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A Chance to Earn 93% Per Year Imagine earning 93% on your money, year-in, year-out. In ten years, a $10,000 investment would turn into more than $7 million. Sound impossible? Read on to learn how one investor hit those numbers in his private market portfolio.

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Page 1: CROWDFUNDING 101 - Crowdabilityimages.crowdability.com/pdfs/SignatureFund.pdf · with an equity crowdfunding platform called “FundersClub” to create a new fund that’s designed

A Chance to Earn 93% Per YearImagine earning 93% on your money, year-in, year-out. In ten years, a $10,000 investment would turn into more than $7 million. Sound impossible? Read on to learn how one investor hit those numbers in his private market portfolio.

CROWDFUNDING 101The Equity Crowdfunding Market in a Nutshell

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If you could earn 22% compounded annual returns, given enough time, you could turn a small investment into a sizeable nest egg.

For example, in 10 years, you could turn an investment of just $10,000 into roughly $73,000.

In 20 years, it would grow to more than $500,000.

To see an example of what 22% compounded returns look like in the real world, look at Warren Buffett.

His net worth currently stands at $68.6 billion.

Buffett was able to reach that staggering number by earning 22% returns year after year, and allowing his money to compound for more than 40 years.

But what if you could do even better than 22%?

What if you could earn 93% per year?

In ten years, that same $10,000 investment would grow to more than $7 million.

Earning 93% annual returns might seem unthinkable, but today, we’ll introduce you to an investor who’s actually done it.

Even more importantly, we’ll show you how you could potentially do the same.

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Opportunity Name: Signatures Capital FC Fund

Raising: $1 Million MinimumCurrently Raised: $1.415 million

DescriptionEarly-stage venture fund managed by professional venture capitalist

Highlights• Current fund has annual return of

93%• Invested in over 100 start-ups with

28 exits• Portfolio companies include

Google, DropBox and Uber

Core Investment Thesis• Experienced venture capitalist

with track record accepting new investors

• Immediate diversification by investing in fund structure

• Low investment minimum per company

AT A GLANCE:

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MEET BOBBY YAZDANI

Bobby Yazdani is a serial entrepreneur and investor.

He began his career at Oracle, where he held a variety of R&D roles. But his big break came when he founded the software company, Saba Software, in 1997.

Only three years later, he took the company public where it commanded a billion-dollar market cap.

Since then, Bobby’s shifted to the “other side” of the table, actively investing in other entrepreneurs’ businesses. First as an informal angel investor, then as a formal venture capitalist through his fund, Signatures Capital. In total, he’s invested in over one hundred early-stage companies.

And his portfolio has generated some of the highest returns in early-stage investing.

Collectively, the companies he’s backed are now worth over $500 billion. They employ hundreds of thousands of people.

Here are just a few examples of his winners.

FIND ANYTHING

If you were looking for a turkey-chili recipe, which website would you go to?

Where would you look online for cross-country driving directions?

Or what if you wanted to watch a video on how to play “Chopsticks” on the piano?

Chances are you’d head straight to Google, or to one of the services it owns.

Although Google began life as a simple web search engine, it’s always had a grander vision.

It aimed to be the place for finding any and all types of information – and they’ve

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certainly accomplished that objective.

From driving directions on Google Maps to looking for videos on YouTube, consumers execute over 117 billion searches per month across Google’s properties. That’s almost 68,000 searches per second.

And all of those searches bring in advertising dollars:

Google currently generates revenue of about $60 billion per year.

But back in 1998, when all it had was an idea on the back of a napkin, it required some serious imagination to picture this vision coming to fruition – and some serious courage and conviction to invest in it.

Bobby Yazdani was one of those visionary investors.

It’s been estimated that Google’s earliest investors earned over 3,000% on their money when the company went public.

And since then, the stock has risen even higher, generating an additional 900% return for its investors.

This is certainly one of Bobby’s more notable successes, but it’s far from the only one…

TURN $5,000 INTO $2 MILLION

Google provided a great return for Bobby and his investors.

But another start-up he backed performed even better. How much better?

Well, it’s estimated that this company has already returned over 40,000% to its initial investors...

That would be like turning every $5,000 you invested into $2 million — and the company hasn’t even gone public yet!

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We’ve told you about this company before. It’s called Uber. It’s one of the hottest start-ups in the world right now.

Uber provides a dead simple way to hail a taxi from your mobile phone.

It’s grown from a single-car cab service in San Francisco, to a global transportation company with a presence in almost 50 countries.

Like Google, this is a company that started with an outlandish vision, and ultimately became one of the largest and most successful companies on the planet.

Bobby has a knack for identifying companies like these early in their lives.

This talent has enabled him to find and invest in companies like Google and Uber when other investors wouldn’t give them a second look.

And his fund has locked in winner after winner for the past decade…

28 EXITS AND COUNTING

Some of the other successes in Bobby’s portfolio include:

• Salesforce.com: IPO in 2004• Aardvark: Acquired by Google in 2010• Qwiki: Acquired by Yahoo! in 2013• Klout: Acquired by Lithium Technologies in 2014• Think Big Analytics: Acquired by Teradata in 2014• And the list goes on…

In total, Bobby’s fund has invested in 105 start-ups.

28 have had exits, 16 of which were profitable.

The remaining 77 companies are still active and in business.

As of today, his fund has an annualized return of 93%.

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Those numbers could rise even further as the remaining 77 companies increase in value.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU?

At this point, you may be saying to yourself:

“That sounds great, guys – good for Bobby. But what does this have to do with me? How does this help my portfolio?”

Good question – and here’s the answer:

As we mentioned earlier, Bobby doesn’t just invest his own capital. He manages money for other investors via his fund, Signatures Capital.

Signatures Capital is a venture capital fund.

It’s like a mutual fund, but instead of investing in stocks and ETFs, it invests in start-ups.

The way venture capitalists like Bobby get compensated is pretty interesting:

Instead of relying on fees and commissions, venture capitalists – or “VCs” for short –make their real money when their clients make real money.

Their upside comes from a performance fee they receive based on the profits of their fund – in the VC industry, this is known as a “carry fee.”

It’s generally in the 20% to 30% range.

Meaning, if Bobby had a $100 million fund to invest and he turned it into $400 million, he might receive 25% of the profits in return.

25% of $300 million in profits is a nice payday – that’s $75 million.

But again, Bobby only gets his payday if he earns big returns for his investors –

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remember, investors made about 3 times their money!

Which is why fund managers like Bobby are always in high demand.

It’s difficult to get access to the best performing funds, and even when you do, the investment minimums are usually in the millions or even tens of millions of dollars.

Therefore, these types of funds are usually reserved for only the wealthiest investors – and more commonly, they’re reserved for institutional investors like pension funds and college endowments.

Which brings us to what we’re writing about today…

“A FIRST”

For the first time ever, Bobby is opening up his funds to regular, individual investors. In other words, folks like you.

And he’s doing it through an equity crowdfunding platform.

Meaning, if you want to, you can invest in Bobby’s new fund from your computer.

Bobby’s main fund, Signatures Capital, is closed to new investors. So Bobby partnered with an equity crowdfunding platform called “FundersClub” to create a new fund that’s designed specifically for individual investors like you.

Similar to other equity crowdfunding platforms we’ve shown you in the past, FundersClub gives investors the opportunity to invest in early-stage private equity deals online.

FundersClub was founded about two years ago and has already racked up impressive returns.

They’ve funded over 90 companies so far, and have an average annual gain in their portfolio of 47.9% per year.

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They generally showcase individual investment opportunities, but recently they began launching fund-like offerings. For the most part, these “funds” have focused on specific sectors or themes (e.g., Bitcoin, Mobile, etc.).

But when we saw that they were partnering with Bobby Yazdani to do a fund, we decided to share this opportunity with you immediately.

In the rest of this report, we’ll walk you through the details of the deal.

SIGNATURES CAPITAL FC FUND

This new fund is accepting investments from 95 investors.

The fund’s goal will be to invest in ten to fifteen early-stage, private equity opportunities over the next twelve months.

It will be managed by Bobby Yazdani – and while past performance is no guarantee of future returns, Bobby seems to have an ability to find and fund the most promising early-stage opportunities in the market.

In addition to having your capital managed by a professional VC, there’s one extra benefit to investing in the Signatures Capital Fund: Access.

Specifically, we’re talking about getting access to later-stage deals that would normally never show up on an equity crowdfunding platform.

But because Bobby’s fund has already invested in more than one hundred companies, if those companies raise additional capital in the future, you might get a shot at investing in them, too.

Since later-stage deals are generally less risky, this access could help decrease your risk profile and increase your probability of future returns.

As far as fees are concerned, The Signatures Capital fund will charge investors a 1.5% per year management fee to help cover costs. Then, if the fund is profitable, Signatures Capital and FundersClub will take a 25% “carry fee.”

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Remember, they’ll only receive this performance fee if the fund is profitable.

WHY WE LIKE THIS OPPORTUNITY

As you can see, we’re excited about this opportunity.

Perhaps you’re excited, too.

Diversification – As we always say, if you’re going to invest in early-stage companies, you need to diversify. By investing in this fund, you’ll get access to ten to fifteen high-quality opportunities with one investment.

Track Record – Past performance doesn’t guarantee future gains, but we always advocate following smart money. Bobby and Signatures Capital are some of the smartest money in this space and their track record backs it up.

Access – We can’t overstate how important this is. By investing in this fund, you’ll have access to deal flow that most individual investors would never see, let alone invest in. This could help to dramatically improve your risk-reward profile.

Alignment – Unlike your broker or money manager, a venture capitalist is incentivized to make you as much money as possible. He only earns substantial returns if you do. Therefore, you can rest assured that you’ll always have someone working hard to turn your investments into winners.

Furthermore, Bobby is putting up to $300,000 of his own money into the fund. So you’ll be investing right alongside him. Convenience – And finally, we love the convenience factor of this deal. To be properly diversified, you need to invest in many, many deals over the next few years. That’s what allows you to decrease your risk and increase your likelihood of returns.

Being properly diversified generally takes a lot of time and research, as well as regular monitoring of your portfolio. But with this one deal, you can take care of a lot of that: you get access to almost 15 start-ups, all with a single investment.

OPPORTUNITY HIGHLIGHTS

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But, as always, you’ll need to decide for yourself whether excitement gives you enough comfort to warrant an investment.

If you do decide to move forward, there’s one unique aspect to this investment that we need to go over…

ASSET ALLOCATION

At Crowdability, we often cover the topic of how much of your portfolio to allocate to early-stage deals – and how much to put into each deal.

In general, we advise putting no more than 10% of your investable assets into private equity.

And even then, we advise diversifying that 10% into 25 to 50 different investments.

Meaning, if you have investable assets of $1 million, you can put up to 10% of your capital – or $100,000 – into private deals.

That $100,000 would be allocated towards 25 to 50 investments.

With 25 investments, for example, you would put up to $4,000 into each deal.

Those are the general guidelines we like to follow when we’re talking about individual company investments.

This opportunity is different. This is a fund. And this fund will make individual investments for you.

Therefore, we need to re-think the math.

Furthermore, the investment minimum for the Signatures Capital Fund is higher than most deals we’ve shown you so far. The minimum is $20,000 per investor.

But while that’s a relatively high “per deal” minimum, it’s actually a low “per company” minimum. Here’s what we mean…

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Let’s assume the fund invests in 10 companies.

If you invested $20,000 into the fund and the money is spread around evenly, you’ll be investing just $2,000 into each company.

RETURN PROFILE

As we’ve mentioned, Bobby’s historical returns are extremely impressive.

His 93% annualized returns add up to an 8.3 times return of capital.

Even compared to other highly successful venture capitalists, that’s outstanding.

Venture investors typically aim to deliver minimum net returns to investors of about 2.5 times their money, with an average investment duration of 5 years.

To put those typical venture numbers in terms of annual returns: those returns would earn investors an about 18% to 20% annually. That’s getting close to Buffett’s returns.

So now let’s look at a range of outcomes for the potential returns of Signatures’ new fund:

On the low end, let’s use the industry average of 2.5 times your capital. On the high end, let’s use Bobby’s historical 8 times your capital. And in the middle, let’s use 5 times.Here’s what it looks like:

Return Profile 2.5 Times Investment 5 Times Capital 8 Times CapitalInitial Investment $50,000 $100,000 $160,000ROI (%) 150% 400% 700%

What you’re seeing in the above chart is the cumulative returns from the entire portfolio. And overall portfolio returns from 150% to 700% are pretty darn impressive.

Keep in mind: of the ten or fifteen investments the fund makes, not every one of them will be a “winner.” That’s how diversification works.

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The aim is that, in a diversified portfolio, the “winners” will more than make up for the ones that don’t work out so well.

If you can earn returns like this over many years, you might even have your shot at beating Buffett!

If you’re interested, instructions for how to invest are located on the next page.

Remember, Crowdability has no relationship with the FundersClub funding platform, Bobby Yazdani, or his fund, Signatures Capital. Our goal is to provide research and education on early-stage investing for individual investors.

Best,Wayne & MattFounders,Crowdability, Inc.

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Signatures Capital has made it possible to make your investment online.

To make your experience fast, safe and easy, they’ve teamed up with a high-quality website called “FundersClub.” As we wrote about earlier, FundersClub has outstanding credentials.

If you have any questions about Signatures Capital or FundersClub, you can reach out to FundersClub directly on their website.

Here are the basic steps:

1. First, Register for FundersClub » (NOTE: It’s fast, easy and free to register, but you’ll need to certify yourself as an “Accredited investor” to make an investment)

2. You can look through additional research on the Signatures Capital Fund here »

3. When you’re ready to invest, click the orange “Invest” button.

4. Next, you’ll see a page that says, “Enter Your Investment Amount.” Enter a dollar amount, select how you’ll be investing and wiring funds, then click “Continue.”

5. FundersClub makes it incredibly easy to either mail a check in or wire your funds online.

6. You’ll then electronically sign your funding and subscription documents, and verify that you are an accredited investor.

HOW TO INVEST IN THE SIGNATURES CAPITAL FC FUND

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Disclaimer: This document is made available for general information purposes only. This report does not constitute a specific investment recommendation or advice upon which you should rely based upon, or irrespective of, your personal circumstances. Use of this document is not a substitute for obtaining proper investment advice from an authorized investment professional. Actual results may differ significantly from the results described. Potential retail investors are urged to consult their own authorized investment professional before entering into any investment agreement. Past performance of securities is not necessarily a guide to future performance and the value of securities may fall as well as rise. In particular, investments in the technology sector can involve a high degree of risk and investors may not get back the full amount invested.

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ABOUT CROWDABILITY

Crowdability provides individual investors with education, information and insight into opportunities in the crowdfunding market.

Our free website and email newsletter aggregate and organize deals from an ever-expanding universe of crowdfunding platforms. We aim to save people time and simplify the process of discovering and evaluating crowdfunding opportunities.

BENEFITS OF JOINING CROWDABILITY

• Never worry about missing an opportunity - we track them all for you

• Gain access to education and resources that remove the confusion and anxi-ety about early-stage investing

• Hear from professional venture and angel investors to help you better understand the mechanics of early-stage investing and how to identify the best opportunities

Crowdability’s goal is to become your primary resource for navigating the equity crowdfunding landscape.

Visit www.crowdability.com to join for free today.

Contact Us: Crowdability, LLC229 West 28th Street12th FloorNew York, NY 10001www.crowdability.com [email protected]

Copyright © 2013 Crowdability, LLC. All rights reserved.