What it is:

Our Frequently Asked Questions section which contains all of our written knowledge on both equity crowdfunding and Wefunder

You already had one. Why re-do it?

Our FAQ page is the second most frequently page on our website, just after the explore page. Though it currently serves the purpose, the FAQ has not changed as equity crowdfunding matured and evolved so some information and language may be outdated.

What is wrong with the old one?

I mean, quite a few things. Of course we want to keep the good things and gut the parts that could be improved. It's a long list, but primarily it didn't fully evoke the sort of emotion we wanted to instill in our investors. It also was lacking in navigational flexibility - users can't click around various sections of the FAQ knowledge base freely without needing to backtrack to the main menu. This inhibited users from exploring different sections and learning more about Regulation Crowdfunding and investing in general. Maybe investors will want to know what the founders are reading, and vice versa, so why segregate the guides like this?

Plus, look at it.

It's not revolting, but it could use some flair, don't you think?

What works and what doesn't work?

Our Goals

We want to achieve three things with our FAQ page:

1. Educate

Educate our first time users so they feel comfortable with crowdfunding and Wefunder. The goal is to make investing approachable instead of intimidating. Investing is for everyone, not just the Wall Street folks. 

2. Educate

Further education repeat users - in addition to the basics, we should also provide enough information to fully educate our users by diving into the nitty gritty. 

3. Educate

Create super investors out of all of you. We want to help all of you become mini angel investors because we totally believe you have it in you. We want to teach you to pick out good investments from a pile of bad. We want to help you understand the difference between security types, good terms, bad terms, ridiculous terms, and valuations. We're training all of you to do the job that was, up until we came along, reserved for venture capitalists in expensive suits. If you're a venture capitalist in a fancy suit — you look great and we love you!

What emotion are we trying to evoke?

Almost every company has an FAQ or knowledge base. We don't want it to just be a place for people to go to when they need help. Sure, we go to Wikipedia when we're looking up something, but we just as often also fall down a rabbit hole of one article after another, because it's just so. damn. easy to get engrossed in the endless stream of fascinating stuff. This is what we want our knowledge base to be. Come to find out about SAFE contracts, stay to read more about everything else related to investments.

Let's talk about the new format

Plus, there are cute icons. Who doesn't like cute icons?

Why did we choose this format?

• We wanted to highlight FAQs, not guides. We're all busy people who probably don't have the time to sit down and read a guide from start to finish. Most people like to scan for questions that apply to their situation instead of reading in whole — so we wanted to make that easier to do. The key is to make this easy to absorb, easy to scan.
• We wanted these frequently asked questions to be short and concise. Why say in 10 words what you can say in three?
• Though it's short and concise, it doesn't mean there's less information. There is still a tremendous amount of content that can be found should you feel inclined. 
• Everything's interconnected with each other. See a glossary term mentioned elsewhere? It'll be linked to the glossary. See a security type mentioned? It'll be linked to the terms & contracts section of the founder FAQs.
• This format is great for continual reading. When you reach the end of a section, you automatically move on to the next section. In theory, you can read from article 1 of section 1 until article 10 of section 10 without ever needing to click anything. That's pretty neat.
• If you do click on the questions or sections though, it'll help you jump there in an instant.

Some guiding principles for how we draft content:

1. We write like human beings.
Einstein once said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." We explain things in a way your 13 year old next door neighbor would understand. (We actually have a 13 year old next door neighbor serving as our litmus test).

2. We don't talk down to our users.

Yeah, we know a lot about investing, blah blah, but that's not the norm, nor is it the expectation. My first day on the job, I didn't know what a security was, and I'm pretty sure unless you attended business school in utero, you probably didn't either. We all started somewhere. You are eager to learn, so we're here to help you learn, not make you feel bad about not having a business degree.

3. We try our best to be brief.

Brevity is underrated. We get you're busy. We don't want to waste your time so we get to the point and dash.

You've had a week or two to play around — what do you think?

We'd love to hear from you! 

Email [email protected] with your thoughts and comments.