Groundbreaker was created to be an automated online portal enabling investors to access your portfolio, make offers, and remit and receive payments. There are several features you will use to manage your investments and support your investors.

When you are getting started with Groundbreaker, you should first create a simulated trial investment. The simulation allows you to practice using the features, become comfortable with the process, and see the experience from the investor’s perspective without impacting your business. Once you complete the simulation, contact Groundbreaker, and we will remove the test data.

As you progress through the process, you will perform some tasks as the General Partner by accessing the Manager Platform (the URL ending in groundbreaker.app). Steps associated with Sponsor-related activities on the Manager Platform are identified with:

You will perform other tasks as the Limited Partner by accessing the Investor Portal (the URL ending in mygroundbreaker.com). Steps performed by the Limited Partner investor using the Investor Portal are shown with:

Both manager and investor actions will create email notifications to the investor along the way. You can customize those messages within the Notification section under Settings. Within this article, you will see this icon when an email notification is triggered:

To keep track of the data used for the simulation, we recommend:

Using these words in the simulation data will make it easy to identify and remove the data after the simulation. Having separate words for the sponsor vs. the investor makes it easier to keep track when moving between the manager platform and the investor portal.

As the General Partner, you will go through the steps to create a trial offering with its subscription details and make that offering available to a test investor.

Access the Manager Platform using your Groundbreaker account credentials.

In Contacts, create a contact with a name that can be easily identified as part of your simulation case. Make sure to use a valid email address for the contact and that you can access the email account. If needed, you can always create a new Gmail address or add a '+' to your existing gmail address (ex: [email protected]). Once added, click on Send Portal Invite. Suggestion: Test Investor

This contact will receive a Portal Account Invitation email at the address you identified when you created the contact.

In Offerings, create a new offering using a name that identifies it as part of the simulation. Suggestion: Trial Offering

In the Description step of the offering create process, you add information about the offering. For this exercise, you can add just the minimum information required, or you can make it as complex and complete as you like. This is where you include documents and photos. If you choose to provide an address, it must be a real address that can be located on a map.

Once you have provided all the information about the offering, make sure to click on Save and continue located at the top right of the page.

This next section, Stage and Parameters, is where you define the subscription. Set the stage to Commitment to open the offering to investments. Because all investments require a legal entity, you must define an investment entity that will manage the offering and retain all transactions.

For the purpose of this simulation, you should choose to create a new investment entity.

Once you click Save entity, you can complete all the parameters for the investment entity which will apply to subscriptions for this offering. Parameters that are required, but not yet defined, will show with yellow caution icons.

Select yourself as a counter-signer (if allowed).

Select and define the contribution funding options. We recommend that you use check instructions for this simulation. If you want to add the wire option, you can create wire instructions using all 9’s for the bank numbers. While it is possible to configure ACH, you must complete it with live information. You cannot simulate an ACH configuration or ACH transaction. We do not recommend using ACH for the simulation.

Provide online subscription documents. Upload at least one PDF ‘agreement’ that you can configure for e-signature. You may want to use one of your standard agreements so that you can see how it appears to investors, but just make sure to use a name that sets this document apart from actual agreements. Suggestion: Trial Offering Agreement.

Prepare the document for signing by creating a template with signature fields, auto-fill fields, and other standard fields that you may want to include. This allows you to see how the document appears when your investors elect to sign electronically. We recommend you require both LP and GP signatures to experience how countersignatures are handled.

Once all icons are green, you can click on Save and Continue to move to the Preview step.

From the Preview step, you will see how the offering will display to your LPs. At this point, the offering is still a draft and you can modify any offering information or parameters if needed. Click on Save and continue to go to the final step.

You can now publish your offering which will make it available to your LPs and opens it for offers.

The investment process begins when you, as the test investor, sign in to the Investor Portal and make an offer. You will move between the Investor Portal and the Manager Platform as you proceed through the process.

In one of the earlier steps, you sent an email to the address identified for the test investor inviting Test Investor to access the portal. Access that email and click on the link to be directed to the site to create a password. Your account is now active, and you can log in.

The deal card for your offering is on the home page. You can click View Details to look at the data room you created but click on Invest Now to initiate the investment process.

When you click Invest Now, you begin the process and will provide several pieces of information. You first enter your offer amount.

All subscribers and offers must be associated with an investor account that is the investor’s legal entity. You can create one right here.

Use a name for the investor account that easily identifies it as part of the simulation. Suggestion: Test Investor Investments. You can use all 9’s for the tax id, any date for the date of birth, and any address. This data does not go through an automated verification. When completed, click on Save and Continue located at the top right.

When you scroll down, you will see the section to identify your distribution payment details. For this simulation, default to Mail Check and click Add mail check instructions.

When you click Save and Continue, you can now complete the accreditation questionnaire. Select one option before proceeding to the subscription documents by clicking Continue to documents.

For this simulation, we recommend that you sign electronically and click eSign Document to follow the directions associated with Hellosign.

Once you sign the documents, they are now awaiting Sponsor countersignature. The investor's subscription page shows the status and you will receive a Subscription Documents Completed notification email.

Access the Manager Platform using your Groundbreaker account credentials.

When you look at Recent Activity on your Home Page, you will see that Test Investor has submitted a subscription. You can also go to the list of prospects for your Trial Offering and see that Test Investor has a status of Subscription Submitted.

The detail page for the prospect now shows that you are at the document step.

You are given the option to countersign the agreement, assuming that you required a GP signature when you uploaded the agreement and the document was signed electronically by Test Investor. (If the countersignature is managed outside of Groundbreaker, you will upload the countersigned agreement.)

This will generate a Funding Announcement notification email.

Access the Investor Portal as Test Investor.

When you go to the subscription page for Trial Offering, you see funding instructions. If you added more than one option for the offering when you created the settings for the Trial Investment Entity, you can choose between them.

For the simulation, we suggest you use Mail Check as the funding option and click I’ve mailed my funds to simulate that payment has been made.

Access the Manager Platform using your Groundbreaker account credentials.

When you access the prospect detail page for Test Investor, you need to indicate that payment was received. If you used the Mail Check option for the simulation, click on Check Received.

The LP will receive a Funding Received notification email.

All steps are now complete!

Closing also initiates an Investment Confirmation email notification to the investor.

Once the subscription is complete, it is now managed as an investment.

Access Investments from the Trial Investment Entity to see the investment from Test Investor. Click on the investor to see the details.

The Investments Dashboard shows all your investments. You can click on the one for Trial Offering to see the details.

You can delete the trial investment. Click on Delete investment when you access the investment page.

You can deactivate the trial investment entity.

=> Select Investment Entities

=> Click on the investment entity you created for the simulation

=> Click on More Actions and then Settings

Click on Deactivate investment entity at the bottom of the page.

You can deactivate the contact.

=> Select Contacts

=> Click on the contact you created for the simulation

=> Click on Settings

Click on Deactivate contact account at the bottom of the page.

You should contact Groundbreaker at [email protected] if you are not able to remove your simulation data.

If you have more questions or feedback, please use the live chat in-app (located in the bottom right corner) or contact [email protected].