Startup Sells Shares to Fund TV Blitz

If a small Valley company wants to run a national TV advertising campaign, where does it get the money? If it’s OneDayDecisions.com, the answer is a funding round. The Encino company, which runs a website to help people settle small-claims disputes, filed a 506(b) form with the Securities and Exchange Commission so it can sell its shares to family, friends and a small universe of potential investors. The company hopes to raise $400,000 in stock sales, representing 10 percent of the company. Chief Executive Rob Frankel said the round is nearly fully subscribed. He said the money would finance a three-week national ad campaign starting July 11. “We will be on everything from Justice TV to Fox News,” Frankel said. “We’ll have some cable and some over the air, but we are going to hit it pretty hard.” The campaign features a 60-second direct response ad with a retired judge advising viewers to avoid court and use OneDayDecisions.com. The website handles do-it-yourself small claims cases. A client who wants to settle a matter can go to the site, give a brief description of the case, enter a suggested settlement amount and provide the email of the other party. The website contacts the other side and gets their proposed amount. An algorithm calculates the average fair settlement and that becomes the basis for negotiation. The parties can make proposals and counter proposals. If there’s an agreement, the damages are settled with a credit card. The website charges a minimum $19 for the service, but the total could go higher based on a percentage of the settlement amount. Until now, the site had used Google Inc.’s AdWords to attract customers. It functioned well and grew sales, but Frankel hopes the television spots will bring in a surge of new customers. If that happens, he believes the site’s technology can handle it. “Everything is handled by algorithms, so we have very few customer service calls, below 1 percent,” he said. – Joel Russell