How to Invest Through CrowdStreet

 (00:00):

Hello and welcome to CrowdStreet. In this video, we will cover how to make an investment through CrowdStreet. 

Today's agenda:

The investor requirements to invest accreditation

How to create your CrowdStreet account

A brief overview of different investing accounts

The offer process and what to expect when making an investment and what to expect post-investment. 

First, a disclaimer, CrowdStreet is not a registered broker dealer, investment advisor, or crowdfunding portal, and therefore cannot provide investment advice. None of the information contained in this presentation may be construed as investment, legal, or tax advice. CrowdStreet does not endorse any of the opportunities that appear on the CrowdStreet website, nor does crowd make any recommendations regarding the appropriateness of particular opportunities for investors. Investing on the CrowdStreet Marketplace includes a high degree of risk, including risk of entire loss of investment. Users and investors should consult with a respective investment advisors, attorneys, and tax advisors concerning each investment opportunity. Carefully review all documentation concerning each investment and seek clarification on any questions or concerns of a particular investment opportunity prior to investment. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. No advisor-client relationship may be formed. Absent a written executed advisory services agreement with CrowdStreet Advisors and without such an agreement, nothing herein may or should be construed as investment advice.

(01:22):

To invest with the CrowdStreet Marketplace, you must fulfill the following requirements. Be a US citizen or resident, meet US accreditation requirements, which will be discussed later in this presentation and comply with a MLKYC laws. If you are not a US citizen or resident, but would like to invest via a US based entity, either a corporation or an L L C, that entity must meet us. Accreditation requirements comply with AMLKYC laws, be taxed in the US as a corporation or partnership, but not be a disregarded entity. Have a US taxpayer ID and draw on a US Bank account. Please note that international investors may vary and may require additional documentation. In this next section, we will cover accreditation, the requirements to be accredited and how to prove your accredited status. To comply with SEC regulations, Crowd Street investment opportunities are only accessible to accredited investors through our secure and private platform.

(02:21):

The definition of accredited investor is found in Regulation D promulgated under the Securities Act of 1933. There are several different ways to be qualified as an accredited investor, including but not limited to individuals having a pretext income exceeding $200,000 annually with the expectation of that continuing in the next year, individuals having a net worth of more than 1 million, excluding the value of the primary residents, individuals holding certain professional certifications, designations and licenses, and good standing Series seven, series 82 and series 65 holders joint accounts where the couple earn $300,000 annually with the expectation of that continuing in the next year, a couple having a net worth of more than 1 million, excluding the value of the primary residents entities owning more than 5 million in investments entities in which all equity owners are accredited. Trust with total assets in excess of 5 million not formed for the specific purpose of acquiring the subject securities, whose purchase is directed by a sophisticated person as defined by Regulation D.

(03:33):

To prove you're accredited status to CrowdStreet, you need to provide a letter stating that you are accredited. The S e C states accreditation must be verified within 90 days of the offering by a registered wealth advisor, licensed cpa, or licensed attorney. For this reason, the CrowdStreet Investor relations team is not a qualified party. After confirming your status, the reviewer should provide written confirmation. The letter or template must explicitly state that the investor is an accredited investor as defined by Rule 501A  be dated within the last 90 days, be signed by a licensed cpa, licensed attorney, or registered wealth advisor and list the issuers qualifications i e license number and state of registration CrowdStreet has a template that you can use. It is linked in the transcript below. There are two ways to prove your status to Crowdstreet. The first is to upload your letter from your CPA Wealth advisor, et cetera mentioned before.

(04:31):

The second way is to use our third party partner, verify investor free of charge. Note that it can take up to 48 hours for verify investor to send you a letter, but this will not affect your ability to invest in Ideal. You do not need to have both a letter from your CPA and a letter from Verify investor. We recommend getting a letter from a qualified third party, but verify investor is there as an option in case your accreditation letter is older than 90 days and you do not have time to meet with a qualified third party. More information on accreditation. The letter does not have to be from Verify investor. We just won't pay for it. Letters from parallel markets, for example, are also generally accepted. Sponsors may require additional verification or documentation concerning accredited investor status. If you are the sole owner of the investing account, the letter can be for yourself as an individual, but you must upload the entity's formation documents indicating the ownership rights if you are investing jointly with your spouse. Both parties need to be listed on the letter. If you are investing through an entity with multiple owners, either the entity must be accredited or all owners must be accredited. You cannot submit a letter for only one of the owners or three outta four. You cannot obtain a letter from your bank simply stating your current account balance. The issuer must be a qualified party and must state that you are an accredited investor per rule 5 0 1

(05:56):

If you are a qualified party, you cannot sign your own letter. Let's go over how to create an account. You cannot view the details of marketplace deals unless you have an account. First. Go to CrowdStreet.com. In the upper right corner, you'll see a  button that says ‘Create an account’. Click on it. You'll then be taken to a signup page. Fill out each section with the appropriate information. Note that you must be an accredited investor to participate in Crowd street Marketplace deals. Once you have created an account, you'll be able to view the details of marketplace deals. However, it is recommended that you fill out your profile information at this time. To do this, look to the upper right hand corner of the page. You'll see something that says, hi your name. As you can see for me, it says, hi, Becky. Click on that. This will provide you with a dropdown menu. Click on my account. This will take you to your My Account page. Once there, you'll see options along the left hand side. The profile section is where you will input personal information such as your legal name, email address, mailing address, social security number, et cetera. Don't worry, your information is secure.

(07:13):

To create an investing account, click on investing accounts. In the navigation, there are several different types of accounts that you can invest through the information needed by CrowdStreet to use those different accounts of varies. However, our most popular types of investing accounts are individual joint trust, IRAs and LLCs. To create an investing account, click on add an investing account. You will then need to fill in the required information. Again, the information that you will need to provide will vary depending on the account type, but in this example, this is the information that you would need to provide for an individual account. What is important to note that if you are investing through a joint account, not only will you need to list each member here, but also each member will need to have their own CrowdStreet account. Other important notes related to accounts. It is important to ensure that you are choosing the correct account type. Be sure to consider all options before making a selection for joint accounts. Each investor will need to have their own CrowdStreet login and member profile and then share an investing account. For an ira, it is important to follow the naming format and instructions found in the help center.

(08:28):

Ensure that the legal name is correct. This is not a nickname field for an individual. This should be your name as it appears on your government issued ID for a joint account. This should include both investors' names for entity. This should be the same as it appears on the articles of organization. While it is not required for all offerings, it would be best to upload a copy of each Investor's government issued ID now so that it is on file and your offer process

(08:54):

Is not. In the future, you can do so under account members. Again, while not required for all offerings, it would be best to upload your entity's formation documents now so that they are on file. This could prevent future delays during the offer process. If you have an accreditation letter, you should upload it at this time. I will now show you the steps of the offer process. I'll be using a tutorial offering to demonstrate this. Therefore, this is not actual information, but rather a representation of a fictional investor's offering. Before we begin, here are some important times to note in the offer process. At 10:00 AM Pacific Standard Time is when the webinar begins at 10:30 AM Pacific Standard Time is when offers can be submitted at 5:00 PM Pacific Standard Time is when closing documents can be submitted. Document submission, date and time will be used to decide when or if your offer will be authorized to fund. There are four main steps of the offer, process, offer submission, account selection, signing documents, and funding.

(10:03):

Once you have reviewed the offerings details and are ready to submit an offer, click the Gold Invest Now button to start the offer process. Here is the offer submission page. In the upper left corner is a tracker to show you where you are in the offer process. If you would like to review help center articles related to submitting an offer, you can click here. Here is where you will follow in your offer amount specific guidelines regarding the offer amount can be found here. Next, you review disclosures and disclaimers and check acknowledgements associated with this offer. When you are ready, you can progress to the next step by clicking on the blue submit offer button. In this example, the minimum investment amount is $1, so that will be my offer submission, so I filled in my offer amount and have acknowledged the disclosures and disclaimers. Thus, I can move on to the next steps and view the offer summary page.

(10:56):

On the offer summary page, you'll see your offer status and what's next. Along the bottom is a tracker that shows you the steps of the offer process. Each step will show whether has been completed via a green check mark or further attention is needed. For my offer, you can see that the offer amount is $1 and that I am ready to select an investing account for this offer. At this time, I will proceed by clicking on the blue get starter button below the account section and selecting my investing account that will be associated with this offer. To get started, click on the get started button under account. Choose the eligible investing account you would like to use to make your investment. Please note, accounts can only have one in progress offer per offering. The account name will be grayed out and disabled when an offer is already in progress and you will not be able to invest again with that account until the offer is fully invested. Additionally, there may be restrictions

(11:52):

Set by the sponsor on the types of accounts you can use to invest. For example, SD IRAs. Those accounts will be grayed out and disabled. Once you select your investing account, the account information will appear below. Confirm that the account information is correct. Once you have confirmed all the information is correct, click the submit button in the lower right corner. If the account information has any missing or invalid information, click on the edit button of the section you would like to edit. It looks like a little pencil. You'll then be brought to a new screen where you can fix the information. Once done, click the return to offer button, confirm that the new information is correct, and then click submit. You'll be brought back to the offer summary page. At this point, you have submitted your offer and associated the investing account. In this example, you can see that my account has been submitted and is under review. Review does not need to be completed prior to moving to the document step. Now I will wait until the designated time to sign documents. This is usually 5:00 PM Pacific Standard Time. I'll be notified via email once I'm able to sign documents.

(13:05):

It is now the designated time before the document step was grayed out, but now it's blue. At this time, I'll go ahead and move to the document stage by clicking on the blue get started button. Once you were in the document section, you can click the button next to e-sign to digitally sign documents via our third party provider DocuSign option. Optionally, you can download and sign documents to upload at this step. Please note that if you are investing via an SD ira, you cannot use DocuSign. You'll need to download and sign documents. The document process is offline and we cannot configure DocuSigned and our workflow. To meet each custodian specific requirements, you'll need to download the document and submit them to your custodian for their review and approval. Once they have countersigned, please upload the fully completed package to your offer. If your custodian requires any additional information for their review, please reach out to help@crownstreet.com.

(13:59):

For investing accounts with additional signatories, the additional signatory must log into their account to execute their portion of the closing documents. Once the first signatory has completed their e-sign, an email will be sent to the next signatory asking them to log in to complete their portion completed. Documents will be available on the screen for review or you can return to the offer summary page. Once documents are signed. CrowdStreet Investor relations will review based on the date and time your documents were submitted. Document submission, date and time will be used to decide when or if your offers authorized to fund. Please allow 24 to 48 hours for our customer relations team to review documents. If the offering becomes oversubscribed. Investors who do not complete their documents promptly will be moved to a wait list while the investors who have completed documents have the opportunity to fund.

(14:51):

Ultimately, not all investors who submit offers will be able to invest in an offering that is Oversubscribed Investments will be finalized on a first to fund basis from among the offers where investors completed documents soonest. For more information on oversubscription, please view our help center. Back on the offer summary page. You can see that my documents are complete and under review. Once documents are reviewed, you'll see a green check mark. This means that your documents have been reviewed and you are approved to progress to funding. You can access funding instructions by clicking on the blue get Started button beneath the fund section.

(15:30):

The funding instructions page shows funding requirements as well as funding methods. This example offering is configured for ACH funding only. After you select the funding method and remit funds, it is important to confirm funds have been sent. You would do so by clicking the blue confirmed funds sent button and filling out the appropriate information. This will alert and the sponsor to watch for and mark funds as received. Note that if you are investing through an SD IRA, your custodian will need to send the funds following your confirmation of funds being sent. The sponsor will confirm receipt, countersign your closing documents, and finalize your investment. Note that it can take two to five business days for the sponsor to confirm that funds have been received. Once the sponsor has countersigned documents, all the steps of the process are complete. You will see a green check mark at each step. You will now be able to view your investment in your portfolio.

(16:28):

The goal of the portfolio page is to give investors insight into their investments made through CrowdStreet and access to reports. You get there by logging into CrowdStreet and clicking on portfolio in the navigation. To see more details about a specific investment, you'll go to the investor room. On the top left, you'll find the name of the investment, which investing account you use to invest and the date you invested. If you would like to message the CrowdStreet team or the sponsor, you would click on the Ask a question button once you complete an investment on the CrowdStreet marketplace. Each deal has a dedicated investor forum, which is a message board for investors of the same deal to communicate with each other. If you would like to view the investor forum for this investment, you would click on this button. Besides messaging other investors in the deal, investors can post questions about their investment and some sponsors use the form to communicate updates. If you would like to view the original offering details page, you would click here on View Offering. This is also where you would access your tax documents in the document section. This has been a brief overview on how to get started with Crowdstreet. In this video, we covered investor requirements to invest accreditation, how to create your CrowdStreet account, a brief overview of different investing accounts, the offer process, and what to expect when making an investment and what to expect post-investment. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to help@crowdstreet.com