SEC Form D: Who are the investors?
<p>The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires the filing of a <a href="http://www.sec.gov/answers/formd.htm" rel="nofollow">Form D</a> "to offer and sell securities without having to register the offering with the SEC." This is commonly used to allow privately help companies to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_D" rel="nofollow">raise capital</a> from venture capital and angel investors.</p>

<p>Form D filings are public, and available <a href="http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?company=&amp;CIK=&amp;type=D&amp;owner=include&amp;count=40&amp;action=getcurrent" rel="nofollow">from the SEC's EDGAR database</a> or from various third parties who attempt to make the data more user-friendly and useful, a great example of which is <a href="http://rankandfiled.com/#/explore/exempt" rel="nofollow">Rank and Filed</a>.</p>

<p>Having looked through these filings, the question arises: where and how do news sources (such as VentureWire or the Venture Capital Dispatch) discover who the <em>investors</em> are in any given private offering? This data isn't listed on Form D as far as I can tell (only the total number of investors).</p>

<p>Typically in a venture investment the lead investor will get to nominate someone to the board. Since this is done at the closing of the investment, the name of the new director will appear with those of the other board members in the "related parties" section of the Form D. With some detective work (a.k.a. Google), you can figure out which venture fund the new director works for and by implication the likely lead investor.</p>

<p>In a <a href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1645219/000164521915000001/0001645219-15-000001-index.htm" rel="nofollow">Form D filing</a>, the <a href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1645219/000164521915000001/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml" rel="nofollow">full text of the filing</a> lists the number of <em>Documents</em> (in this case 1), and then <em>Document Format Files</em>.  That formatted document includes an <em>Issuer</em> and <em>Related Parties</em>.  The Related Party (In this case Galen Vinter) is the investor. </p>

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