Welcome to the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions (DFI) Small Business Offering Options Decision Tree.
This interactive decision tree is intended to help you evaluate whether your business may raise money by selling securities in a strictly private offering and if so, explore some private offering exemptions that may apply, or if it will be necessary for your company to register the offering. We encourage you to use the decision tree to test different scenarios and observe how different circumstances may alter the offering options that are available to your business.
This decision tree is not exhaustive. There are complicated state and federal securities laws requirements that are not discussed here. Please consult the applicable state and federal laws and/or a private attorney with experience in this area prior to offering or selling securities.
A PDF version of the decision tree is available online at http://www.dfi.wa.gov/sd/pdf/decision_tree.pdf