Former S&P President Leads Seed Round for ICO Compliance Startup

Regtech and compliance startup iComply has just completed a seed funding round led by former Standard and Poor's president Deven Sharma.

The firm - which seeks to develop standard compliance tools and services for other blockchain startups and in particular those which launch initial coin offerings or ICOs - announced Monday that it raised a seven-figure number during the round, although it did not provide an exact figure.

DMG Blockchain and Block X Capital also participated in the round.

In its announcement, iComply also revealed that former CFTC official Jeff Bandman, former Nasdaq and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority executive Manny Alicandro, MIT fellow Praveen Mandal and attorney Thomas Linder have joined the startup as advisers.

In conversation with CoinDesk, Sharma said he chose to invest in iComply specifically because of the startup's "Focus on compliance and risk services for ICOs." Compliance, he said, will help ease regulator concerns by providing transparency into ICO issuers.

"My interest is to see iComply evolve into a benchmark that investors can use to assess credibility of issuers, sustainability of underlying services and the price of ICOs," he said.

The startup's founder and chief executive, Matthew Unger, said in a statement that new ICOs and exchanges will have to answer to regulators including FINRA, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, among others.

He said, "Will allow for more growth of innovative ways of raising funds and investment - I see iComply as a critical component of making the entire ICO space more successful, because it provides the confidence."

The concepts of transparency and trust, he said, were what sparked his interest in blockchain to begin with.

CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.