Membership Agreement

Introduction

VC Crowd (the “Club” or “we” or “us” or “our”) is a member’s club established as an unincorporated association in Gibraltar, and is governed by the provisions of the Club Rules and Gibraltar law. Our registered office 6.20 World Trade Center, 6 Bayside Road, Gibraltar, GX11 1AA

 

Definitions

Club

VC Crowd, being an unincorporated association formed under Gibraltar law

Club Administrator

Angel Business Services Ltd, incorporated in Gibraltar, being the Treasurer and the administrator of the Club, or such other entity as appointed by the Club from time to time

Club Services

 

The services provided by the Club from time to time, including, without limitation member events, investor education and access to our Participation Companies.

Custodian

means the appointed Entity for the provision of dealing, clearing and settlement of securities, safe custody and associated services, or any other Custodian that the Club may appoint from time to time

Free Equity Entitlements

Free allocation of Participation Shares to Members, at the Club’s discretion

Introductory Services

A referral of new paying Members to the Club

Member

A Member of the Club, being a paying or non-paying member

Nominee

Premium Nominees Limited

Participation Company

A quoted or unquoted company in which the Club’s appointed Nominee or Custodian(s), is the legal owner of share instruments issued to it in the furtherance of the Club’s business model, on behalf of the Members

Participation Shares

Securities in a Participation Company

Share Allocation

Discretionary monthly free allocation of Free Equity Entitlements, determined by type of membership and made by the Club Administrator to Members

Share Entitlement

A right, which entitles the holder to the ultimate beneficial ownership of an underlying Participation Share.

 

Purpose of these Terms

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are for registered Members of the Club and it contain important material regarding the way in which we will provide our services to you and important information on your legal position. These Terms cover the provision of our services to you, which may be updated from time to time without prior notice to you.

Important Information

Please keep in mind that the Club is unregulated by any financial authority and no advice of whatever nature, financial or otherwise, is given or should be implied.

This website does not provide or purport to provide an investment opportunity, investment advice, investment management services of any description or kind. 

By engaging in the Club, Members acknowledge that they may be one of a group of other Club Members who may receive free share entitlements from time to time and on the Club’s discretion, all of whom are held by Premium Nominees Limited, the Club’s appointed Nominee, on behalf of Club Members.

Please review the Club Rules and the below information prior to proceeding any further.

Services

The Club's objective is to pool the expertise of Members to exchange knowledge on specific business matters to affect business growth in the Club’s carefully curated businesses. The Club provides a forum for its Members to discuss, exchange and negotiate market ideas pertaining to the business of quoted and unquoted entities. The Club is not carrying out any investment or asset management activities on behalf of its Members but it may hold participations in quoted or unquoted entities. Such participations shall in general be transferred to the Club in the form of remuneration as consideration for (i) investments as principal and/or (ii) services rendered to such quoted and unquoted entities by service providers engaged by the Club.

The Club also provides the following associated services: a private peer to peer bulletin board for its Members to trade their Share Entitlements, regular business insights, seminars, business education, and Club events.

The Club provides a community platform for Participation Companies and Members to interact, believing such activity encourages and creates opportunity for accelerated growth for those Participation Companies.

The Club provides active management of selected Participation Companies with the purpose to minimise risk and drive growth.

The Club and the Treasurer make all decisions at their own discretion on behalf of the Members in relation to investments and, the disposal of or any other transaction involving Participation Shares.

Depending on the jurisdiction in which you are based, Membership of the Club including receiving Free of Equity Entitlements or Share Entitlements may not be legally permitted under applicable securities laws. If you are in any doubt as to your personal legal position, you should seek local advice from a lawyer or other appropriately independent qualified professional adviser. 

Charges and Commissions

Members will pay a monthly membership fee to the Club. Membership fees are non-refundable and will be used to cover the costs of running the Club and service providers who themselves render services to quoted and unquoted entities. As remuneration, the Club may receive participations in such quoted and unquoted entities. Such participations may result in a free allocation exposure to Members (free Equity Entitlements) via their accounts with the Club, per their contributions level on a monthly basis.

The Club's appointed Nominee or Custodian(s) will retain legal title of all the underlying Participation Shares in Participation Companies and Members will be the Ultimate Beneficial Owners of such Participation Shares.

Members may be entitled to receive introductory benefits in the form of Equity Entitlements or commission in respect of new paying members they introduce to the Club.

Please note that your membership fee is a payment for access to the services of the Club and does not necessarily entitle you to receive allocations of Equity Entitlements. Membership fees should therefore be regarded as an expense only. You should only pay the Club an amount that you are willing to pay to obtain access to the Services. The cost of membership may be offset by the proceeds from sale of Equity Entitlements, which may be allocated to you, on the Club’s management discretion. However, these proceeds could be less than the Member membership fees paid by you and any amounts subsequently realised in respect of Equity Entitlements or the Participation Shares, if any, could be less than the value attributed to those entitlements at the time they are allocated to you.

If a Participation Company in which you hold an Equity entitlement or a Participation Share fails, neither the Club nor any of its advisors or partners nor any financial services compensation scheme will provide any compensation.

 Limited Marketability of Share Entitlements

Participation Shares are not currently transferable through the Club and may have limited marketability. There can be no guarantee that you will be able to sell your Equity Entitlements at an acceptable price, or at all.

Valuation of Share Entitlements

From time to time the Club working with the Company will review the value it places on its underlying Participation Shares. Allocations will be made on a basis, which reflects this valuation, which may be higher or lower than the price at which the Club originally acquired such Participation Shares. If you cease to be a Member, your Equity Entitlements may be purchased from you at a Fair Value which will be determined by the Club in its absolute discretion, acting reasonably or, where possible and permitted as determined at the sole discretion by the Club Administrator, the underlying Participation Shares may be transferred to you.

Compliance with Laws and Regulations

As a Member of the Club, you are reminded that you must not post anything on this website or elsewhere relating to the Club, which could constitute a breach of the regulations in your country. Breaches of this can constitute criminal offences with penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment. Considering the real-time nature of the discussion forum on this website, it is impossible for the Club to review messages or confirm the validity of any information posted. Please remember that the Club do not actively monitor the contents of and are not responsible for any messages posted. The Club do not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message, and are not responsible for the contents of any message.

The messages express the views of the author of the message alone, and not any entity associated with the Club. Any user who feels that a posted message is objectionable is encouraged to contact the immediately by email. Any such concerns should be emailed to support@vccrowd.com. The Club has the ability to remove objectionable messages and will make every effort to do so within a reasonable timeframe, if the Club determines that removal is necessary.

This is a manual process, however, so please realise that the Club may not be able to remove or edit particular messages immediately. You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use the discussion forum or any other publicly accessible areas of the site to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise violation of any law in the region you and this site operates within. You agree not to post any copyrighted material unless, the copyright is owned by you or by the Club. Although the Club does not and cannot review the messages posted on the discussion forums and is not responsible for the content of any of these messages, the Club reserve the right to delete any message for any or no reason whatsoever. You remain solely responsible for the content of your messages, and you agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Club, and their agents with respect to any claim based upon transmission of your message(s). The Club also reserves the right to reveal your identity (or whatever information the Club know about you) in the event of a complaint or legal action arising from any message posted by you. Any breach of your obligations hereunder or as a Member of the Club will entitle the Club to cancel your membership with immediate effect.

Please note that advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, MLM schemes, and solicitations are inappropriate to the content of this website and such postings will be removed. Please note that you may not repost content outside the Club site. Neither may you as an individual Member share any stock information, nor promote any specific share or public stock in the open, this is strictly against the Club policy and illegal in most countries as well. Please keep this in mind for your own safety.

You will as a registered Member be a full Member of the Club, although you may be restricted to certain services according to your membership level. Please treat other website Members with the same respect that you would expect to receive from them.

The Club prohibits the publication in any form of its materials in third party websites, social media platforms and any form of unregulated non-compliant public domain unless expressly approved the Club and its advisers. Misuse of Club materials will be taken very seriously.

Please observe that the Club by law is obligated to prevent money laundering and financing of terrorism by complying with governing regulations, recommendations and general guidelines. This invokes supervision and investigation of transactions, which fall under the regulatory definitions. You, as a Member, are obliged to participate and reveal all information that is demanded in such investigations. While the Club does not prohibit private transactions, the Club is unable to assist in such transactions using the online platform for regulatory reasons. Abuse may lead to the suspension of your account.

Data Protection

The Club abides by the EU Data Protection Act (EUGDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 as amended by the DPPEC (Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit)) Regulations 2019 (UKGDPR), in relation to Member's privacy. With your permission, the Club and its partners may contact you from time to time via email with details of website news, and details of products that the Club believe may be of interest to you. The option to receive such emails is user selectable and is selected during the registration process, and can be changed by the user at any time thereafter, by selecting the relevant option in their user profile screen, or by contacting the Club by e-mail on support@vccrowd.com. By consenting to this, you also permit partners of the Club operating under a regulated entity for the market in question to market investments and securities to you.

Leaving the Club

If you wish to terminate your membership with the Club and close your account, you are required to give the Club a one month’s notice in writing. Notices should be sent to support@vccrowd.com. Your account with all Equity Entitlements (not the ownership) can be offered to existing Members at the Club’s internal peer-to-peer trading platform. There is, however, no guarantee that you will be able to sell your Equity Entitlements on this platform.  The exiting Member can request the Club to transfer their entitlements into their own name, provided that the Club Administrator, in its own discretion, deems this feasible or permissible. The Club is not obligated in any way to acquire member entitlements on closure of an account. All entitlements are issued to members free of charge and the Club acts solely as a nominee for all Members.

If an Equity Entitlement in a Participation Company lists on a recognized or un-recognized stock exchange your entitlement will cease to trade on the internal system and if you would like to sell your entitlement of a listed stock you may do so [once per month]. Such request should be sent out on the [first Monday] of each month. The Club will first offer the entitlement to existing Members (pre-emption right) and if existing Members or the Club do not acquire the entitlement, the Club will instruct its brokers and the Custodian of the sell order. The Club will make best efforts to fulfil a Member’s sell order in an orderly fashion so as not to affect detrimentally the price of the Company’s stock.

The Club will provide members annually an account report detailing any commissions paid and any capital gain realized. Members will hold harmless the Club against any member related tax enquiry and the Club reserves their rights to reveal any payments made to Members if requested by any tax authority.

Taxation

Any income or capital gains which you derive from sale of Equity Entitlements or Participation Shares may be subject to direct or indirect taxation depending on the jurisdiction in which you are based. This may affect the net proceeds you receive in respect of Equity Entitlement interests or Participation Shares.

All Members are responsible for their own tax declarations and payments. The Club expressly does not offer any advice to its Members on their personal tax liabilities or declarations. Members are therefore wholly responsible for their own tax declarations be it income tax or capital gain.

Business Exclusions

The Club has the following business exclusion policy and will not work in the following sectors:

  • Armaments (weapons)
  • Services and/or products that require pyramid type schemes for distribution or hard sales
  • Child and/or abuse, pornographic material, services and products
  • Companies that are operating in prohibited countries (according to Visa EU, MasterCard & international regulations)
  • Services which may provide peripheral support of illegal activities for business
  • Grey market suppliers taking advantage of Cross-Border trading loopholes in national laws
  • Nutraceutical USA, vitamin, herbal selling in USA market
  • Activities outside card association rules
  • Tobacco
  • Money laundering, terrorist financing & fraudulent activities
  • Replicas, criminal or counterfeit activities
  • Timeshares
  • Agricultural co-operatives
  • Adult services

Risk Warning

The Club is not suitable for everyone: The Club is intended for individuals with an interest in learning more about and participating in unquoted businesses, which carry with them a high degree of risk and who wish to exchange information and market knowledge about this form of investment model.

Membership of the Club is not an investment: The Club is a private members’ club whose members pay a non-refundable membership fees for its Services only. Your membership fee is a payment for access to the services of the Club and does not entitle you to receive allocations of Equity Entitlements. Membership fees should therefore be regarded as an expense only and not as an investment.

Participation Shares carry a high level of risk: As a Member, you may be allocated an entitlement to Participation Shares held by the Club, which can include shares in start-up, early stage, pre-revenue and other unquoted private companies. Participation Shares in such companies involve risks, including loss of value, illiquidity, lack of dividends and dilution:

  • Loss of value: The majority of start-up and early stage businesses fail or do not scale as planned and therefore shares in these businesses may involve significant risk. It is therefore possible that Participation Shares may lose all, or part of, their value.
  • Lack of liquidity: Liquidity is the ease with which investors can sell shares after they have purchased them. Participation Shares acquired by the Club may not be sold easily and may not, either now or at any point in the future, be listed on a recognised market. Even if a Participation Company is successful it may choose not to seek a listing for its shares. Participation Shares held by the Club may be subject to restrictions on sale.
  • Non-payment of dividends: Participation Companies are typically at an early stage of their development and may not pay dividends to their investors, choosing instead to invest profits, if any, in future growth. In case of a dividend payment to the Club, the Club is not required to pay such dividend on to a Member. Instead, the increase of value of a participation and allocation may be reflected in the capital account dedicated to each Member.
  • Dilution: Any Participation Shares acquired by the Club may be subject to dilution at a later date. This will happen if the Participation Company concerned issues more shares after the original acquisition of the interest. The effect of the subsequent issue of shares will be to reduce the proportion of shares held by existing shareholders who do not acquire shares in the subsequent issue. This will affect rights to receive dividends, voting and the value of the shareholding.

 

Purchase of additional Share Entitlements: Should you decide to acquire Equity entitlements in Participation Companies in addition to your share allocations on the Club’s peer-to-peer trading platform you are reminded that Equity entitlements are a high risk investment and that you should only purchase Equity Entitlements if you can afford to lose the money invested. Furthermore, the value of investments, and the income from them, can go down as well as up and an investor may get back less than the amount invested.  Past performance is not a guide to future results.

  • Equities: Foreign securities may be more volatile, harder to price and less liquid than domestic securities. They are subject to different accounting and regulatory standards, and political and economic risks. These risks may be enhanced in emerging markets countries.
  • Fixed Income: Fixed income securities are subject to certain risks including, but not limited to: interest rate, credit, prepayment, and extension.
  • Property: Investments in property may carry additional risk of loss due to the nature and volatility of the underlying investments. Real estate investments are relatively illiquid and the ability to vary investments in response to changes in economic and other conditions is limited. Property values can be affected by a number of factors including, inter alia, economic climate, property market conditions, interest rates, and regulation.
  • Alternatives: Alternative investments may engage in speculative investment practices; involve a high degree of risk; and are generally considered to be illiquid due to restrictions on transferring interests. An investor could lose all or a substantial portion of their investment. Investors must have the financial ability, sophistication / experience and willingness to bear the risks of such an investment.
  • Diversification does not necessarily ensure a return or protect against a loss.

This is not a complete list or explanation of the risks involved and investors should read the relevant offering documents and consult with their own advisors before investing. If you are in any doubt about the action to take you should consult an appropriately qualified independent professional adviser.

Law and Jurisdiction

These Terms  of  Services is governed by and shall be construed in accordance  with  the  laws  of  Gibraltar and the Parties hereby irrevocably submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the Gibraltar courts.

Member Consent

By accepting these Terms, I hereby confirm that:

  • I understand that my monthly payments constitute my membership fees. I also understand that such memberships are non-refundable and, therefore, I have no right to claim these memberships back.
  • I hereby authorise the Club to charge my account depending on my membership level.
  • I understand that, as part of my membership with the Club, I may be allocated free equity entitlements and that the Club, its Nominee(s) and/or Custodian(s), as appointed from time to time, will remain as the legal owner of Participation Shares. The allocations to my account with the Club are made in accordance with the Club Rules and the Terms of Services, and the amounts and levels will vary.
  • I understand and acknowledge that the Club and/or the Treasurer are entitled to unilaterally sell, loan or otherwise dispose of any Participation Shares held by the Club or the Nominee on behalf of the Members in so far as any ultimate benefit from such transaction will be allocated to the Member being the ultimate beneficial owner of such Participation Share.
  • I understand that the only terms that apply to my membership and its benefits are those officially communicated on the Club’s website: www.vccrowd.com and nothing else. The Club will not take responsibility for misrepresentation or representation made by its Members or other parties that deviate from this.
  • I have read and understood the terms for my membership with the Club in Gibraltar. I therefore fully agree to be bound by these Terms of Service and any supplementary rules appearing on the Website, and as amended from time to time.