Ivy City's Republic Restoratives is known for not just being female-owned and operated, but also for being the largest crowdfunded distillery in the United States. They raised $119,000 on Indiegogo in May, and they had only set out to raise $75,000.
Co-founder Pia Carusone thinks Indiegogo chose the distillery as one of four companies to start using the crowdfunding site's new equity platform because of that success.
"They called us a couple of weeks ago and said they would want us to be a part of the launch with them," Carusone said. "Since we had a successful campaign in the past, they were looking for companies like ours that had a proven track record."
Any startup looking to raise equity has their own idea of how they want that partnership to look. Some give investors voting rights, others simply promise a cut of the revenue. Indiegogo's platform lets companies keep that autonomy and structure their deals how they want. The SEC adopted new rules surrounding equity crowdfunding last year, from Title III of the JOBS Act, that allows startups to sell up to $50 million worth of stock online to anyone, making this new platform possible.
For Republic Restoratives, that means giving investors a cut of the revenue until they get a 1.5x return on their investment. The platform lets anyone become an investor, not just those who meet SEC qualifications. And because of how they have their investment structured — with no voting rights — Carusone isn't worried about having strangers invest in the company.
"So if somebody invested who had views counter to ours, it wouldn’t be problematic," she said.
However, one feature of Indiegogo is still found in the equity platform: you have to meet the campaign goal in a given timeframe in order to get any of the money pledged to you. So if Republic Restoratives doesn't raise $50,000 within 60 days of starting the campaign, they won't get anything.
But that might not be a problem. In two days, the distillery has raised about $44,000 from 131 investors, as of Thursday afternoon.
"It’s a pretty big deal. The significance of us being involved is pretty big. Indiegogo sent an email to their international lists about this," Carusone said.
