FAQs

By investing in Forcrowd you buy a company share. You would become a shareholder of the company in which you would like to invest. As a shareholder, you will receive dividends from future revenues and a return on investment in the case of sale of the shares.
(In the case of investment in a start-up, the five years legally established period must pass)

You can invest by following a few simple steps as described on the homepage.
Register on Forcrowd portal, discover the projects in the dedicated section, choose the project and decide how much to invest.You will be able to complete the investment only after completing the appropriateness questionnaire.
You can find out your degree of appropriateness in the personal user profile section.

Everyone can invest in equity crowdfunding through Forcrowd. You must be of legal age and in possession of an Italian tax code. You can invest only after you have logged in and completed the appropriateness questionnaire.

Visit the tax relief page to find out about the benefits provided for the investor.For tax deductions, regardless of the date of payment of the investment, is the binding date is the one of registration of the capital increase with the Companies Register. Investors are therefore registered in the shareholders’ register by the Company that collected the capital at the end of the campaign, after having received the money paid in. The Companies themselves will provide the necessary certification to the Investors who participated in the fundraising.

Forcrowd, inspired by the principle of transparency, intends to publish and make the following information available to investors, before registration on the Portal:

• progress status of equity crowdfunding fundraising updated in real-time
• quarterly revenues communicated to Forcrowd by the bidders with the same timing
• performance of specific drivers (depending on the initiative)

Everything will be easily accessible through the section dedicated to the single investment project.

For each campaign a minimum subscription amount is set, lower than the total goal.

If the fundraising matches or exceeds the minimum subscription amount, the applicant collects the amount raised. If this does not happen, the collected amount will be returned to the investors at no cost.

To finalize the capital increase offer, Forcrowd verifies that, for each published offer, professional investors have also invested into a quota of the fundraising.

The following investors may be considered professional investors:

• Investor in support of innovation, namely an investor with a portfolio, including cash deposits, of at least € 500,000 and in possession of at least one of the following requirements:
  • have made, in the last two years, at least three investments in the share capital or provided shareholding loans to innovative start-ups or innovative SMEs, each of which for innovative or innovative SMEs, each of which for an amount of at least fifteen thousand euro
  • has held, for at least twelve months, the position of director or executive director in an innovative start-up or innovative SME, different innovative or innovative SME, different from the applicant company. ( Article 24 paragraph 2)
• Professional investors upon request: as per Attachment 3.II of the Intermediaries Regulation.Intermediaries can treat customers, other than those included in section I (banks, SIM, sgr, etc.) who expressly request it, as professional clients, provided the criteria and procedures mentioned below are respected.
  During the evaluation conducted by the intermediaries to assign the professional qualification, at least two of the following requirements must be met:
  • the customer carried out significant transactions on the market concerned with an average frequency of 10 transactions per quarter in the four preceding quarters;
  • the value of the client’s portfolio of financial instruments, including cash deposits, must exceed EUR 500,000;
  • the client works or has worked in the financial sector for at least one year in a professional position that requires knowledge of the operations or services envisaged.

  In the case of legal entities, the aforementioned assessment is conducted on the person authorized to carry out transactions on their behalf and / or to the legal entity itself.

• Professional investors by right (according to Article 6 paragraph 2-part 5 of the TUF): as provided for in Annex 3.I of the Regulations
  • intermediaries, for all services and investment instruments that are required to be authorized or regulated to operate in the financial markets, be they Italian or foreign such as:
    1. banks;
    2. investment companies;
    3. other authorized or regulated financial institutions;
    4. insurance companies;
    5. collective investment schemes and management companies of such institutes;
    6. pension funds and management companies of such funds;
    7. the own-account negotiators of commodities and commodity derivatives;
    8. subjects that exclusively carry out trading on their account in financial instruments markets and indirectly adhere to the settlement service, as well as to the clearing and guarantee system (locals);
    9. other institutional investors;
    10. currency traders;
  • large companies that present, at the level of each company, at least two of the following dimensional requirements:
    1. total assets in the balance sheet: € 20,000,000;
    2. net annual turnover: € 40,000,000;
    3. own funds: € 2,000,000;
  • institutional investors whose main activity is investing in financial instruments, including entities dedicated to the securitization of assets or other financial transactions.

You can claim to be a professional investor in the personal user profile section below.
For this certification, the documentation demonstrating the effective status of “Professional Investor” must be attached by e-mail, in compliance with Consob Regulation dated 26 June 2013.

In the case of bank transfer, there will be no additional expense, unless there are charges foreseen by your bank.

Certainly, you have the right to withdraw from the request to become a shareholder, at no cost, through a communication addressed to Forcrowd through a request from a reserved portfolio area, within seven days from the date of the request.

Forcrowd portal can be used by:

• “small and medium-sized enterprises” or SMEs (as defined by Article 2, paragraph 1, letter f) of Regulation (EU) no. 2017/1129 of 14 June 2017)
• innovative start-ups
• innovative SMEs

In addition to these types of applicants, also those coming from UCITS (“collective savings organizations”) or from other corporations that invest mainly in SMEs (including innovative start-ups and innovative SMEs).

“Small and medium-sized enterprises” or SMEs are:

• companies that according to their most recent annual or consolidated financial statements meet at least two of the following three criteria:
  • the average number of employees during the year is less than 250
  • total balance sheet not exceeding EUR 43,000,000
  • annual net sales not exceeding EUR 50,000,000
• small and medium-sized enterprises as defined in Article 4, paragraph 1, point 13, of Directive 2014/65 / EU, or companies that have an average market capitalization of less than EUR 200,000,000 based on year-end prices of the previous three years.

Visit the Fundraising section to better understand all the steps needed to start a Forcrowd campaign

To finalize the capital increase offer, Forcrowd verifies that, for each published offer, professional investors have also invested into a quota of the fundraising.

The following investors may be considered professional investors:

• Investor in support of innovation, ie an investor with a portfolio, including cash deposits, of at least € 500,000 and in possession of at least one of the following requirements:
  • have made, in the last two years, either at least three investments in the share capital or acted as a financing partner in innovative start-ups or innovative SMEs, each of which for innovative or innovative SMEs, each of which for an amount of at least fifteen thousand euro
  • has held, for at least twelve months, the position of director or executive director in an innovative start-up or innovative SME, different innovative or innovative SME from the applicant company. ( Article 24 paragraph 2)
• Professional investors upon request: as per Attachment 3.II of the Intermediaries Regulation.

Intermediaries can deal with customers other than those included in section I (banks, SIM, sgr, etc.) who expressly request them as professional clients, provided the criteria and procedures mentioned below are respected.

During the evaluation conducted by the intermediaries to assign the professional qualification, at least two of the following requirements must be met:

• the customer carried out significant transactions on the market in question with an average frequency of 10 transactions per quarter in the four preceding quarters;
• the value of the client’s portfolio of financial instruments, including cash deposits, must exceed EUR 500,000;
• the client works or has worked in the financial sector for at least one year in a professional position that requires knowledge of the operations or services envisaged.

In the case of legal persons, the aforementioned assessment is conducted on the person authorized to carry out transactions on their behalf and / or to the legal entity itself.

• Professional investors by right (according to Article 6 paragraph 2-part 5 of the TUF): as provided for in Annex 3.I of the Regulations
  • intermediaries, for all services and investment instruments that are required to be authorized or regulated to operate in the financial markets, be they Italian or foreign such as:
    1. banks;
    2. investment firms;
    3. other authorized or regulated financial institutions;
    4. insurance companies;
    5. collective investment schemes and management companies of such institutes;
    6. pension funds and management companies of such funds;
    7. the own-account negotiators of commodities and commodity derivatives;
    8. subjects that exclusively carry out trading on their account in financial instruments markets and indirectly adhere to the settlement service, as well as to the clearing and guarantee system ( locals );
    9. other institutional investors;
    10. currency traders;
  • large companies that present, at the level of each company, at least two of the following dimensional requirements:
    1. total assets in the balance sheet: € 20,000,000;
    2. net annual turnover: € 40,000,000;
    3. own funds: € 2,000,000;
  • institutional investors whose main activity is investing in financial instruments, including entities dedicated to the securitization of assets or other financial transactions.

Forcrowd identifies the following success factors for equity crowdfunding campaigns and is committed to guiding applicants in the presentation of their project to maximize fundraising results:

• the attractiveness of the project
• the innovative aspect of the project
• business profitability
• clarity and completeness of the information provided
• the credibility of the plan
• concreteness of investments
• team experience

Following the closure of the campaign, the capital increase will be formalized and implemented through a communication to the chamber of commerce that will determine the registration of the new breakdown of the capital increase. Each new member will receive an updated confirmation statement that attests to his or her shareholding.