Assurely and Dalmore Group enter a partnership to seamlessly offer an insurance solution for Dalmore clients

Recently we were able to sit down with Etan Butler, Chairman of the Dalmore Group. What we learned contributed to our excitement about the Assurely - Dalmore Group partnership even more. Etan’s vision and drive are contagious. Aligning ourselves and supporting great entrepreneurial leaders is our goal, and when Etan spoke about his passion and vision for the industry it was easy to see how our values were similar. Read more about Etan and how his dedication transcends into Dalmore’s success;

Since 2018 Dalmore Group has onboarded more than 200 companies utilizing Reg A exemptions to raise capital, resulting in $3.6 billion live Reg A offerings. 

Most recently the company has entered the Reg CF space, which is music to our ears. 

Dalmore Group is impressive for many reasons, including their prominence in the capital raising industry, but we have another story to focus on here.

Our conversation quickly revealed Etan's compelling entrepreneurial personality, and we want to highlight how his blend of dedication and vision contributes to Dalmore's success.

Throughout our conversation one thing was clear; Etan’s inspiration comes from the folks in the industry that he gets to work with daily.

Etan explained,

“I come across folks every day, especially the entrepreneurs, they're the ones that are really inspiring to me. Oftentimes, they're taking a huge risk and they're approaching this idea of crowdfunding that has a lot of noise around it. And they need good guidance, and we always try to do our best to help show them what we're seeing is effective, and it's working well.”

It’s clear that Etan loves and values what he does and it is prevalent within our experience working with the rest of the team at Dalmore Group as well.

The Dalmore team are experts who understand how to navigate the risks companies face when entering the crowdfunding industry. This expertise contributes to Dalmore's success in providing unparalleled advice to entrepreneurs as they raise capital.

This dedication and knowledge has resulted in Dalmore Group facilitating over 1,000,000 investments since 2012 as one of the earliest SEC-registered broker-dealer investment banks to enter the capital raising industry. 

Dalmore Group's unique approach to capital raising focuses heavily on compliance and safety as Etan explained to us;

“...it's our responsibility to implement sufficient compliance processes and protocols to have the right people in the right roles, doing the right things, and always looking to implement best practices… And that's one of the reasons why when you guys reached out, and we learned more about what it is you're doing in the industry so successfully, and the positive reputation that you guys have within the industry, we were ready to jump in.”

At Assurely, our ambition to provide companies with proper insurance coverage supports Dalmore’s focus on customers' safety.

Our partnership provides Dalmore Group clients with cost-effective savings to obtain our crowdfunding-specific TigerMark D&O insurance.

With companies' best interests in mind, our shared value to create a safer industry for companies raising capital is why this partnership is essential to the crowdfunding industry.

Dive into the conversation that David Carpentier, CEO of Assurely, and Rachel Stevenson, member of the Assurely team, had with Etan Butler earlier this week to continue learning about Etan’s unwavering passion, Dalmore Group’s innovation approach, and the advice Etan gives younger entrepreneurs.

Do you want to just give two or three minutes about Dalmore Group before we dive in?

Sure. Etan Butler here and I'm the chairman at Dalmore Group. We are a FINRA, and SEC-registered broker-dealer investment bank founded in 2005 and based in New York. We spent the first 10 years or so focused primarily on institutional investment banking and since the time of the JOBS Act in 2012, we were early as a broker-dealer to get involved in helping companies raise capital at scale primarily online through Regulations D, A, and most recently CF exemptions. 

I think we're pretty well known in the Reg A space at this time. We've been fortunate since late 2018 to have onboarded over 210 Regulation A clients including many of the more successful Reg A offerings that have been completed to date, and we're also becoming quite active on the Reg CF side as well. We've observed what's been working well and what hasn't been working so well with previous raises, and we always look to share that knowledge and experience with our clients.

You’re well known as a leader, can you explain to us some of the fundamentals that you’re deploying in the industry that is contributing to your success?

Thank you. I think it has to do with the fact that we've been at this for a while. There are a number of new broker-dealers that have come to the market recently, to take advantage of some of the exemptions that the JOBS Act provides. We've been at this since 2005. So we've had the opportunity to build the infrastructure, the compliance, to really handle scale. I think one of the reasons why we're so active in the Reg A space has to do more with our model which is unlike what you'll find with marketplace-type approaches. They are companies, excellent companies, that we’re very friendly with and ones that we think the world of, like Start Engine, Republic, We Funder, and Seed Invest, they all have a very different model. Their model is more of a marketplace approach, where issuers list their offering on their marketplace, amongst other offerings. One of the benefits of that is that you have the potential for a lot of people who register there to discover you, but that doesn't always happen. Our model is very different, we put an invest now button directly on the Issuer's own website and that allows for the Issuer to become the sole beneficiary of their own marketing and promotional efforts along with being the beneficiary of the conversion of their own ecosystem of followers, fans, subscribers, users, and customers in a more direct way. 

The question we ask is why do you, the Issuer, need a broker-dealer? And how do we play a role to empower you to achieve your objectives more so than just joining our platform, have your users register with us, and view a bunch of different other offerings. It's really more about bringing the Issuer to the frontline and allowing that relationship to be directed in a more cost-effective manner. 

Certainly, those Issuers who recognize the importance of marketing and promotion know you need 1000’s of investors in a Reg A offering to raise multi-millions of dollars. You could sign up on a platform and hope that you get momentum but personally, I think that you'll realize pretty soon that you're gonna have to market and promote effectively. And that's really what focused on, how are people winning? And why? And how important is access to analytics and the ability to tag pages and put heat maps on and have control over your investors? Realistically, pretty critical from a marketing company perspective. And that's really what we look to deliver. I think that's why many of the larger issuers have chosen to work with us, for that purpose.

Are you seeing specific industries that are seeing more or less success? Or are there certain industries that you think should be leveraging Dalmore Group that are not?

It's interesting because today an Issuer could put an “Invest now” button on their website and market it and accept funds from pretty much anyone over the age of 18 internationally. That's new. And that's compelling. And so, of all of our offerings, it spans the spectrum of industry. It's from as plain vanilla as REITs (real estate investment trusts) that are offering yield to investors, pretty vanilla, but some of them do quite well. And on the other end of the spectrum, cannabis, even psychedelics, very blockchain-related entities, digital securities, as well as everything in between, like consumer brands. Both business to consumer, which has a unique appeal for considering crowdfunding, because you're marketing your offering at the same time as you're marketing your brand to consumers. 

I believe there's an audience for anything that's interesting that's out there. The question is, how do you reach them. It begins with a compelling opportunity that resonates to them and causes enough of them to want to take action; click invest now, enter a credit card or an ACH and sign a subscription agreement. It must be compelling to them. So it's more about how you reach the specific subset of investors based on who you are as an Issuer. More so in my opinion than it is what industry you're in. 

Obviously, things like minority-owned businesses, anything that's impacting the environment in a positive way. And cannabis, we see a lot of success for natural, obvious reasons because it’s relatively new, it's in the news, people are thinking about it, they can relate to it and they may have not seen opportunities to invest previously. So those Issuers have a better chance of succeeding based on general marketing and promotion. But it's not to say that someone who's doing something very specific, can't reach a specific subset that would be appropriate for them to fill out an offering. It spans the full spectrum here.

You bring a lot of passion to the table, you can hear it in your voice. Are there folks in the investment world that may have inspired some of that passion or have helped shape some of the core values that Dalmore Group brings to the marketplace?

It's a great question. I come across a lot of folks in the industry that inspire me, day to day. It could be CEOs, and it could be customer support people. Especially today, when you don't have the opportunity to meet people face to face, you have a very limited window to establish a relationship and to convey energy, and what you want to convey to them that’s more than just words. This is something I'm passionate about. I've always been an entrepreneur, unlike many folks that work with us, I never really had a job. I mowed lawns, and I worked at a pizza shop when I was 13. But I've always been an entrepreneur. I love what I do because I get to help other entrepreneurs achieve their visions. And it's super interesting to me. And we're obsessed with finding out what's working and how we can be helpful. 

But yes, I come across folks every day, especially the entrepreneurs, they're the ones that are really inspiring to me. Oftentimes, they're taking a huge risk and they're approaching this idea of crowdfunding that has a lot of noise around it. And they need good guidance, and we always try to do our best to help show them what we're seeing is effective, and it's working well.

So knowing what you know now, what advice would you give that younger version of yourself?

That’s another great question. I think what I've learned, and probably the hard but necessary way is you could approach your entrepreneurial endeavors by trying to do a lot of things and hoping that some of the things you're working on are going to work out. But you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. So you are always open with the capacity to put energy towards different ventures. And what I've realized, especially over the last few years, as we've been so focused more narrowly on what it is we do, is that there's a tremendous value in specialization and experience in doing one thing right. And that's something that I didn't learn in a book, although there are a lot of books that I'm sure are out there. And it's a lot easier to do that when the one thing you're doing is working. So it's unfair to say that to someone that isn't in that position. But I can tell you that you don't want to approach being an entrepreneur on a deal to deal basis, you're going to burn out, you're going to start taking on fixed expenses, you're gonna have a family, and they're going to have fixed expenses. And if you're not working for someone, then you eat what you kill. You want to build value, you want to build enterprise value. Something that you could rely on going forward, something that you can keep building, and bettering and getting further and further ahead of the industry in what you're doing. 

And that's something that we've been very focused on, specifically over the last three, four years, as we've as it's really been about the broker-dealer role for companies that are taking advantage of the JOBS Act foreign securities exemptions, and having a nimble enough operation to be creative and accommodating to a lot of different strategies. Not saying this is the one way you have to sign up with us for everything. It's saying who are the best marketers? Who are the best transfer agents? Who, what are the different ATS options? And how do we keep the pricing down really low, and try to create a seamless opportunity for each of these issuers? And that's super specialized and what makes us unique in the industry.

Talk to us a little bit about risk management and where does it come into play on your platform? What's the role and how do you blend ease and risk management with responsibility?

Risk management is in the DNA of everything we do, and as a regulated entity, it has to be. And that is something you learn very quickly when you're in the regulated world. Everything is audited by regulators. And it's our responsibility to implement sufficient compliance processes and protocols to have the right people in the right roles, doing the right things, and always looking to implement best practices. 

One of the interesting things with crowdfunding and the JOBS Act born exemptions is that we're at a time right now where regulation has met innovation has met technology, and it's evolving. And so there's not a static way of doing things. You always have to try to be one step ahead. You may never be perfect but you always want to be ethical and transparent. You always want to abide by your responsibilities. Everything is going to be checked right afterward and audited. Therefore, you get into that rhythm of really thinking differently and recognizing the importance of having the role of making sure that we oversee the KYC AML suitability OFAC of every single investment that's a big responsibility. We do the bad actor checks on the issuing entity and the officers and directors and that's all designed really to ultimately try to protect investors. That's what this is all about. 

We take our responsibility very seriously. And that's one of the reasons why when you guys reached out, and we learned more about what it is you're doing in the industry so successfully, and the positive reputation that you guys have within the industry, we were ready to jump in. I think the timing could not be any better than it is right now for the importance of what it is you guys are bringing to the table. We're certainly grateful that you did reach out and that we were looking to implement a lot of what you guys do into our process because anyway that we could be helpful to issuers and ultimately investors, we are ears open. I'm always open to learning how to improve.