Guide
What you are building is not a pad
RCAICO is a regulated event with a campaign around it. It is not a website that takes money.
Most teams arrive with a date, a token spreadsheet, and a sentence that they want to “do a regulated ICO.” That sentence is a search query, not a plan. A plan names the instrument, the people who may hear about it, the law that will be used, and the licensed party who will take the money. Everything else is costume.
RCA Pad exists because that costume is expensive. It leaks into Telegram, into a waitlist that became a book, into a creator who promised allocation, into a footer that said “Reg CA-compliant” before a comment period had closed. The process below is how we stop that leak without pretending we are the venue.
If you are a counterparty — an allocator, a bank, counsel on the other side — this map is how to read the board. “In market” is a campaign with locked claims. It is not a subscription. “In diligence” is fourteen days of writing. “Screened” passed a desk, not a listing committee. “Closed” is archive. None of those words mean we sold you a token.
If the campaign only works if we pretend to be a pad, we do not have a campaign. We have a costume.
Guide
Three owners, or the file is a fiction
We operate the launch. Counsel names the path. You complete the funding.
Confusion about ownership is how accidental offerings are born. A founder thinks the pad will “handle compliance.” A marketer thinks a disclaimer is a path. A lawyer is copied on a deck two days before the date. None of that is a process.
RCA Pad owns the operating file: claims register, named geographies, campaign calendar, creator policy, partner map, the pack a later reader can open. Counsel of record owns the legal conclusion: classification, the live exemption or private-placement route, the disclosure, the promotion permission. You own investors, allocation, completion, and the licensed person who takes the wire. Our fee is sterling. It is never a percentage of a round we did not fill.
Guide
Eight stages, none of them skippable
A calendar is not a sequence. Sequence is what keeps a public sentence from arriving early.
Intent is a sentence. Evidence is an entity, founders, and a product that is not only a slide. The screen is a person reading ten dimensions — calendar is never automatic. The sprint is fourteen days to a pack. Pathway is counsel naming a live route, or locking “not offering.” Build is the file in production: landing, waitlist, kit, approval trail. The window is the lawful campaign, still not a venue. Completed funding is your event, our archive, 0% of proceeds.
Teams ask to start at Build because the site looks empty. We do not. A surface without a claims register is how a sentence escapes. Teams ask to skip Pathway because “Reg CA will be live by then.” Proposed rules are not paths. Teams ask to skip the screen because they already have a date. Dates without a screen are how we inherit someone else’s leak.
You cannot skip:
- A first sentence that survives counsel.
- Named entity and named founders.
- A human screen.
- A written pack.
- A path that is alive on the day you speak — or a lock that you are not offering.
Guide
What thirty to one hundred and eighty days actually contains
The range is not optimism. It is whether the facts already exist.
If the entity is incorporated, counsel is retained, the product has a URL, and the founder can name two geographies, a Sprint can start in days and a Build can follow in weeks. If any of those is missing, the missing thing is the critical path — not our calendar.
One hundred and eighty days is not a promise that the window opens. It is the outer bound in which a serious house can produce a file, a path, and surfaces that a later reader will not flinch at. Faster is possible. Faster is not the product. Completeness is.
Guide
The permanent refusals
These do not become available if the fee is larger.
We do not accept investor funds. We do not custody. We do not sell or allocate tokens. We do not execute trades. We do not operate a venue. We do not introduce a round as a placement. We do not underwrite proposed Regulation Crypto Assets. We do not put “Reg CA-compliant” on a page because a comment period exists. We do not take a percentage of a raise. We do not let a creator promise allocation. We do not run a “how do I buy” bot.
If your plan requires any of those, you are in the wrong house. That is not an insult. It is a save — of your later self, and of ours.