I'm not certain what type of Crowdfunding Kimer is engaged in, but I had a thought:
If Kimer were to offer Equity Crowdfunding. They could offer crowd investors guaranteed shares after their IPO. Investors would then be registered on the company's share register, and ideally become shareholders enjoying Kimer's profits post IPO.
However, Kimer would have to adopt an Equity Crowdfunding strategy with guarantees of post IPO stock to investors with no threat of forced by backs or trade sales designed to exclude original investors...
Does Kimer have an exit strategy? IPO, Trade Sale, or Share Buy Back? Would you consider a post IPO arrangement for crowd investors?
Footnote: Kimer's brave effort to develop DRACO must succeed! The world desperately needs an effective broad spectrum antiviral, but the majors view DRACO as uncharted waters, and will sit out the effort until Phase I human trials are complete and successful. That is precisely why Kimer should sweeten the post to crowdfunders, guaranteeing them a piece of the pie - Post IPO. In such a scenario, I would invest. And with the proper advertising the word would get out and thousands would invest. My father was a famous ad man and I saw him work miracles for companies with cheap, creative advertising campaigns...
Thank you Kimer for your work on behalf of humanity!
It seems a bit premature to be talking about post IPO share buybacks with a company like Kimer Med: Share buy backs are for companies that are earning so much money that they don't know how to invest it internally in a way that would beat a broad market return. It is essentially an alternative to dividends for paying out investors.
In other forum posts I have seen it stated that they want to find a path to commercialization that can make the company self funding, ie they want to drive any profits from the sale of VTose for a particular use case back into research and testing for other use cases and considering the wide range of applications for the drug I would imagine that process would go on for a very long time including after the transition to a public company. Essentially I would expect it to be a growth company for decades to come.
As for funding you can see on their website that are accepting charitable donations but also that they are a post seed funding company. This was announced back in April. I'm not sure if they have made the details of the seed funding public but with that and the recent success of in vitro testing on the dengue virus I am sure they would be looking more towards finding partners that can not only provide funding but also industry connections.
I don't think that eliminates the possibility of an equity crowd sale since if Kimer Med do find a partner/backer for a full trial they might also be interested in being a backer for an equity crowd sale and a backer would be needed in case of the very real possibility a shortfall from a crowd sale. Hell, even companies that get publicly listed on exchanges have backers with deep pockets to soak up any shortfall from a public sale. I'm sure they are aware of the possibilities.
Equity Crowdfunding is one of many options for raising all or part of our next round of funding ("Series A"), when the time comes. It's much too soon for us to say whether it will be appropriate. Unfortunately, in New Zealand, although equity crowdfunding is now straightforward from a regulatory perspective, it also comes with limitations regarding who can invest (NZ residents are strongly preferred). AFAIK, most US citizens are still prohibited by the SEC from investing in overseas crowdfunding campaigns, though my knowledge may not be completely up-to-date.