I just finished filling out a sixteen page questionnaire for an investment the Gotham Gal and I are making. I fill out this identical form about once or twice a month for various investments we make. Each time I get the form, I find a version I filled out previously in my archived email and copy the answers line by line. It’s complicated and I want to make sure I answer the questions correctly.
This form is created by lawyers to make sure that we are qualified and/or accredited investors. They also use this form to verify our tax and regulatory and compliance status. If you make an investment in a venture fund, a hedge fund, a private equity fund or a private placement, you will probably fill out a similar or indentical form.
Here’s the thing. I am literally answering the exact same questions again and again. I take great pains to make sure I answer them the same way each time. And it is a chore. I hate doing it.
Though the size of the accredited/qualified investor market may be small, I really don’t understand why there isn’t a web service where I can go, fill this form out once, and then certify that the answers are correct, and then simply auth with this service each time we make an additional investment.
If such a service exists, please point me to it and I will recommend it to the lawyers who handle these sorts of transactions.
USV requires our investors to fill out these same forms. When we close our next fund, we are going to hack together a web based system in partnership with our portfolio company CircleUp. But this isn’t really CircleUp’s business and they are doing this as a favor to us and our investors.
What we really need is a third party to offer this service to all accredited and qualified investors and we need the market to adopt it. It would make me and many others very happy to stop filling out these forms.
