Letter from the CEO

As I sit down to write this letter, a full-on crisis is sweeping through financial services with the failure of Silvergate, Signature, and Silicon Valley Bank.

Right before our very eyes, we’re watching an entire ecosystem crumble for an entirely common and predictable reason…

A complete lack of financial controls, governance, and accountability to shareholders!

While you can find plenty of real-time updates from basically everyone in financial media as the story unfolds and regional bank stocks get pummelled…

For our Equifund members, we can thankfully say that neither our company – nor any of the companies who have listed an offering on the Equifund Crowd Funding Portal – were directly impacted by the events of the past week.

However, we simply can’t ignore what we believe will be the most significant impact of this bizarre series of events…

In our opinion, this only makes retail investor-focused fundraising strategies – like crowdfunding – more appealing.

Why? 2023 was already shaking up to be a difficult year for early-stage fundraising with rising interest rates and the FTX fallout; Private Capital was already under fire from LPs over weak due diligence.

Now, with the collapse of SVB – the defacto “country club of unicorns” – it seems like things will only get harder.

And now that we seem to be on the precipice of a new paradigm in Private Capital, it only seems appropriate we officially announce the rebranding of our editorial program, the Private Capital Insider, in order to give our Equifund readers an inside look at what’s happening in today’s private markets.

Yours for investing equality,

Jordan Gillissie - CEO
Equifund

Welcome to the Private Capital Insider – A free newsletter for everyday investors looking to diversify away from public markets and into private markets.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been managing a public market portfolio for 30 years or 30 days, investing in private markets is a different beast.

Unlike Public Capital Markets where everyone has access to the same information, the same investment opportunities, and (hopefully) daily liquidity…

Private Capital Markets are exclusionary by nature. This means getting access to opportunities is a challenge for pretty much everyone.

However, even if you do have access to desirable private offerings, most individual investors simply don’t have the ability or resources to do proper underwriting (or otherwise understand the risks they are taking).

And lastly, even if you did have access to desirable opportunities, and you could underwrite the risk, that doesn’t mean you can write a big enough check to get in.

While we can’t legally say that any of our offerings are going to generate positive returns, here’s what I can say:

After more than two decades of experience in the capital markets, I had all of these problems when I wanted to invest.

That’s why I started Equifund.

Thanks to the Reg CF and Reg A exempt offering frameworks made possible by the JOBS Act, our team can compete for the types of deals we’d want to invest in ourselves, but couldn’t because of check size.

But with a syndicate of hundreds – even thousands – of people, it means we can perform due diligence, package an offering, and give everyday people a chance to invest for as little as $500.

However, in order to build a thriving ecosystem that helps us achieve our mission of providing everyday investors with access to the same generational wealth building opportunities normally reserved for industry insiders…

We believe the key to our success is building a well-informed community of investors who are engaged in what's going on in today’s markets…

Understand the nuts and bolts of how Private Capital works (and have proper expectations around liquidity and time until potential exit)...

And can communicate with Equifund regarding the types of private investments they’d be interested in adding to their portfolio, as well as approximately how much they have to invest.

Why? Because the more “buy side” information we have, the easier it becomes to approach companies and say “hey, we’ve got X thousand investors with $X they’re interested in putting to work in deals like yours.”

Since 2020, our primary focus has been exclusively on Private Equity; more specifically, private companies that are 1-3 years away from potentially being listed on the Nasdaq or NYSE, although there is no guarantee they’ll achieve a listing.

Since then, the Equifund community has committed more than $58m across twelve Private Equity listings.

This year, we’re looking to list 8-12 new offerings across three private market categories.

• Private Equity: Sometimes called Early Stage Capital or Growth Capital, generally speaking, these all refer to investments made into privately owned companies (with some notable exceptions).
  

• Private Credit: Also known as Private Debt, this is a type of investment where the investors lend money to businesses and earn a return by charging interest on the loan.
  

• Real Estate: Similar to publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), this could refer to an investment into a professionally managed real estate fund, or direct investing into individual properties.

Just to get things kicked off with our first member poll of 2023…

Your Private Capital Blueprint

Interested in adding private investment opportunities to your portfolio? Here are a few ways you can get started on Equifund.

Free Investor Education:

While we cannot legally provide any individualized investment advice or recommendations, we do our best to publish answers to the most common questions we get from our members.

If you’d like to check out our library of existing content, you can do so by going here.

Create Your Free Account

Did you know you can invest in private offerings using your retirement funds, trust accounts, and corporations? You’ll find all of our walkthroughs, guides, and tutorials for getting your accounts set up properly right here.

Current Offerings

Ready to start investing? If so, go here to see our current opportunities.

Have Questions?: Whether you need help getting your account set up or you’re looking for more investor education, hit reply to this email! While we can’t provide any individualized advice, we do our best to read and respond to everyone who writes in.