Because Public is a financial institution, we fall under the regulatory supervision of FINRA. This means that we adhere to important guidelines when it comes to how we represent our clients' experience and particularly how our advertising partners talk about our product.

The below is a quick guide for ensuring that you're operating within these guidelines.

What does this mean for you?

1. Content should always be truthful and never misleading.

   • Why? As a regulated business (and generally good humans) we never want to mislead users. From a compliance perspective, this is the golden rule. Please ensure that anything presented to users is clear and wholly truthful. If you're not sure, just ask! Our team is always on-call and eager to help.

2. Avoid mentioning the performance of any individual stocks or the specific performance of your/any Public account.

   • There’s a lot of red tape surrounding explicit discussions of stock and account performance, so we advise that you avoid the topic. Below are some examples to help you position the topic of performance in a compliant way:

   <aside> ✅ "With Public, you can invest in Amazon for $20 when the share price could be at about $1,500 or higher, which few people can afford."

   </aside>

   <aside> ❌ "With Public, I just invested in Amazon for $20 when I know the share price right now is $1,579, which I could never afford."

   </aside>

   In the above case, you see how we avoid articulating a specific stock price. That's because it may fluctuate over time, and we will not know when your reader or viewer may encounter it.

3. All content must be approved by the Public team prior to publication.

   • Our compliance team must review and approve all content prior to publishing. Unfortunately, releasing unreviewed content may void your contract, so please be sure to build in enough time for a round or two of reviews.

4. Disclosures may be required, depending on your content.

   • During our compliance review, we may find that additional disclosures (AKA points of fine print) need to accompany your final piece of content. This will depend greatly on subject-matter, and is assessed on an individual basis. We'll let you know if we need to add anything to your piece, and will work with you to include the necessary details in a way that works for you, your audience, and your medium!

5. Respond to comments only with pre-approved responses or send responses to the Public team for approval.

   • A response to any question related to Public must be approved by our team, or must be taken from the pre-approved FAQs below.

6. Tag all of your content with the appropriate "sponsored" or "ad" language (per FTC guidelines).

Responding to Comments

As mentioned above, anything that is said regarding Public will fall under regulation. What if someone leaves a comment? Below are some questions/topics that need to be answered carefully. Don't see the example you are looking for? Please contact our team and we'll add what you need or help craft a response.

FAQs in Comments

Q: How much do they charge in fees?

A: Public allows you to buy and sell stocks commission-free. You may still incur small exchange fees from your trades; however, Public does not charge a monthly fee or anything else to use the app.

Q: I just signed up, but don't know what to invest in, help!

A: Luckily, Public makes it easy to discover publicly traded companies through their community and themes. On Public you can follow other users and see what they're invested in, even share investment strategies. There's also Themes, which are curated lists of stocks and ETFs that align with investors' interest areas or values.