC is so much fragmented that there is no way to centralize it for now. And so maybe it’s one of the things which can be solved and then it should move forward. This global access and cross border collaboration and so forth.

On a different note, some of the countries they actually use, digitalize their identity and document management in a very good way. And then it simplifies a lot, KYC procedures. So, for example, we work quite a lot with platforms in Saudi Arabia and they have this governmental database systems where very easily you can confirm that you’re indeed the person who is registering on the platform. You don’t need to submit any documents. You just do very basic digital confirmation through your form and that simplifies their whole onboarding flow, like a hundred percent.

On the other hand, this also limits the platforms in this country to local residents, because nobody else can go through this process unless they’re registered in this same database. So in this instance, digitalization of identity management or governments, documents management serves two purposes at the same time, it also, it creates a very convenient process, but it also designs the platforms to be local.

Again, maybe, maybe, I’m just thinking out loud, maybe there would be, in the future a way to connect those systems between different countries and then it’ll allow to exchange, and for anybody in one country to register in another, in a very simple way. But for now, this is one of other challenges or other barriers to real cross border crowdfunding.

Eric Cox: And I’ll add one more super fun fact here too as well is that in the United States, of course the US passport represents your nationality, but we have individual state issued IDs. And most of, if not, most of the investments that we process are using a state or local ID. So, fortunately, like California DMV, I have a digital ID on my phone, and there’s a share feature there, which is actually pretty cool. Most state local governments don’t have that feature.

So, beyond even just dealing country to country, we have to deal with province to province, state to state, essentially even more local than that. So, I know there’s some technology that are trying to use to kind of make that a little bit more seamless. I think the sooner that we can identify each other more easily and then share that somebody our portal did the KYC, you could trust that so you don’t have to do it somewhere else. That would definitely decrease the friction. But, the concern is going to be, we took your word for it. It doesn’t feel really great from a hyper regulated entity. Like, hey, they told us that this person was cool. That should be enough. I think even if we do get to the okay to do that, as you know, we just want to make sure that we’re never fined by FINRA, so we might just do it anyways. And that’s the hard part. It’s kind of like protecting your own selves, the self-interest there. So, I think we’re getting closer and closer. People want to do this. I think there will always be a little bit of a fear. And of course, the lawyers are always going to say, just do it again. They’re like, what? The cost is so negligible for a background check. They’re going to say, just write it again.

Konstantin Boyko: Okay. Let’s look a little bit more into the future and how the market can evolve and maybe, what can happen. One thing which is happening in this, in crowdfunding industry is right now there are so many different platforms in every single part of the world. And if we look globally, then there will be thousands probably of those. Just in European Union right now, there are more than 200 ECSPR licensed platforms, which was supposed not to happen this way, but it still happened.

So I guess my question to you is how you see that development of this industry in terms of number of platforms, is it going to be increased? So there are more and more platforms because not every country actually has a lot of platforms now. Some have more, some have less. So there is still room for new countries to develop and to launch more platforms or there should be some merging of smaller players or, so basically there will be less platforms, but of a bigger size, I guess nobody knows for now, but what’s your feeling, how do you see this developing?

Jason Fishman: Yeah, so if I’m first looking at the US there’s I believe 90 some odd FINRA regulated portals, and some have come and gone already. Meanwhile, if I look at a platform called KingsCrowd and monitoring how much is being raised any given week, month, quarter year, on Reg CF regulation A plus portals, it’s really 10 to 20, we’ll call it 20, that are actively raising capital, meaning far more portals than are relevant.

I do believe there’s a strong need for the high and the low. The groups that have a higher volume as well as the portals that offer, let’s call it more of a white glove service, to their issuers and have an existing investor base, maybe have some financial publishers that they’re able to tap into and see those publishers audiences come and participate.

I think locally than globally, I guess it’s a pretty broad local range from Think in the US but at the same time, I know those stats, I know that data. I could tell you more about the Los Angeles ecosystem at that, but it really extends out to the US When I think globally, it’s from the same lens of, yes, let’s see some, we’ll call it big box platforms that are able to bring in investors from various markets and host founders, host deals, host offerings from various countries as a whole.

Let’s also see some smaller, more personalized groups out there working with issuers and tapping into their own communities of investors. And I say that not to point at the middle of the road portals, as much as to say there’s a lack of awareness globally, there’s a lack of an awareness in the US There’s a lack of awareness in Los Angeles and Marina del Rey, where I live here since 2016, I’ve had to explain to people roughly every day what equity crowdfunding is.

Doesn’t fully make sense to me. I believe this is going to be the primary approach towards capital formation in the years to come. I would’ve actually anticipated it to happen sooner. Businesses go under because they’re under capitalized. Most deals are not funded offline and at the VC level, it’s difficult for founders to connect with investors. Investors want to get involved in early stage growth stage, companies. So I think there’s this larger missing element of how do we get these exemptions? How do we get these vehicles out to the masses at least in the entrepreneurship world or retail investor space? That’s why I think some larger players, may be beneficial versus, hey, here’s the top hundred platforms globally. Here’s the top 10. Here’s also a list of 50 that’s really specialized and really ingrained in their geographical area. But all combining, all collaborating, that’s why I love GECA and similar types of professional organizations. I want to see us build more relationships with the media. I want to see funding to be able to launch campaigns or lobby for the next iterations of government partnerships so that more people are aware of this, we’ll call it movement, that they’re putting dollars in and there’s growth seen worldwide.

Konstantin Boyko: Okay. So, from your perspective, it’s awareness which could actually grow this market and make growth one really global, right.

Jason Fishman: Yes. Yes, exactly. I throw more of a story and some other tips in there. And again, I hope it’s not too long-winded, very passionate about this stuff, but that is the overarching point. Yes.

Eric Cox: If I could piggyback on that, and I’m super grateful for Jason’s passion for it. Jason, I think, and I have very much drank the Kool-Aid and do believe in the future of equity crowdfunding, regulated investment crowdfunding more broadly. Jason and I both serve on the board for the Crowdfunding Professionals Association here, largely in the United States, but we want to continue to support regulated investment crowdfunding everywhere. But from an educational standpoint, that’s an important resource for people can go and learn more. And, we have a really cool, shameless plug. We have a really cool event coming up in October, so if you want to learn more about that and it’s in DC I would love to have more folks come out, come out and join us there.

But the way I think about it. Remember we’re less than 10 years into Reg CF here in the United States. It took more than 40 years for index funds to become popular in the United States. And that’s fully embraced now. But if I think about three to five years, what changes would help unlock significant access here? I think there’s really kind of three things.

I think we need more institutional support here. I think every VC that’s putting, or every angel investor or smaller investor that’s putting a couple hundred thousand or a million dollars into a deal, and they know that they need a couple hundred thousand more or a couple million more, what a perfect opportunity to coordinate with it, with a portal to say, hey, and invest, alongside our fund. We’ve seen tremendous success with that, where we can say, hey, you get to invest alongside Harvard Business Angels, or you get to invest alongside this shark from Shark Tank. Those are the types of things that help get everyday people off the bench and into the deal. So I think institutional support and syndicating their offerings is huge.

I already mentioned how important it’s to have exits. Companies are staying private longer, and if you put money in and don’t get anything out for several years, you start questioning whether you want to put more money in. So we need companies to actually raise the capital, grow and get acquired or go public. We’ve had a couple of exits under our belts. We’d like to see more. I think secondary trading will probably be more likely than true exits where people don’t have to wait the full timeline for the company to get acquired to go public. They can actually just trade them amongst themselves. Something that would be important.

And the, and then the last piece. It is pretty burdensome from a regulatory standpoint to be a portal. And so, leverage other portals, existing infrastructure. We’d like more portals to leverage our technology partner with us White label our technology, avoid the regulatory burden you focus on whatever target you want to focus on, market the way that you want to market. We are kind of an agnostic, kind of technology. So, so if you want to focus on one specific group or one type of technology, we’ve had oil and gas companies specifically targeted with using our technology. We’ve had Green Tech specifically focused. Medical technology. If you have a niche or a region that you want to support, that’s great, but it is, it could be overwhelming when you have to deal with the regulators every day and pay legal every day.

And so you can leverage what we’re already going to do by virtue of being a funding portal and broker dealer. And you can kind of take our technology and leverage that and in your own kind of creative way. And I think that that’ll be important to keep some of these portals active. ‘Cause you’re absolutely right. We used to have, we used to have over a hundred portals in the United States. I think it was 135 was the tip of it at one point. And we are seeing folks kind of close up the portal by virtue of not having the deal flow they need. And we think more competition is better than less. So we’d love to have more people out there doing their own thing.

And then I guess the last thing, this is the hardest part, more economic advancement globally. The better people are doing every day to be able to throw a hundred bucks or a thousand bucks at a deal, the better, right? And if, we continue to consolidate wealth in specific subcategories, we won’t have the kind of the ability for everyday people to participate in these deals.

And, and then, and I think it’s actually a little bit of a fable at this point, but I think it’s super fun. We talked about translation and more global access. There is that Chevy Nova story, which I guess was debunked, but I think it’s a funny story Anyways, from a marketing standpoint, allegedly Chevy rolled out the Nova, the Chevy Nova, but I guess they didn’t consult Latin America, that Nova means doesn’t go in Spanish. And maybe they didn’t have so much success in Latin American communities. Now again, I think that is a little bit blown out of proportion. I don’t think there’s some, there’s some things to say that that wasn’t true. But I think it’s a great example of why it’s good to have more people in the room rather than less to have different, unique perspectives. And that’s what equity crowdfunding really allows us for you to kind of have these vested interest places, so they could bring you information that you might not otherwise have. So, sorry. And I went even more long-winded than Jason there, so I’ll go on mute now.

Konstantin Boyko: Well, that was nice. And it was actually nice to hear you talking about collaboration because I see a lot of closed minded owners of the platforms and other people in the industry are not so much open to collaboration and that one of the actual hurdles. So you need to collaborate. You need to share and grow the industry together because otherwise you are just competing for small, small pie rather, instead of making it bigger and then having the share. So, thank you for this. And Jānis, do you want to add to this?

Jānis Blaževičs: Yeah, just add for there. I think the. There one of the hurdles right now, like, also Jason was telling, so we are just 10 years in equity crowdfunding. It’ll add five more years. But as we see, one of the issues why the people are not investing is this secondary market and the liquidity into the equity crowdfunding because they are aware once they will invest this money. So either they will get their money back, whatever in five or 10 years successfully, or it’ll be, so there is no chances to sell these shares prior or the previous mentioned term. So, this will once there will be, I think this will come together with blockchain. The secondary market will definitely sort out a lot of issue and give confidence to the investors maybe to try out whatever. So, because they will have these chances maybe to exit. And so, yeah, and simplicity. So right now, so there’s different kind of platforms like, like previous topic, but still, so I mean, overall rules for everybody is the same. So I mean the questionnaires ID cards and those who be more simple with more simple registration, this will take out all the boundaries and then we will, so you’ll have more investors into your platform. So, so, but yeah, I think that one of the questions is the secondary market.

Konstantin Boyko: So I guess this point we can summarize what we’ve discussed and I think we can agree on that in order for the industry to grow and to enable a cross border collaboration, cross border investing, there are many things which are still need to be done and developed. And they include collaboration between different players in the ecosystem, which is very important. Then the development of secondary trading, I think, and or opportunities to actually exit those investments from equity. That this is a big step, which can be made possibly with blockchain. And of course awareness because the more the more people know about such a tool such as equity crowdfunding, then the more market will grow and the more opportunities and finding will be there.

So I think on this note, I’d like to thank everyone who joined. Thank you, Jānis. Eric and Jason and of course for Andrew to organize for organizing all the session. Andrew, if you want to close up with your pleasure, feel free to this.

Andrew: That was fantastic. Thank you very much. It was a really compelling discussion. I really enjoyed it. It’s really nice for me to just sit back and listen to true experts speaking about a subject they know so well. So listen, I just want to say thank you very much guys. We really appreciate it. It’s fantastic for all of our supporters to listen to this kind of insight and we look forward to future discussions. Thanks guys. I really appreciate it. Thank you.