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Terry Tateossian (00:00:03):
I’m excited to introduce our guests today. Chuck Pettid, Chuck is the CEO of Republic funding portal, a leading investment crowdfunding portal based in New York. He’s also the co-producer of the international television series. Meet the Drapers. He is also a board member for Ruby and rideshare. So Chuck welcome. And thank you for being here.
Chuck Pettid (00:01:08):
Thank you, Terry. I can’t wait to share more about Republic and the startup ecosystem all around.
Terry Tateossian (00:01:13):
Absolutely. So Chuck and I met maybe about, I would say two years ago and a series of Bloomberg events and kind of in the, in the crowdfunding industry. And we got to know each other over time and spent quite a bit had quite a bit of discussions over how to raise capital for startups that were either launching or they were existing, but there were launching a new product. So I became fascinated with crowdfunding in general, because it’s such a new industry. It’s such a unique and innovative way of raising capital for companies that wouldn’t normally not necessarily attract traditional investors. And yeah. So we’re now here to talk about it. So Chuck, tell us a bit about your background in the industry and how you got started.
Chuck Pettid (00:02:09):
My background started in New York city, about 21 years ago. Classic wall street stuff got into a hedge funds. Grad school started my own business. It was real estate related. I was doing some small angel investments about that time. You’re not so small actually, but doing a few angel investments at that time. And I wanted to get out of the real estate industry and back into kind of mainstream investment industry, which I previously had been in. Startups were obviously interesting to me. So I pursued a couple of different avenues and I actually invested in a company named Republic. So that was about four years ago, actually, probably four years ago. Like right now I had been invited to speak at a event and I sat with someone who was working at a company named angel list and we got along Ken Dwin and I, and he told me about Republican how they they’d be spinning out of Angeles to start Republic at the time I was only investing in early stage pre-revenue startups.
Chuck Pettid (00:03:13):
So it fit my bill. I liked exactly what they were doing super interesting to me. And after several attempts and a lot of drinks later, I finally talked Ken into allowing me to invest. It came with a, a hook, which I was totally fine with was I needed to come on and be an advisor to help build out the deal team at the time. So that was about three and a half years ago. And fast forward to today, we’re over 50 people strong. We’re known for our crowdfunding platform, that particular platform on Republic dot SCIO, lets anyone from anywhere in the world invest in early stage startups. In addition to our crowdfunding portal, we also have a syndicate platform that’s for accredited investors only we’ll do raises of a couple hundred thousand dollars up to even North of $20 million per company.
Chuck Pettid (00:04:12):
In addition to that line of business, we have a broker dealer those are four, well that license specifically lets us do reggae plus deals. Those are for again, anyone in the world, regardless of their wealth, up to $50 million raises for companies. The last primary piece of our business is Republic advisory services. By the time that you and I started to talk, that was called Republic crypto. And it was great, you know, source for deal flow in the crypto space. And we actually brought a lot of those companies on, they were quite successful. We raised capital for them. But that market dried up a little bit due to the crypto winter. And then we brought in what we realized was we had a lot of companies that were familiar with us, the brand that we built, we had domain expertise in legal regulatory and compliance, I guess, had the domain expertise in the tech part of the blockchain and these companies.
Chuck Pettid (00:05:07):
I don’t call them startups. They’re private, but they’ve been around for 30, 40, 50 years some cases. And they’re looking to deploy blockchain technology across their platform in some shape or form. So we had those pieces and became a consultant for them. So now we have, I think it’s just over a dozen different clients that we work with. And those will actually come into play with our broker dealer license because some of these companies will actually do security token offerings at some point. And we can do that through our broker dealer, which we previously couldn’t. We got the broker dealer maybe eight months ago. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, I’m throwing a couple of other things about Republic to seed, bringing it up, bring it up to speed. Maybe six months ago we acquired a, she works. It’s a platform for female founders and female investors about 25,000 strong people.
Chuck Pettid (00:05:55):
There’s an event series that goes with it. And it’s doing really well creating a lot of buzz in that community of founders and investors to you know, get these companies into public raises that we do at Republic. So they have the opportunity now to come with us and they can raise from the crowd. This typical reg CFS can be reg DS. They can do reggae, pluses, et cetera. And we have all the tools and the people that help you get to that point and you know, awesome market for you, which we’ll probably get into in a little bit here too,
Terry Tateossian (00:06:24):
For some of our listeners that are not familiar with a reg CF with a reg, a plus and so forth. Tell us what the differences are.
Chuck Pettid (00:06:33):
So reg CF you’re again, it’s, you can raise capital from anyone anywhere, regardless of their wealth. You can only raise a maximum $1,070,000 per 12 months to be qualified, to be compliant for it. First of all, you do go through diligence and Republic. Has we have a lens? We want to make sure you have certain pieces in place. It’s not just like you can sign up and run an account there or run a campaign that day. It takes time. We’re looking for partners. We’re looking for, you know, maybe first and foremost and out actual valid quality of investment opportunities and the process to actually get compliant. It’s pretty easy for the reg CF res it can take, you know, less than 10 days. Most people take 30 days. They can do that comfortably, especially 13, that helps you get there. Costs are minimal.
Chuck Pettid (00:07:20):
Most companies actually on average, our companies spend about $5,000 to get to a live campaign. For reg a plus that’s a bit of a different ball game. That’s almost like going IPO. Someone’s becoming a publicly traded company, but you can raise $50 million on that side of it. You can also raise those from anyone again, accredited non-accredited anywhere in the world, but to get there, you need to file a one day with the sec, that process can take several months for approval several weeks. At the very least there is an accounting process. That’s much more thorough. It takes a lot more. That was a cost a lot more. So I’ve seen companies that have spent 15, $20,000 for the accounting or the audit up to over a hundred thousand dollars. We know at Republic that that’s a lot of cheese for companies. So we work with them on finding, you know, different ways to keep those costs down, or sometimes we’ll even cover the cost until they can actually close their campaign and then pay us back with proceeds. We want to make it as easy as possible for you especially for the writeup
Terry Tateossian (00:08:27):
Over, over time. How have you seen the crowdfunding space kind of change? Cause I, I know initially I believe it started with the ability to do the CS. But now there’s a lot of different options.
Chuck Pettid (00:08:44):
Yup. So it actually started in 2012, part of the jobs act J O B S act and the first, you know, crowd component to come out of, it was actually reggae plus reg CF did not go effective until may of 2016. That’s when we actually the same month as when we spun out of angel list, got our license from FINRA and then launched the company officially in June, I guess, of 2016. So it’s been around a while. I think it will be probably known. I’ve noticed that it’s also been pretty prominent in other countries, kingdom, especially they’re probably seven years ahead of us, at least I think is actually when they started allowing it. And I’m giving a little bit of an overview of like kind of where things were for us then as where they are now and where things are also now for international companies.
Chuck Pettid (00:09:42):
Back in 2016, there were a lot of stereotypes, a lot of investors who thought it would be, you know, mostly fraudulent companies that if you were raising capital through this method, you’re probably desperate. And it was a negative sign. We had a difficult time, I’d say finding companies that actually wanted to do it. We only had four live campaigns in 2016. We actually had a period in 2017, we had zero live campaigns. Fast forward to today, we have over 40 live campaigns in the rig CF platform. We have more than enough companies in the pipeline or in enough companies knocking on our door, wanting to do it where before you can find anyone I wanted to do it, you had to talk them into it almost. Campaign raises were small on average, you know, 75 K today, average campaign raises over 500,000.
Chuck Pettid (00:10:33):
So it’s becoming you know, much more likely. And actually I would say much more unlikely, but it’s becoming a thing. It’s becoming a tool in everyone’s toolkit in the startup ecosystem. It’s becoming accepted and widely accepted three and a half, four years ago. Venture capitalist hated it. The one of the big things was if you do it, we’ll never invest in your company. Well, fast forward to today, 77% of the companies that have raised capital on Republic have gone on to raise institutional funds. Post-Campaign so that’s coming from metric capitalist, many top venture capitalists. I’m sure you can probably find those names on our website. Also institutional funds. So if that’s not happening, they’re actually okay with you going through a crowdfunding campaign. Part of the reason is because, well, it’s what you needed to do. And if you’re a founder, you get to do what you gotta do to get there.
Chuck Pettid (00:11:23):
And also it comes with a lot of validation because you end up with, you know, today back then it’s a couple hundred investors today. You’re ending with a couple of thousand and the owner of the couple thousand people who are free and clear to actually post why they made the investment and they get pretty passionate about it. That’s validation. They also buy a lot of the products and services. It doesn’t need to be, you know, a consumer product group retail kind of thing. I’m talking, they also buy B2B software, SAS type stuff. They’ll buy hardware. That’s only for businesses. And not in small amounts. We’ve had plenty of companies that have gone Terry on during their campaign, close out millions of dollars worth of sales, bring in, you know, hundreds of new registered users, people that buy, you know, whatever, like an insurance product.
Chuck Pettid (00:12:09):
There’s a company jumpstart that closed recently. She raised a million bucks had ’em get the official number as soon. But I know it’s, you know, a few hundred people bought her insurance policy, which is a major boost for the company. And that was just during the campaign from the exposure. So you might be catching onto that. You know, Republic also focuses not just on the capital part of the, of the raise. How do you get that capital part of the way that you’d have to have a lot of marketing? So that’s why we have the TV. You mentioned my TV show, the TV, show them co-producer of my TV show. But we have a, you know, radio shows, podcasts, live events, print media we even do performance marketing internally for companies because the more that they get exposure the more exposure they get, the more eyes you get, the more likely that people are to, you know, to make an informed decision to either invest, become a client or share it with someone else.
Terry Tateossian (00:13:04):
Yeah. I find that to be absolutely brilliant part of it. Now, the thing that confuses me is that I, I feel like like rewards based type of crowdfunding. I think if I’m not mistaken, I think Kickstarter got that type of attention to this innovative way of investing almost 10 years ago. I think, I think there are at least 10, is that my right,
Chuck Pettid (00:13:29):
At least probably 12 Kickstarter, maybe about the same for Indiegogo, but they did. They kind of kicked off the industry and good and bad, good that they did bad that most people now still have a taste in their mouth that, you know, crowdfunding is rewards based. We’re far from that totally different beast. It’s also unfortunate for, for issuers, the companies that raise on these platforms because they’re oftentimes confronted with, and we learned by doing, you know, dozens of different tests with marketers who are used to the Kickstarter and Indiegogo style of marketing. And what they’re the disconnect is is that a rewards based participant is watching a 32nd video and saying, Hey, if I give them 50 bucks, they’re going to send me a product in the mail three months, six months, maybe it’ll take a year, but I know I’m going to get something in return for that money where with investment based crowdfunding, they may put 50 bucks.
Chuck Pettid (00:14:28):
And I’m thinking if I put 50 bucks into this, is it going to come back? What’s the actual chance of that coming back? They’re thinking about return on investment. And a lot of people think, well, well what’s 50 bucks. Well, 50 bucks is actually a lot. It’s a lot for a lot of people, but even if they’re doing $10, they’re doing 20,000 are doing a hundred thousand dollars on Republic. They do want the overwhelming majority of investors from my conversations, from surveys that we take in research that we’ve done is they want a return on investment for even for every dollar amount. And the way I get people to think about that is if you worked for a four Oh one, you have, you worked for an employer and you have a 401k plan, you allocate part of your, you know, biweekly check to a bunch of mutual funds.
Chuck Pettid (00:15:13):
And one of the mutual funds gets a smaller percentage of the total pie that one’s probably getting 20 or 40 bucks every two weeks. And what do you want with that 20 or 40 bucks over two weeks? You want a return on investment, right? So these people are investing in two, five, 10 companies a year, 20, 40, 50 bucks. They also want return on investment. That’s why we’re so keen on finding actual quality investment opportunities and only presenting those the best that we can to the crowd. And then making sure that the companies are putting their best foot forward, presenting that information, disclosing everything they need, you know, need and should disclose sometimes even going above and beyond that. So people can make an informed decision and then it’s game on.
Terry Tateossian (00:15:53):
So tell us how, how do you vet companies to ensure that they would make a good investment for your investor base?
Chuck Pettid (00:16:04):
So we have standard metrics that are kind of lines in the sand that we look for especially, you know, runway, well actually there’s product market fit. I wanna make sure it’s the right team. But in short, I’ll give you the whole process to founders at home. And you know, here what actually happens, people apply. And then we, we keep the application process very simple. It should take 30 seconds and you hopefully provide, you don’t have to, but it’s, you know, one of the key indicators of who we’re dealing with is you shouldn’t provide a pitch deck if we get the pitch deck and we get general information about you and your company, we’ll do a topical review looking good, we’ll schedule a diligence call sometimes face to face. And then from that call, which is roughly 45 minutes an hour or so, we’ll take the information that we gathered and we’ll do kind of a deep dive internally, if anything is needed to be shared or collected from the founder, we asked for that information and create a report.
Chuck Pettid (00:17:02):
So those reports are sometimes five pages, sometimes 15 pages. That information is then used at an investment committee meeting where myself and a couple other people will review those companies and then basically vote yes or no if they’re gonna move forward. Of course, all the time that you know, this is going on, we’re also listening to you, making sure that you are fully aware of all the information that you need to be aware of, that you’re educated completely on the entire process. You know what the costs are. There’s no like hidden information everything’s been told to you. And we do it several times verbally and in writing. And if you’re saying you want to move forward, and we’re saying that we want you to move forward, then you’re going to hopefully give you a campaign agreement and move forward. And then we help you with the onboarding.
Chuck Pettid (00:17:44):
And then you have a campaign that’s a very short version of it. But what type of companies so far have done the best? Like what is a good product or service that could be successful through crowdfunding, but anyone that’s a viable investment opportunity. And a lot of people think that it has to be CPG or retail or something that the funder at home can touch. They can order. I can see that’s not true. Most of it, when it comes down to, to me at least, is that there’s something relatable within that product or service to the investor. That’s kind of the spark. If you see something that you’re familiar with, it could be like a product or service that’s relevant to your industry, to your family, to your general likes, that’s the beginning. And then they they start to read, they do not pay attention to the video video can be great.
Chuck Pettid (00:18:40):
I really just don’t tell people, look it’s, and this is again, based off data, we don’t see a lot of people watched. They certainly don’t watch the entire video. Most don’t watch even like 30 or 45 seconds of it. And they certainly don’t seem to be making a decision off the video. What they’re really digging into is key highlights the body of the text, they’re reading about it. Then they kind of go you know, off the page where I believe they’re going and I’ve talked to people. It sounds like, you know, that’s true. They’re checking out LinkedIn, they’re checking out Crunchbase, they’re checking on angel list. They’re trying to find, you know, basic Google searches. They’re learning more about it on their own. They’re doing cross checks. Sometimes they can make the decision within five minutes out of that. Sometimes it takes five days.
Chuck Pettid (00:19:20):
You have a group of people that also sit on the sideline, watch all the questions roll in during the campaign, they see how much traction they get. They see what the updates are from the company during the campaign, how businesses are going and they make an investment. The last, like two days of the campaign, there’s a whole group of people that do that. That’s what you see like a big rush at the end. Sometimes people miss out. Sometimes those people miss out though, like then the campaign will hit its max raise. Whether it’s, you know, sometimes people want 500,000, they get 500,000. They call it, call it quits, enter the full million 70. And they get there and they have to call quits. But the people who wait on the sideline get left out and they get really mad. It’s like you asked that question 45 days ago.
Chuck Pettid (00:19:55):
You know, he probably didn’t take that long. You were just waiting, but you went into college. They want to see everybody else in first before they do well. Is that something that’s, you know, that’s part of, there’s thousands of reasons why people would invest. So hopefully you’re bringing in companies that have a lot of these milestones already in their past things that people again can relate to or see as being valuable or something. That’s a quality of the founder and the founding team that they’re executing on and all these things add up. It also does help for founders to share updates during the campaign because people are watching that the beauty of crowdfunding regulation, crowd funding, especially is everyone’s on the same playing field information that’s shared is shared publicly share for everyone to view. If the founder, you know, where to go to say, they’re on this podcast. And they gave out information that they had not already disclosed or shared on their deal page you know, we ask them to share it and they do it. Does it go into their update section? And they type like, Oh, it was on podcast with Terry. And she asked me this and I answered it and realized you guys didn’t know that you see that a lot in the founders you know, discussion pages. So everyone’s on the same page, everyone’s got the same information and hopefully just helps them. Like I said, make that decision
Terry Tateossian (00:21:07):
From just, you know, startups that may not necessarily have enough information or haven’t dived into the details of educating themselves on what the strategy is. So they, they, they asked me constantly will I want to go on Kickstarter on Republic and on, on we funder all at the same time. And I, you know, I have to do that and unusual, you know, obviously the answer is no, but tell us why. That’s not a good idea. And how do they select the right platform? Like, is there a strategy where first you should go on Kickstarter, then you should go on a Republic and do a CF, and then you should do a reggae plus like what, what is a good path for a founder to follow?
Chuck Pettid (00:21:51):
So I’ll answer that the way that I think it’s best there can be different situations or scenarios where they should go a slightly different route, but in general, if you’re looking for, you know, early product market fit validation some sort of sense of what the actual market reception of your product or service will be, then you’re probably talking about a Kickstarter, Indiegogo rewards based campaign. That’s actually actually a good you know, time for you to learn what it’s like to run a crowdfunding campaign. There are some similarities for sure, mostly in communications and communication styles, basically getting people excited about what you’re offering and trying to get them to do it. If you are an early well, there’s a few different stages that you’d want to do regulation, crowd funding reg CF, if you’re early stage, you’re probably looking for seed capital.
Chuck Pettid (00:22:46):
If you’ve already done a friends and family maybe have a few angel investors, you got a couple of flags in the ground that say like, you’re doing well, you’ve been executing. And you know, I got some momentum things that the crowd will find attractive. Then it’s probably a good time for you to what would be like, you know, your seed plus round or something, whatever it’s called today. There’s some different ways to call it. But I call those like, you know, the early stage companies are looking for a little bit more capital. Maybe they want a little bit more exposure to, they also need a little bit more validation. They can get that pretty quickly through a reg CF res a middle stage companies. Again, some people might say this is post seed. This is series a companies. Or just before series a, those companies typically already have enough capital.
Chuck Pettid (00:23:28):
They are mostly looking for it for marketing purposes. And then late stage companies are doing it reg CF, because they want to evangelize or their user base. Those are the company. Those are the people that have actually helped build that company. That’s why it exists. So it was a little bit of a rewards play where they are, you know, rewarding by offering them the opportunity to also invest in the company so they can grow with the upside that could be coming with the company in the future. If you are, you know, a founder, like I said, most likely you’ll do a Kickstarter first. Totally not necessary to do it though. Then you’ll do a reg CF after you do a reg CF, you’re probably going to tap back into the VC world, into the angel world. You’ll have more data points, more things to talk about with those individuals.
Chuck Pettid (00:24:13):
That’s why so many of ours haven’t been successful raising posts, Republic campaign. And then if you are serious about going IPO, that’s when you’d want to do an a plus. So doing an a plus, like I said, it’s, it’s, it’s really a mini IPO is probably not pro doesn’t give it justice. It’s almost almost an IPO. And if you’re serious about going IPO, then yeah. Doing a plus that’s probably the type of capital. I need also tens of millions of dollars to get you to that IPO. And then you IPO after that. So we’ve had companies actually have done reg CF, who did a plus and who have done IPO. So we have had companies that have gone through it and actually exited to the public traded markets. And those investors actually got returns.
Terry Tateossian (00:24:58):
Let’s take a quick break. And thank our sponsors. The production of the amplified podcast has been brought to you by social fixed, medium social fixed a transformational growth hacker agency focused on emerging technology platforms, video and podcast, production, content marketing, and overall startup strategy. Social fixed has helped over 300 clients generate millions of dollars in revenue fund raising and a profit. If you’d like help launching or growing your business visit [inaudible] dot com. So from what I understand is your options are a Kickstarter rewards based a 1,070,000 or 50 million. There’s nothing in between. And I know they’ve been talking about it.
Chuck Pettid (00:25:49):
Yeah. You do have a reg D at your service too. Right. He’s been kind of productized made into platforms. That’s our syndicate platform that you can raise as much as you possibly can. There’s no limitations with the reg D but those are for accredited only, right? So you’re limited depending if you do a fiber B or a fiber succe, which are part of the Ray D exemption, there’s also some limitations on public, private advertising and things like that. And if you’re doing current res CF or a plus, you can have some other ad rag laws that you have to follow, but you just need to be with the right either a legal team or work with the right platform. That actually understands that to your other question too. Like which platform, how do I pick one? I always tell people, just go and try it.
Chuck Pettid (00:26:38):
Don’t try whatever platform you’re interested in. Actually make an investment in a whatever 25, 50 bucks, if you need to cancel it, cause you don’t feel comfortable doing that. Don’t sweat it. They’ve already seen a few people cancel at that point. It’s not going to be any, any big deal for them. So when you do it, though, what you’re looking for is how do they, how does that platform communicate with investors? Because those are gonna be your investors. And that’s going to be one of the first things that they remember about you. You’re also looking to see like how easy is it to do it? What are the you know, the speed bumps, what were the roadblocks to actually make that investment happen? Because you want to make sure that they’re smooth and it’s happening and it’s happening a lot. The other thing I’d say is do your research on the teams that run each, each platform which one’s having no relevancy to what you’re doing or have relevancy to the industry you’re in or just the startup ecosystem.
Chuck Pettid (00:27:32):
You know, I’m pretty proud to say that we’re all not 50 plus people now, but most of us, the core of us are former venture capitalists, angel investors, startup founders you know, attorneys, accountants, et cetera, all these bits and pieces that are part of the world that you’re actually already in and trying to, trying to work with. We are those people. So we’re very conscious of, you know, the trials and tribulations that you’re going through. That’s why our product is all about service for the founder, all about service for the investor. We’ve lived both sides of those. And we want to make sure that it’s it’s right. And that, you know, look, you’re trying to get to the live campaign. That’s the fun part. That’s when you get to basically stand on the mountain top and scream, you know, you’re, it’s your chance to expose yourself to the world.
Chuck Pettid (00:28:21):
So it’s fun. And we wanna make sure that that’s what you’re doing. And keep that in mind too. If you’re a founder listening, if you’re uncomfortable, you know, exposing yourself, screaming off the mountain top, then this isn’t for you either as a, either, either as a rewards based program, you really need to be, you kinda, you know, put aside any, any, any shyness you have to you know, go out and, you know, really do push it. But when you push it the better you do, and when you put your guard down, the better you do too
Terry Tateossian (00:28:54):
Well. Yeah. I mean, investors want to invest with people that are transparent and they can relate to and they believe in. So the more you put out there, I feel like in the more information you give out, the more likely your chances are of people. Basically getting in the boat with you, getting on the bus with you and letting you drive.
Chuck Pettid (00:29:14):
No, we still get applications today where people send, they won’t send a pitch deck and they say, can you sign an NDA for us?
Terry Tateossian (00:29:20):
That’s my, how’s that going to be possible for you to run a crowdfunding campaign? You want people that know I signed probably like, and I’m sorry for anybody I’m about to offend. I signed probably three to four days a week, which I think is really silly because it’s, I mean, come on, give me a break all, but
Chuck Pettid (00:29:42):
Anyway tell me a bit about there’s a lot of misconception about the fantasy of raising capital and most founders that I encountered don’t really understand the effort needed pre campaign during campaign and after the campaign. So even if you did not maybe hit your goal, maybe your goal was 500 K and you hit four 50, that’s still a successful campaign, I think. And there’s still a lot of work to be done after. It’s over. Tell me how does a founder set themselves up to actually have a successful run at this without either falling off the cliff or tripping over themselves or being their own worst enemy. So I would say, come out of the Gates, and this is when you start your company or at least you have idea generation, and you’re starting to feel it out. What you’re going to do is immediately accept that you’re, you know, always be raising.
Chuck Pettid (00:30:49):
You’re always going to be raising. And that doesn’t mean you have to sit there and do it 24 seven, you know, a week, or you’re not going to be able to focus on building out your product or your team or whatever, whatever it is that you’re doing, it’s always needs to be at your, you know, the tip of your tongue needs to be at your fingertips all the time, because opportunities aren’t going to come up just because you say, I’m going to raise between like, you know, August and October. You need to be ready for it at all times, and always on, look out for it, refining your craft, making sure that you’re learning your message. I can’t state that strong enough. A lot of people are not in control of their message. That’s a huge problem. It means you come out and you pitch, or you send a pitch deck and it’s, it creates opportunities for people that are reading it or the one that you want to invest to go on tangents.
Chuck Pettid (00:31:40):
As soon as someone goes on a tangent, because you haven’t controlled your message. You haven’t kept it sometimes that’s, you know, it could be described as keeping it short and sweet you know, making it highly communicative or making sure that it’s easily consumed and digested. However you want to think about it, but when you don’t, you don’t control the message. People go on tangents. As soon as they go on a tangent or thinking about things that you don’t want them to think about. And they’re never going to invest. So practicing that throughout, I’d say, you know, quality companies that have made it to the promised land, they probably spent five all five years pretty consistently and almost constantly raising or thinking about raising or refining the craft, learning their message. When people say like, you shouldn’t know it like the back of your hand, you really should too many times. I see companies that don’t, and it’s a huge red flag. And guess what? Probably they don’t get, you know, clear to raise and Republican. I certainly don’t invest in them personally, either. Cause I’m thinking about things that are like, Whoa, what happened then? If no, I don’t want to, if I’m saying that you’re, you’re done,
Terry Tateossian (00:32:47):
That has to be my favorite piece of advice that I’ve heard in a long time, because most people don’t understand how to control the room, how to control their deck, how to control their message and their narrative. And then, you know, you end up with these like three hour pitches where you’re now getting drilled by people. Meanwhile, you should have been out of there in 20 minutes. And if you couldn’t deliver that in 20 minutes, then you have no business even being there. Yeah.
Chuck Pettid (00:33:17):
I mean, you need to do your research too. Before you go into a meeting, who are you sending things to? Who you asking to get warm introductions to? Funny enough, I’m actually okay with receiving a cold email. That’s if the person actually did the research and they say something to that effect like you did, and I responded to you, but you could, I could tell you actually did your research. You had some sort of knowledge about what was, you know, what I was up to what Republic was up to. So if you don’t and just do it cold and you kind of copy and paste and send it to as many people as you want, especially when you’re just like BCC everyone, or you really dominated, like don’t be CC. Everyone was CC, you didn’t can see 500 emails. And I’m like, wow, that’s, you know, really that was really well thought out.
Chuck Pettid (00:33:59):
So did you do your research on who you’re actually communicating to? You’re reaching out to, I can just hold straight up, save you a lot of time. The other thing I’d say is research the options that you have to raise capital friends and family route there’s going to accelerators are doing crowdfunding. There’s getting into in front of venture capitalist, as it can be institutional investors. There’s a lot more institutional investors than people probably know today that they weren’t aware of. Everyone seems to have a fun. Now I just saw like a Kia open one for a hundred million bucks or something like that. There’s, there’s a very relevant fund out there. That’s perfect fit for whatever product or service it is that you’re building, but you don’t know about it. Or you can try, I haven’t done the research for it, but there is one and it’s important to get that research done. So, and then you control your message. You send people, your pitch deck in a PDF and not in a PowerPoint or some other weird, weird format that can’t open on your phone. It can’t open the phone. Don’t do it. If you can’t open something on the phone, don’t do it. People are opening up 90% of the time. I’d say I opened up at least on my phone. And if it’s a, I don’t know what program I’m like, sorry, I’m not going to read it. So PDF universal, everyone can open it.
Terry Tateossian (00:35:14):
So would you say that it’s smarter for founders to first get seed funding or maybe just prepare the seed funding, then launch the campaign and have that seed come into the campaign right away in the first three days? Cause what I’ve noticed personally is momentum really kind of builds within that first, I think two to three days. And if investors start seeing the nobody’s investing in that time period, you kind of floating out there by yourself and hoping a boat’s going to come and save you. Is that a good strategy or would you recommend that they wait until the very end to maybe put that bundle of cash in
Chuck Pettid (00:36:06):
So hard to hear? Well, first the first thing that came to my mind was, you know, getting investors lined up for a regulation crowdfunding campaign before you actually have a live campaign in your form, C has been filed with the sec friends and family. That’s called testing the waters and that’s illegal. So you would be breaking security laws. If you were to say, Hey, we’re going to have publicly say this. We’re going to have a Republic campaign. And I want everyone to be ready when I launch on May 1st, that’s against the law. What do you do to prime the bomb to get things ready? So you hit the ground running. That’s something that we work with on, you know, with every founder you need to start segmenting your network, putting them in different buckets. You would want to send a certain type of communication to a family member or friends and family.
Chuck Pettid (00:36:55):
That would you want to send a different type of communication to say people that are just followers of yours or they’re connected to you on LinkedIn dozens of different like networks that you have. You probably don’t realize that you need a segment come over the different strategies of communication. Again, something that we help on. And then when the day comes that you file form C you can start to get that communication out there and you follow process over the next couple of weeks. We’d like to see people get to F you know, 25 to 50,000, the first two weeks of a campaign of it being launched. Now, the fail safe, or kind of the safety net to help that doesn’t happen at Republic. Our line in the sand is you don’t make our homepage. You don’t get a launch email until you’ve raised $25,000.
Chuck Pettid (00:37:33):
Now, sometimes that comes from our network because they, they look at below the line basically other, you know, services scrubbing look for form seeds that are filed as soon as he can make the URL. Something totally crazy. They’ll still find it. So sometimes that can happen and naturally organically or whatever. But if it doesn’t, you stay below the line and you’re really not, you know, it doesn’t look like you’re slow, not embarrassing because once you get above the line, it could be on day 45 day 65. No, that doesn’t really happen anymore. But if it’s further than 15 days out you still looking pretty good. You’re above the line. You just got a launch email, the vast majority of people who are just hearing about it for the first time. So the momentum starts getting, you know, you’re getting into the game a little bit late, depending on how many days you have left in your campaign.
Chuck Pettid (00:38:19):
But yeah, something that we think about too, and we’ll make sure you do it right now. If you’re doing a reg a plus you’re allowed to test the waters means before you’ve actually received approval before it’s a compliant campaign. You can go on the platform and say, Hey, we’re going to be doing an a plus, you know, leave your interest or tell, indicate what you’d, you know, if you’d be interested in investing, whatever it is. And we’ll count that up. Basically you have a pretty good feeling or not. If you’re gonna be good or have a good, good raise or not before the A-plus has even started.
Terry Tateossian (00:38:54):
So let’s talk about that a little bit because there’s, I think a very interesting difference between a CF and a, an a plus where, and I’m probably completely wrong in what I’m about to say, but one you can advertise before and during the race. And I think one you cannot, or I believe that there was a way to maybe even put it on your own website that you’re raising and then send people over to the crowdfunding page. Is that right?
Chuck Pettid (00:39:31):
Yeah, you’re right. So well, like it was just sitting on testing the waters with CF. You can’t do anything before you can do anything publicly before your CF campaign starts. No that’s public, right? You can’t do anything publicly before the reg seat we were approved. I’m sorry. Before the form C is filed before you actually have a reg CF campaign. Now you can, your team’s obviously gonna know about it. Cause they’re working on it. You also have some investors that have information rights. That would be information that they’re, they can be privy to. But you’re not allowed to go on like Facebook or, you know, whatever LinkedIn and say, I’m going to do this with reggae plus you can. So you’re then you can also advertise both CF and a plus and you know, five Oh six C you’re allowed to do.
Chuck Pettid (00:40:18):
If I succeed for reg D you’re allowed to do advertising during it some have slightly different rules, I guess, for each two on like what you can and can’t present. Just, we just give like this there’s a standard way of doing it or a foolproof way kind of, of advertising CF. Doesn’t allow you to say certain things or terms of the deal. You’re not allowed to talk about the terms, but you can still advertise for it. And let people know that you have this and you’re going to be able to, you know, go to their deal page and make the investment. They don’t even know what the terms are because they just go to the field page and see it five seconds. You asked about doing it on your own site. You can do an a plus in here on site, cannot do a reg CF in your own site.
Chuck Pettid (00:40:57):
You can do a five Oh six B private reg D raise on your site. The difficulty with that is, is that most places don’t have proper platform for it. So they’re not gonna be able to have whatever 110 investors come through or a hundred or 500, whatever it ends up being. And the burden of doing things like KYC, AML is on the it was on the founder to do that. And that’s difficult. It’s also costly and timely, and it takes lawyers sometimes. And it does take accountants, but those are the things that we’ve productized or automated and keep that out of your hair. So again, you’re only focusing on the
Terry Tateossian (00:41:34):
Fun part, which is raising capital. So in terms of the deal page, tell me about some of the most important elements where a founder should pay the most attention to
Chuck Pettid (00:41:45):
Highlights. Basically you’re topping like say five or 10 you know, past events, things that you achieved that you built a team additions, whatever the highlights, maybe those are really important. I’d say the next part is the discussion board. You really want to be on top of answering any questions that are being asked on the discussion board, and you want to answer those thoroughly. And honestly the third, most important thing is updates. So while your, to me at least is the third, most important thing while you’re campaigning. You want to, you want to talk about what’s going on with your business, especially if you close like a new partnership or you close a new sale, or you got a new investor and he took in like a whatever during the, during the round on canteen and said, we’re going to do 500,000 bucks.
Chuck Pettid (00:42:36):
You want to tell everyone about that? So keeping people up to date on what’s actually happening real time, super important. And then generally the, the body of the, of the message after that, it’s the, the, you know, kind of the next part where you’re just telling the story, you’re telling them about the problem, how you’re, how you’re fixing it, what you’ve done to fix it so far where you plan on growing, what you gonna use the capital for that comes up a lot too. That should be part of like how you’re fixing it, how are you going to grow? And then, yeah, there’s just a questions to start, should start coming in at that point, then you don’t be, if you’re on top of them, answering them, it’ll be good.
Terry Tateossian (00:43:20):
What type of companies so far have done really well on the platform and what are investors looking for? Like what, what determines, and then investors mind that this is a great company to invest in women founders have done really well. I do think that is
Chuck Pettid (00:43:42):
Give a few reasons for sure. I mean, when we came out of the Gates day one and our mission was to serve the underserved founder and to date, it’s something like 55% of funds raised have gone to either a female founded or a minority founded company. We attracted a lot of likeminded individuals, investors and we still do that, are looking for those opportunities as well. And I think a lot of times, Y you know, especially women entrepreneurs have done well because they’ve had difficulty raising where a lot of times, if you’re, you know, a white dude or an agent do that Stanford or Berkeley have a pretty easy time raising capital, especially in Silicon Valley. And you may not actually be the best opportunity, but they’re so used to doing that, to do it again and again and again.
Chuck Pettid (00:44:31):
And then, you know, Terry over in New York is trying to raise capital and no one’s looking at her because they were too busy with the boys out of Stanford and Berkeley and three Ali is she actually has something that’s better. So eventually, and a lot of times because of the work that we’ve done, having, she works showing other founders and investors that the successes of the founders before them they’ll come to Republican, they raise and they’re, you know, they’re quality, hardworking founders, not that anyone’s isn’t or campy, but they’re getting a chance to shine and they’re taking advantage of it. And that’s why I’ve seen so much, right. So much success.
Terry Tateossian (00:45:14):
No, that’s very cool. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, women in general, I think only about 4%, I think from this was a long time ago. I was thinking, is it really it’s gone down? I don’t know if it ever got the floor, but I heard two today and I’ve actually, I hear most often, wow,
Chuck Pettid (00:45:36):
We’re for the 35% for women. It fluctuates between like 32 and I think 38%. And then we also have a considerable amount of women investors on our platform. I want to say the industry, at least for accredited investors average, or I’m not sure where these, where this research came from, but I’ve read over the years, it’s roughly 8% of investors are women on Republicans, more like 30%. So it’s creating a lot of, it’s a new AI access and inclusion, artificial intelligence, new AI access and inclusion.
Terry Tateossian (00:46:14):
What type of role does the market play in all of this? Meaning if we have like a strong economy or we don’t have a strong economy, both, and then the need for the product, like how, like how do you determine something that’s actually going to be a good viable investment opportunity? Yeah.
Chuck Pettid (00:46:35):
Yeah, I mean, at some level we, on the rig CF, we’re not allowed to, you know, to make investment advice or investment recommendations or anything along those lines, that would be strictly against those rules. But we are doing diligence and if we’re doing diligence, we’re trying to make sure that we’re bringing the best opportunities that we can to the platform. And what makes those attractive to the market is they never had access to those. And it is something that they, again, the crowd investor is much more sophisticated than anyone’s ever, probably given them credit for outside of myself, you know, people on our, on the Republic team. And I’m sure it’s some of our competitors too, cause they’ve seen it firsthand, the crowd sophisticated, and they want to do things like have a diversified portfolio and they’re doing here and their investments on TD Ameritrade, they have some fixed income and maybe have like a bank CD or something.
Chuck Pettid (00:47:37):
And what do they do? They want five, two, three, 5% of exposure to startups. And they’re not gonna be able to get access to that anywhere else, other than a portal like Republic and they’re diversifying through, that’s why they, you know, I, I know for sure the market wants it where I think we’ll probably end up going, actually I don’t even think we’ll end up going. I know I’ll end up going there and the way we’ve seen it, we’ve had people knock on our door. We’ve had conversations there’ll be a time in the near future where, you know, the Charles Schwab’s and Fidelity’s of the world, the Merrill, Lynch’s the bank of America, whoever want to offer this type of exposure to their clients. And this is where it’s going to come from the opportunity or chance to get this type of exposure will be done through platforms like this.
Chuck Pettid (00:48:27):
Yeah. They can be packaged whatever 25, 50, a hundred companies together into one package, ship it off to, depending on the risk profile, maybe there’ll be enough volume at that point that it could be just a real estate only type play or a cannabis only type play. And those can be shipped off in a package to the financial advisors who sell it to the private wealth clients, 500 bucks for the whole thing, a hundred bucks, the whole thing, whatever it may be Merrill Lynch. I worked there 20 years ago. They were doing that all day long with stocks mutual funds. They started doing a little bit with hedge funds. If you ask them today, they have anything in venture capital. It’s like one out of every 2000 products they have as a venture capital type fund or venture cap, venture capital type product. So they’re slowly coming around to it, BC being one of the only places that they have, like it gets into startups. But I think that that window’s going to close pretty quickly. There’s demand for it. We have over 400,000 registered investors on Republic. There’s a lot of people that want to do this stuff.
Terry Tateossian (00:49:30):
Yeah. I mean, I would think it’s almost a no brainer to be in this market of emerging startups for established players
Chuck Pettid (00:49:41):
For sure. You know, I think it’s actually probably a good time to, for me to tell you, like where else I see it going. And what I’m, you know, working on what the team is working on at Republic, you know, to date we’ve been really kind of a, just a hodgepodge of pool of different opportunities. There’s no, no, we’re bringing the best opportunities that we can find to the, to the platform. But there isn’t really, you know, exact vertical or industry exposure that investors can come and easily find if they want to say, get, you know, if they’re playing along with the portfolio theory strategy and they want exposure to certain industries that couldn’t just come to Republic and say like, I want just real estate. I want just healthcare. I want just cannabis. Where do I find that I have to look through 45 other companies?
Chuck Pettid (00:50:30):
So we’re starting to, and soon enough I hope have a different verticals that will allow people to come in and easily pick things of whatever nature is that they want or need for their portfolio. And then hopefully each of those that’s actually ends up, you know, growing volume wise. So there’s more opportunities within each of those verticals and more opportunities for investors to make investments, not just equity. So it could be things like this, you know, simple debt agreements or revenue share crypto comes into play. There’s a lot, there’s a lot of exotic verticals to it. Things like artwork antique cars you know, even high end luxury fashion fashion. Those are investible assets, there’s art. There are platforms that are doing those things today and really doing fractional investments to the tune of millions of dollars and things that you would never be able to own. You’ll never be able to buy as an individual. Now you can own part of it. And hopefully there’s some you know, return on, on the investment down the road.
Terry Tateossian (00:51:34):
Yeah. I mean, across lending real estate is, you know, pretty hot topic it’s been around for a while now. And it’s becoming more and more mainstream, but art for sure. I’ve, I’ve heard about that. And a lot, a lot of luxury items, I think you can invest in as a, as a portfolio almost so that’s pretty cool.
Chuck Pettid (00:51:55):
No, for sure. And most of it though, you just mentioned though, especially the real estate has only been accessible to people who are accredited. Obviously our play into any of these things will be that anyone can invest in them. It doesn’t matter if you’re a creditor or not, and that’ll be super important to you. And I think there’ll be a lot of people that will be interested. So tell me about
Terry Tateossian (00:52:20):
Failed campaigns. What do we not do? So what does a founder need to avoid?
Chuck Pettid (00:52:28):
So fortunately we don’t see many I don’t, I’m not even sure it actually, wasn’t one of our like stats that we specifically called out for at the end of the year, this year 2019, at least I think maybe two in all of 2019 that failed to fail. You have to wait it’s if you don’t raise your minimum goal and to do a regulation, crowdfunding, you set two goals, a minimum and a maximum typical minimums are $50,000. Sometimes people will do a hundred. I think we’ve had one that was 250. They were successful. They got to their minimum next year. I think they raised 600,000, but if you don’t hit the minimum, then investors are giving their money back. It’s awesome. Throw it out. Other to investors at any time up until 48 hours before the campaign closes, can cancel their investment and get the money back.
Chuck Pettid (00:53:22):
Super important for investors to know that, you know, you’re really in control, but we make sure you’re in control of the money. That’s that, that Mo those monies stay with an escrow agent doesn’t come to us. It doesn’t go to the founder. If the founder were too early close, there’s plenty of warnings, plenty heads up. You have days to think about it. You actually get like a push button yes. Or no kind of situation. You know, don’t say I want to cancel, then it closes, but at least he had that chance. And I think that also just keeps it fair also that for as many like really peculiar, unnecessary inefficient rules that are found in regulation, crowdfunding even found in reggae plus the authors of this law that the 2012 jobs act and what was eventually regulation CF on that went title three.
Chuck Pettid (00:54:15):
Sometimes people call it to when effective in may of 2016, they actually did a really great job on a lot of it. Making sure that everyone’s on the same playing field, they all have the same information that investors are protected. That there’s only certain ways that you can advertise, because what they’re trying to do is make sure that you’re not fooling people and it’s well thought out a lot of cases, for sure. There’s some strange ones, like why is it a million $70,000, right. And it started at a million. And then right, the only time it was ever adjusted was in 17. I think maybe at 17, they went from a million to 1,000,070 thousand because they said it was inflation adjusted. And that was the last time we got an inflation adjustment was that two or three years ago. We’ve been talking about it for years.
Chuck Pettid (00:54:57):
And we’re really when it comes to. And we go to Capitol Hill once every three months on three, four months. And we’ve actually even been to the, into the white house for meetings to basically lobby for these changes to happen. One being increased the minimum or the maximum 1 million, 70,000 to two to three, maybe 5 million. Some people are calling for 10 million. That’ll never happen, but you know, two, three, $5 million starts to make it a lot more practical for some other companies that doing that ends up being that investors have more opportunities. They have access to things that they wouldn’t have gotten. Like those companies that like, well, I haven’t come around in the idea of crowdfunding. Now they can raise 5 million. If that was the case, I say, well, I’m going to do it now. Cause it’s 5 million is actually good money for us that we can actually use for growth capital or whatever it is.
Chuck Pettid (00:55:44):
And then that means that people actually get the chance to invest in them, to which they’re not getting right now. There’s a couple other weird rules to it. Just like the way that the calculate, the maximum that an individual investor can invest. How, if it was, you make it like a crazy example, but if you were multi-billionaire and he made billions of dollars a year, what do you think the maximum amount you could invest as per year? Yes. No, I’m glad. It’s not that it’s 107,000 again, it’s the dollar amount that you’re supposed to be allowed to invest is based off of a calculation of your income. But if your income was above, like where calculation max is, you just stop there, like you’re, you know, you’re a hundred, 7,000. It doesn’t matter if you’re Warren buffet, you’re still going to do a hundred, a hundred seventh, actually Warren buffet view another interesting case.
Chuck Pettid (00:56:32):
So he’s a billionaire, but he only pays himself a hundred thousand dollars a year. I’m sure he has dividends and all these other, like, you know, sources of income that would be counted towards this. But so he only had a $100,000 salary. I’m thinking when I’m doing that calculation, right. He can only do $10,000 a year and maximum investments across all platforms and reg CF. So it’s like, I didn’t make these simple adjustments. So like, it’s this weird, not that we run with that run into it too much where people are like, I can’t invest even though I’m it’s just silly stuff that could be cleaned up. So are there any success stories you can share with us? Yeah. Yeah, there’s, there’s you know, close to 150 of them actually, so, but where should I go out? How about, of course it’s good.
Chuck Pettid (00:57:20):
Of course it’s gonna be 1,000,070 raise. They raised the full amount, the 5,000 investors. So let’s, that’s, that’s a given for anything that I’ll talk about, but how about Sapient CPNs? Interesting, interesting, because of the B2B play hardware play, they, they sell tools for energy efficiency to basically, you know, commercial buildings, industrial warehouse owners sporting stadiums, very not too unusual of a product, but as a, like I said, it’s something that people can easily relate to. Oh, you’re trying to like save energy through smart plugs, but it’s meant for commercial buildings, not for residential use. So something that people can easily grasp and then they look into it and they say, Oh, Oh, they had XYZ in sales, this partnership during the campaign they updated and said they got this, you know, sale closed and maybe one and that’s, that’s kinda normal and typical and stuff like that.
Chuck Pettid (00:58:15):
That’s great. But maybe one of the cooler successes of that story is they actually closed over a million dollars worth of accounts actually contracted and paid recurring annual contracts. One being specifically with or the the Houston Texans play. I forget the name of the field, but that actual building owner caught wind of the campaign. I think they made it made an investment to nothing major, but the, it had the team go and add and talk to management. They actually signed a contract with like an NFL stadium owner. And that was not the full million. Like there was a few others that actually got to over a million bucks for the that’s huge, that’s huge for earlier in an earlier stage company to take an over a million dollars worth of contracts that they actually already are signed and delivering on.
Chuck Pettid (00:59:13):
I mean, you have jumpstart who, as an insurance product, I mentioned earlier, she sold a few hundred different insurance policies. You know, to, I think it’s a significant amount or percentage of what she had previously had sold to date. And we even had, you could tell is actually really early on four years ago, one of our first camp of them, well, one of our was the first campaign. One of the, we had four launch at the same time farm from a box. They were pre-product pre-revenue which we kind of don’t do those too much anymore. Cause the crowd doesn’t really take them so much, but this one, they, this one they did and they sold a few million dollars worth. Well, they pre-sold a few million dollars worth of their product. This product cost that I think the least expensive one they sold is $20,000. So it’s not like they’re buying a bunch of things that cost two or five bucks. They were selling bikes and they’re putting down deposits for things that cost 20, 40, $50,000. They had maybe did that a little bit too early and unfortunate. They’re still really doing well today and they’ve made all this backup, but those preorders are a little bit too early. They weren’t ready to actually to get these things to market yet. But they still, I think closed a lot of those deals and I’ve done well.
Terry Tateossian (01:00:37):
So moral of the story is hustle, hustle, hustle, and hustle. And don’t just sit there and rely that your campaign is going to organically grow. You need to be out there and constantly pushing and promoting. And
Chuck Pettid (01:00:54):
[Inaudible] that scares people. I mean, it’s not like you can turn on the lights, which I wish he could don’t you to turn on lights. And all of a sudden it was raining money and new customers, but fortunately that doesn’t happen. We know that best, but
Terry Tateossian (01:01:07):
No, it does not. And I think it’s important that we tell founders that we tell the creators that, you know, you can’t, it’s not just about putting it out there. You have to actually get people on board. They have to believe in you. They have to be inspired by you. They have to want to be in a team together with you and support you and become your customer. Ultimately, and you need to be out there spreading the narrative and talking the talk and walking the walk.
Chuck Pettid (01:01:37):
Yeah. Three to four touch points is really important. How do you get three to four touch points? It could be email. It could be being on a radio show, being on a program that was recorded and you share it a campaign update that can be one of the three to four touch points. How do you get three to four of them? And how do you make sure you actually get those three to four touch points? We’d probably have to do 10 to 12 different updates that doesn’t again, mean you’re going to be doing this for 24. We don’t want people doing this 24 seven. We know you’re going to burn out soon. We want you to take time off. We want you to have like even a week or two off, like where it’s kind of things are there. There’s periods in each campaign where there’s a little bit of a doldrum going on. Sit back this, you know, reassess, make some adjustments, work on your business, you know, have fun with their family, whatever it is they need to do should not be working 24 seven on it.
Terry Tateossian (01:02:24):
Should people relaunch fan their failed campaign.
Chuck Pettid (01:02:30):
Most likely they shouldn’t. They should, if they’ve achieved some new milestones that could be landing a strategic investor hiring a new employee, a new key employee, closing new partnerships, new contracts, new sales something that shows that you’re executing something that’s different than what you’re doing, basically during the failed campaign. And then if you, that’s assuming that you failed because you just, weren’t a very good investment opportunity. What you’d like, unfortunately probably learn the hard way, but if you fail because you thought it was a situation where you could just flip the switch and things are going to go your way, you probably shouldn’t run another campaign. Even if are, even if you are, you know, a quality investment opportunity you should only run a campaign if you’re going to be engaged. If you’re pushing it again, not 24 seven, we understand you have a life, but if you’re not going to be engaged in part of like trying to make things successful, it doesn’t matter if you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Chuck Pettid (01:03:33):
No one’s going to care. No, one’s going to support. They’re going to see that they’re going to read through that and they’re going to see through the, you know, through the cracks and think that themselves, that you’re not really into it. Why would I want to be invested with a founder or a team that’s not engaged? What does that actually, you know, tell me about their business. So again, if it was because you tried your best and you just didn’t have the right data points, now you do have those do it. If it’s because you, you know, you didn’t try and you weren’t playing in the game, then don’t do it again.
Terry Tateossian (01:04:05):
I would think if you’re in the middle of a race that better VI are saying 24 seven, I don’t even give a shit what you got going on. I would think that that would be, you should be living, breathing, and eating and sleeping that campaign, ultimately, because that’s your shot like that. That’s the time when you should be doing that. So I, I can’t even imagine somebody not being fully engaged and understanding that it’s going to take their time and their effort and for that period period in, in their life to be completely focused to that.
Chuck Pettid (01:04:41):
Yes, because they get cold feet. I did not maybe they’re shy all of a sudden are. They didn’t put shame to the side. That’s part of the reason why I like to use the, you know, idea that you’re exposing yourself to the world, because if you’re not willing to flash the world, probably shouldn’t run a campaign. You want to really be, get yourself out there. And if that’s having a rain coat on and showing yourself to the world that way, like, that’s how you have to think about it. Cause if you need to, if you, don’t not going to be like, you’re not going to do well.
Terry Tateossian (01:05:09):
And that’s their job though. So either before or after the campaign, that’s still, their job is to flash the world out there and constantly be in spotlight.
Chuck Pettid (01:05:18):
You’d think so. There’s just a lot of people who don’t when you have a product and service and like, what does that mean? You gotta sell it. And if you’re not willing to show your dairy air, you’re not gonna,
Terry Tateossian (01:05:31):
Hey, that’s my job on 24 seven. And I, and I, I joke around all the time. I’m like, it’s just what it is. That’s just what you do. And you have to be okay with that and you have to feel comfortable and just own it. Just confidence is key. So Chuck, what’s next for you? Tell me
Chuck Pettid (01:05:53):
What is next for me? So we actually have a couple of verticals that we’re adding. Can’t say anything yet. There’s some paperwork that’s complete, we’re strategizing on the actual announcement. That’ll be super cool. And then shortly after that, season three and meet the Drapers first episode airs. So that’ll keep me busy for awhile. And then I think the next, you know, outside of these verticals and meet the Drapers of show releasing, or season three, starting, you’re going to start to see some really high quality deals. I will not be surprised with this year. There’s a, and I hope it’s on Republic. I’m, you know, I think there probably will be one on Republic, maybe not the competitors, but a well known household name type company that uses or utilizes the crowd. It could be for various reasons, but there will be some sort of event like that in 2020. And it could be a signal to the rest of the startup ecosystem that, you know, crowd funding is finally here and it’s, you know, that’s when it really becomes a tool in everyone’s toolkit and going forward to be pretty cool.
Terry Tateossian (01:07:11):
I hope so. And I wish you luck in that and I’m, I feel super lucky that we got to sit next to each other at a Bloomberg event two years ago. Well, a year and a half ago, two years ago. Yeah. And I hope everybody’s doing well on your team and thank you for being here with us. I think that you provided a lot of really, really fantastic information for founders that are looking to raise money in general, not even in the crowdfunding space, but just in general, these are rules that apply across the board, whether you’re just starting a business, thinking about raising or have been around for a while. So thank you. I appreciate it. And how can people find you
Chuck Pettid (01:07:55):
At republic.co, or email at chuck@republic.co that’s C H U C K @republic.co.
Terry Tateossian (01:08:06):
Awesome. Thank you so much. And we’ll see you next time. Awesome. Thanks. Thanks for listening to the amplified podcast. Follow us on our social channels and subscribe on Apple and Google podcasts, Spotify pod bean, or wherever you get your podcasts on the next episode, stay tuned for more trailblazing insights, energy and culture to help fuel your pursuit in the modern digital era.
