The preliminary agenda for Growth Capital Expo 2014 has been posted. It’s an exciting program that addresses the current issues and opportunities of most interest to investors and executives active in emerging growth company finance. Click here to view it.
Day One will focus on the traditional institutional capital market for emerging growth finance, with panels devoted to traditional PIPE and non-PIPE structured growth financing, recent SEC proposals and enforcement actions impacting the emerging growth market, and innovations in alternative financing and going-public structures for high-growth companies. We are cramming what is typically two days of information on the equity private placement and alternative public offerings markets into one jam-packed information download. It will give you an understanding of the major trends and issues in the private and public emerging growth capital market you need to navigate the rest of the year.
Day Two is devoted entirely to the impacts and opportunities in the JOBS Act that are revolutionizing the market for emerging growth company finance. If you think the JOBS Act is just about crowdfunding, this program will clear the scales from your eyes and open up a new world of finance and investment alternatives for small high-growth companies, public and private.
Not in 30 years has so much financial innovation been unleashed into the markets at once. But that innovation will come at a cost to some legacy systems and structures that do not innovate in response. On Day Two, we will offer the information and tools to ride the JOBS Act wave rather than be washed away by it.
Day Two will explore the new world of publicly marketed equity private placements for both private and public companies, and the online funding portals that are being created to conduct these offerings. We will address what companies and investors need to do to take advantage of the new investment and finance options afforded by the new freedoms of the JOBS Act: what it will take to be successful, and how to position your company to improve your odds. What does the new Reg A+ proposal mean for under $50 million IPOs? How will the growing liquidity in private stock secondary markets help private companies conduct their going-public events at higher valuations, with less volatility and better after-market results?
And finally, we will address the “CF” word: to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, “Is there a there, there?” For institutional investors, “there” most certainly is, if you ignore the noise of the retail crowdfunding evangelists selling the picks and shovels of the retail CF gold rush, and focus instead on the accredited investor-only “Title II” market. We will bring current, real-time examples of firms that are succeeding in operating and employing online institutional investment platforms to raise and deploy capital into high-growth companies and asset classes.
All of that knowledge-dense programming in an action-packed atmosphere of deal making and networking that is the hallmark of the Growth Capital Expo. We will continue to update the agenda in the coming days as we announce our speakers, moderators and panelists, so check back regularly, and follow us on Twitter @growthcapexpo.
