Silicon Prairie Portal and Exchange is leading the charge to de-risk the future of crowdfunding

Described as "capital 'F' capital 'S'- Full Stack" by CEO David Duccini, Silicon Prairie Portal and Exchange's (SPPX) technology is built from the ground up as an innovative crowdfunding solution. By operating as a funding platform and broker-dealer focusing on a path towards liquidity for investors, Duccini and his team are changing capital raising for the better. 

In the world of crowdfunding today, SPPX's platform is a one-stop shop that takes an overwhelming concept and makes it simpler for all parties.

The global crowdfunding market is projected to grow to roughly $200 billion by 2027, making platforms like SPPX essential.  

Society is beginning to understand the macro impact capital raising has on stimulating the economy. On a micro-scale, crowdfunding is proving to be a popular raising strategy permitting family, friends, and customers to become investors, leveraging portals like SPPX. 

SPPX aims to make capital raising much more efficient, thereby decreasing the pain of fundraising and investing for everyday folks. One way to make capital formation and liquidity easier is to make certain Issuers carry the right types of insurance for their offerings, which our partnership helps solve.

Assurely and SPPX, can help de-risk the process of using crowdfunding as a means to raise capital for both Issuers and investors by offering TigerMark™ on SPPX’s platform, ultimately working to create a new future of crowdfunding.

The 'Full Stack' Advantage

Silicon Prairie Portal and Exchange's approach is much more Issuer-focused than most other platforms, making them a leader in this growing industry. 

Duccini, who considers himself a “financial technology nerd who accidentally became an investment banker” and his team are blockchain experts who own all the infrastructure, software, and code of SPPX, making it a full-stack software platform.”

By laying it all out on the line, SPPX’s modernization of capital raising makes a strong impression on those hesitant about funding portals. Their goal is to make crowdfunding an option of first resort. 

This is why, in addition to the full-stack software, SPPX understands the rules and regulations of capital raising inside and out. Other competitors fail to recognize and take the time to truly understand and comprehend the complicated web of regulations concerning crowdfunding. 

For Duccini, the other half of the master plan provided access to liquidity for investors. One of the frequently used hashtags of the company is #liquidyiseverything. 

Duccini believes, "It's all fun and games; when you invest in that local brewery, just show up and get your free beer until your doctor says you should stop drinking that free beer, right? Then what do you do? So, having some means to get out of your investment has always been a goal from the beginning, and it's been a slow grind, threading the regulatory needle." 

SPPX applies all its tools and lenses to itself daily and is a pioneer for other capital-raising websites of what a future with properly mitigated risks and more liquidity could look like.

The Future of Capital Raising

For Duccini, crowdfunding's future consists of capitalizing on technology to make investing more efficient, and he understands the nerves individuals feel from an investor's standpoint.

Nerves around investing and raising capital through an online portal are valid. Yet, SPPX’s full-stack platform makes it simple as handing $100 to your neighbor for their new honeysuckle jam business.  

This hefty task is simplified by seamlessly embedding crowdfunding directly into private domains and eventually providing more liquidity options for investors.  

"One thing that sets us apart from the other portals is that we give every Issuer (startup) their own private branded landing page. Their investors are not distracted by anything else when they get to our platform. This is the future of crowdfunding." Duccini stated when asked about Silicon Prairie's ingenious approach to the industry. 

By allowing startups and founders to create their own landing pages on their domains, their investors simply need to click and invest to go through the checkout process and agree to disclosures. Easy as that. 

It's essential that Issuers send all their traffic to their own site; that's where they can easily show off what makes their business exciting. And when investors are sold, they click and come to SPPX's site to invest. 

This process avoids what other crowdfunding portals still incorporate; the soliciting and harassment of the community Issuers fight so hard to build and maintain. 

Duccini believes that very few investors come to crowdfunding portals wishing to "shop" through their options. "People come to these platforms to invest in one deal generally because they know and trust the founder or know someone who does know, like and trust the founder."

Mitigating the Risk

Silicon Prairie has embedded Assurely’s TigerMark™ Directors & Officers program in their capital F, capital S - full-stack crowdfunding portal. TigerMark™, part of Assurely’s widely popular and customized Insurance-as-a-Service, is ladled with a multitude of capital-raising friendly features for all parties involved - businesses raising capital, their investors, and the platforms that enable them to do business safely and compliantly.

“After the Issuer gets their investment dollars released from ESCROW, we have little to no control, but we still carry a risk if they do something bad or illegal. For this reason, the Tigermark™ policy adding vicarious liability is invaluable and ultimately, paramount for us.” - David Duccini, CEO of SPPX

As partners, we understand risks change when you build your business with financial support from friends, family, and even strangers. Everyone has concerns that simply need attention. Here is where the partnership with Assurely and SPPX becomes essential. 

Our partnership enables providing the best crowdfunding platform at the best price to the industry. Supporting the safety and confidence of all stakeholders - Issuers, investors, and platforms, always has and will always remain the central goal.

When asked about the role TigerMark™ will play on SPPX's platform, Duccini stated, "After the Issuer gets their investment dollars released from ESCROW, we have little to no control, but we still carry a risk if they do something bad or illegal. For this reason, the Tigermark™ policy adding us for vicarious liability is invaluable and ultimately, paramount  for us."

Companies and startups raising funds are concerned about "messy cap tables" or a bunch of investors (whom some are legally considered "unsophisticated") that you need to answer to and could potentially cause a problem if they aren't happy.

Toss in some main street investors who are not close friends or family members, and different concerns arise. Concerns about the unknown. 

Nothing is worse than fraud, cheating, or someone you trusted running away with your money.  "[TigerMark™] materially de-risks the platform and helps us in the conversations with Issuers who have heard that having a lot of unaccredited investors is problematic," spoken by Duccini when asked what role risk management played within Silicon Prairie. 

The integration of the TigerMark™ program allows Silicon Prairie to spread a shared value proposition across key stakeholders in the transaction. These stakeholders include the supply and demand, the Issuer or the company raising capital, and the investor and enabler.

"Our core business model is investor relations as a service, and we see Assurely playing a critical role. Especially around the fact that 90% of successful businesses have to pivot in terms of any change in funds, materials, resources, etc. That is the sort of event that may give investors pause if they are not on board with the change," Duccini stated during an interview with David Carpentier, CEO of Assurely.

A Bright Future

Moving forward, Silicon Prairie envisions involving more private label portals for angel groups, accelerators, and incubators and continuing to offer the ability to embed Silicon Prairie's technology into domains. 

In addition, the Silicon Prairie merger with MiVenture Holdings Inc. has opened the flood gate of mobile crowdfunding access for startups, companies and investors. Miventure’s unparalleled mobile platform pairing with Silicon Prairie’s ideal capital raising approach emerges a new user experience for investors and Issuers. The app will increase the ease and efficiency of investors, acting as a "mobile wallet" for proof of investment. For businesses, it will serve as a communication tool to their community. 

When asked why Duccini has invested in helping companies raise capital, he stated, "I am a big believer in the democratization of capital raise. I believe people have the right to raise capital from their fans and friends. The thing that gets me is investable businesses raising money."

Duccini's dexterous mind behind the full stack of SPPX will continue to provide more liquidity for all parties, more ease in the investment process, and with the help of TigerMark™, seamlessly include insurance as a service on the platform. 

Yet, he will continue to be stunted by his Achilles heel, wooden model airplanes. "I'm fully incapable, even with an engineering background, to put together any wooden model," stated Duccini. 

Weaknesses aside, the strength of the partnership between Assurely and Silicon Prairie Portal and Exchange is bound to accelerate derisking crowdfunding by providing trust with the TigerMark™ Directors and Officers Insurance program.

You have done a lot to build all the various components of the capital-raising process? Would you consider yourself a "full-stack" capital raising platform?

We are capital F, capital S, full-stack. Make it all capital capslock.

David, how important do you think full-stack is for this industry going forward? Do you think that everybody's going to end up full-stack? Do you think there's going to be specialists?

We are really, truly a one-stop-shop in terms of a full-stack. And I like the word full-stack because that's the reality. I mean that the people will survive in this space; they're going to figure out what they're good at and outsource their weaknesses. All-day long. The same questions that apply and that we asked our Issuer clients apply to us, like, we use all of our tools and our lens to ourselves daily.

 Every business has to have some unfair competitive advantage or serve some unmet need. Otherwise, they're going to be-it's that red ocean blue ocean conversation, right? You're chasing a red ocean; you better have economies of scale. And we just think that we sort of behave a little differently because we own all of our own infrastructures, write code, and pivot faster than anybody else. We understand infrastructure, we know the software, and to some extent, the model off the bat was having control of our own destiny. Early on, we had to write our own banking core software to do the escrow account management, the ACH transfers; everything we've got is our code. 

Yeah, full-stack has been a part of our roadmap since day one—the Master Plan, which was really sort of published in 2017. We got going around 2015 incorporated in 2016. All along. We picked this big hairy audacious name Silicon Prairie Portal & Exchange, right? It wasn't Silicon Prairie Portal and hold indefinitely until you die and pass on to your heirs, because most government forms can't take a name that long. It's just awkward to say there's not a good acronym for it either. So we've always been about making sure liquidity is everything. That's one of our hashtags; liquidity is everything. People have a right to get out of these investments. I mean, it's all fun and games; when you invest in that local brewery, just show up and get your free beer until your doctor says you should stop drinking that free beer, right? Then what do you do? So, having some means to get out of your investment has always been part of master plans since day one, and it's been a slow grind, threading the regulatory needle. 

And one of the things that we think that coming back full circle here on Assurely is that we believe it does materially de-risk, not just the platform for selfish reasons. It helps us in the conversation with Issuers who have heard that having a lot of non-accredited investors is problematic. It certainly is now, as of late, going to be top of mind for folks when they are concerned about Issuer fraud. I do think it plays an important role; the challenge we're going to have is that for people that have raised capital in the past, I don't know if they necessarily see the value of it, especially for certain transactions, like real estate, where it's typically a small handful of investors. But I do think that for probably the vast majority TigerMark™ is enticing.

What is your next push in the industry? Any announcements or initiatives you can tease here?

We're licensing our engine off now to Angel Groups. We've got a reasonably large pipeline of about a dozen other Angel Groups. We're fundamentally a financial technology company, and we happen to have a public portal. But you know, one thing that makes us different from the other portals is that we give every issue of their own private landing page. We encourage all of our Issuers to have their own landing page first. And when they get to our platform, their investors are not distracted by anything else. And so that's what sets us apart from the other portals. I mean, this is the future of crowdfunding. And we are now at a point where we can embed our technology within someone's own domain. We also offer this technology under white label. And so, I think the future for Silicon Prairie is a combination of more private portals for Angel groups; they'll be able to syndicate with each other inside of our system. We're going to continue to offer our Issuers their own private landing pages because, you know, we don't solicit and harass their investors. So like, if you send an investor to our portal, we're not going to harass them to come back and look at other things. Every other portal out there does that because they have a theory of having a big crowd of investors. Our future is more of these private label portals for Angel groups, accelerators, and incubators. 

So our future is bringing in Miventure and getting the mobile app lit up, which for us will be really more of an Issuer-centric tool so that Issuers can send notices out to their investors. For example, individual investors walk into the brewery like they're a big owner, and sometimes they don't know who the owners are. And so our mobile app would say, Look, I'm an owner, give me my free beer. And so, we see it as a mobile wallet for investors. And a communication tool for the brewery. Allowing them to say, 'hey, come to our investor-only events' as a push notification kind of thing. 

People come to these platforms to invest in one deal on one deal only because they know and trust the founder or know someone who does know, like and trust the founder, or if they're lucky because the founder paid media, the thing has gone viral. We don't make any promises that we're going to find investors. I don't think that these portals have a captive audience regarding investors' eyeballs. Unquestionably, people come in and invest, but they're typically low-dollar amounts. And that's, again, not the business we're in. I don't speak for my investors; I mean, I might know what they look at. Still, it's not my business to try, and you know, and I want to be very clear with the regulators with an arm's length distance, they're not our customers. We don't think of the investors on our platform as our clients because they're just not, and we don't want to have the regulatory risk of that. 

So, again, de-risking our business, we're focused on what we're good at and helping our Issuers become successful. I think the Assurely piece is an exciting part, especially for businesses that may or may not be well known, like real estate.

What about helping companies raise capital gets you excited?

I'm a big believer and one of the first people to use the democratization of capital phrases; I believe people have a right to try and raise capital from their fans and friends. 

Ok, self-serving question. What role does risk management play in your platform?

Our core business model is investor relations as a service, and we see Assurely playing a critical role. Especially around the fact that 90% of successful businesses have to pivot in terms of any change in the use of funds, materials, resources, etc. That is the sort of event that may give investors pause if they are not on board with the change. That sort of stuff can provide investors with pause if they're not on board with it. 

Assurely does de-risk a couple of things. One, it's a compelling piece of a story for a high-risk venture, which most of these startups are. And it does provide a level of comfort to investors that perceive its value. The beautiful thing about this is that we've learned that the regulators really only have our neck to choke. They can only complain about the stuff that's on our landing page. But all of our investors and Issuers have their own landing pages. Our model is to try and push our platform out to the edges. So that we tell all of our Issuers, "hey, go get your own investor page." That's where you send all of your traffic; when raising money, send them to your own site first. That's where you sell the investor on the excellent upside of your business, and then they click and come to our site to buy the amazing upside. So our role, really, in the primary transaction is like a bill pay service.

So yes, de-risking it for our issuers and for investors, especially if it's a significant amount of money. And then de-risking it for us.

Besides SPPX, I know first hand some other very cool hobbies you have, like being a pilot... Anything you have tried and totally failed at?

Something I tried and failed at from a hobby standpoint... Oh, yeah, I got a simple one. For some reason, I can't put together wooden model airplanes. I can put together plastic models; I can't put them together like wooden models. I have this fantasy of putting together a wooden model kit, and for some reason, even as an adult, I'm wholly incapable. Somehow even though I have an engineering background, I'm entirely incapable of putting together any kind of wooden model. 

Yeah, I don't know. It frustrates me... I don't know if it's because I don't have the patience. That's probably a deep regret of mine. And thank you very much for surfacing a very painful memory.