Due Diligence

What is the RaiseWise.us due diligence process?

As a registered funding portal, we review and approve every project submitted to the RaiseWise.us portal to ensure that all information presented to the public is fair and not misleading.

We carry out thorough due diligence on the issuer, its legal structure and its officers, by running background checks on the information presented on our platform and by using a third-party provider. We also verify the claims made by companies, such as market size, contracts and partnerships, to make sure the information is accurate. The process can take anywhere from days to weeks, sometimes longer if the company or the raise is complex.

To make the process even more open and transparent for our members, our due diligence reviews are detailed in their analysis and carried out by the RaiseWise team as part of the approval process. The process is also regularly updated as we improve our due diligence procedures.

In line with our company values, our guiding principles for this review are:

• Integrity: acting with integrity and treating our investors and issuers fairly;
• Diligence: acting with skill, care and diligence;
• Transparency: always being open and transparent with our clients.

Our due diligence

Investor protection and transparency are of the utmost importance to us, so we constantly review our due diligence processes to make sure we stay at the forefront of the investment crowdfunding market. The guidelines below describe the current standard RaiseWise due diligence process.

Because of the variety of companies raising capital on the RaiseWise.us platform, we cannot cover every area, and the following should be read as guidelines. RaiseWise USA, Inc. and the RaiseWise.us portal do not endorse any of the companies raising funds on the platform and do not provide investment advice of any kind. Before deciding to invest, we strongly encourage members to research the companies carefully and, if they have any doubt, to seek independent advice from their tax advisor, financial advisor and/or attorney before investing in any company on RaiseWise.us.

Prospective investors should also carry out their own due diligence and read carefully all the information, risk warnings and documents on the campaign page. These guidelines are not part of our standard due diligence. Prospective investors should also understand that forward-looking statements and the opinions of entrepreneurs may not prove to be accurate, and that many startups fail.

Investors should be aware that RaiseWise.us relies on the information shared by the issuer and its officers, who are required to ensure that all information provided is accurate. RaiseWise.us also relies on third-party tools to perform part of its due diligence. The RaiseWise.us investor terms, including the platform's limitation of liability, apply to investments made on the website.

Pre-launch checks

The following checks are performed on every company before its campaign opens for investment:

• Background checks on the company and its officers, including personal credit and bankruptcy checks, disqualification ("bad actor") checks, previous company checks and accreditation checks. These checks are performed by the RaiseWise team and through third-party services;
• Checks on the officers to confirm that there are no outstanding bankruptcy proceedings;
• Fact-checking of all statements and claims made in the campaign to ensure they are accurate, clear and not misleading, by finding independent evidence where possible. Some statements may rely entirely on the company's own systems, for example its cap table or customer management systems;
• Obtaining the commercial contracts mentioned in a campaign; and
• Verification of all material professional accreditations.

Monitoring while the campaign is live

While a campaign is live on the RaiseWise.us platform, our compliance team also monitors investment patterns flagged by our campaign-manipulation tools, to ensure that investments are genuine and are not made to artificially improve the campaign's performance.

We do not review restricted documents, campaign videos, campaign updates, forum discussions, or the content of any investor event not organized by RaiseWise.us.

Post-raise checks

Once a campaign has reached its funding target, we carry out additional checks on the company before investments are completed and before any funds are released:

• Review of the company's share structure to identify any discrepancies;
• Review of existing investment agreements, if any, to check whether the rights of existing holders and the company's obligations are compatible with the crowdfunding round. Based on this review, we may, where necessary, recommend amendments to the documents or appropriate disclosures to investors regarding investment rights or risks;
• Review of known agreements, and request that any undocumented arrangements be documented;
• A full intellectual property search and review is not performed, but claims of trademark, patent or domain name ownership made in the campaign are checked through confirmation from the company and searches of public registers. We also request the transfer of ownership if RaiseWise becomes aware that material intellectual property is not fully owned by the company.

All material findings from the pre-funding due diligence are recorded and shared with investors by the issuer at the start of a seven-day cooling-off period.

Unless specifically mentioned in a campaign, the following information is not always reviewed as part of our standard due diligence, so investors should always assume that it has not been checked:

• Commercial contracts;
• Employment contracts;
• Ownership of assets, or the possibility that a company infringes the property rights of a third party;
• Property-related documents such as leases;
• Visits to all of the company's premises;
• Licensing and regulated arrangements;
• The company's financial history;
• Financial projections made by the company;
• The company's cash position and cash burn;
• The company's key suppliers or customers.

While we provide guidance on valuations, it is the company's decision to set the price of its offering, and ultimately the crowd decides whether it is willing to invest at that price.

Under the RaiseWise terms, all issuers, or companies acting through their officers, must ensure that the information provided to RaiseWise.us is accurate.