Before making an investment decision, it is critical that investors read the entire pitch of an offering as well as the offering documents. Offering documents contain important information and terms that each investor should be aware of before they decide whether or not to invest. Before investing on Republic, make sure you review the risks associated with investing in private offerings.
If you’ve decided you’d like to invest in an offering, simply click the blue invest button found on the offering page.
Creating an investment commitment
From there, you will be taken to the “invest” page. On this page, you will indicate the amount you would like to invest as well as the payment method you would like to use. Each offering is unique in terms of which payment methods may be accepted, so if you don’t see your preferred payment method, it may not be available for that offering. Note that Republic may help facilitate payments via credit/debit cards, bank transfers, wires, and crypto. Republic cannot facilitate payments made by physical check so please do not send Republic or the issuer a paper check.
Identity verification and investing with an entity
If it’s your first time making an investment commitment on Republic, you will be asked to complete our identity verification process via Cognito. If you are having trouble passing your identity verification, please reach out to us at investors@republic.co. This is a required step for every investor that participates in any offering on Republic’s platform.
You can also choose to designate an entity you would like to use to invest with and evaluate any perks an offering may be promoting to those who invest.
Confirming your investment commitment
Once you’ve designated an investment amount, the payment method you’d like to use, an entity you’d like to invest with (if applicable), and completed identity verification, you’ll want to thoroughly review the terms of the investment. If you read and accept those terms, you can go ahead and click “confirm investment”.
Changing your investment commitment
If you’ve decided to confirm your investment commitment, you will be taken to your portfolio page, where you may be able to update your payment method, adjust your investment amount or cancel your investment commitment. Please note that your ability to adjust your investment commitment after you’ve confirmed it will depend on multiple factors including when you want to cancel in relation to the offering’s close date and the regulation exemption the offering is raising under. If you are able to cancel your investment commitment and decide to do so, ACH, card, and crypto payments should be automatically refunded. Wire refunds and some ACH refunds require additional information from investors. If we need anything else from you, we will reach out.
Completing your investment commitment: required action items
After you’ve created your investment commitment, it’s important that you make sure to take care of any required action items. If investors do not complete required action items, such as completing payment or other verifications in a timely manner, their investment commitment may be canceled.
The action items that are required differ from offering to offering. To best understand which required action items you may still have to complete, head to your portfolio and view your investment. If you don’t have any required action items, you’re all set for now. If anything else is needed to complete your investment commitment, a team member from Republic will reach out to you. If you have any questions about required action items, reach out to us at investors@republic.co.
Offering close and security issuance
If you’ve taken care of all required action items, you may be ready to receive securities for your investment, but there are still a few things that need to take place. Once the offering closes, Republic’s team will work with investors to complete required action items, process the waitlist (if applicable), and more. This process can take some time, but once the offering is fully closed out, final accounting will take place and funds will be sent to the issuer. Investors will also receive their securities.
Note that the larger an offering is in investor number and raise amount, the longer it may take to finalize an offering. We appreciate your patience while we work to issue securities for an offering.
Invested
When and only when you have received securities are you officially invested. At this point, keep an eye out for updates from the issuer. While Republic requests that issuers update investors quarterly, building an early-stage business is a lot of work and investors may not hear from issuers for some time. That said, investors will be updated promptly if there are any conversion or trigger events that may affect their investments, so look for emails from team@republic.co with issuer updates, check in on your portfolio and review other offerings you may be interested in on republic.com.