Jeffrey Andrew Bekiares

Jeff Bekiares is an attorney with over ten years of experience in general corporate, capital raising and securities laws practice. He began his career at a great Atlanta law firm, practicing there for over six years before leaving large firm life to become the Co-founder, COO and General Counsel of SparkMarket, a Georgia based crowdfunding platform. He has worked with clients at a variety of stages: from start-ups, to emerging growth to exchange listed public companies. He specializes in entity formation, governance, operating and shareholders agreement, commercial contract drafting, mergers & acquisitions, capital raising and all manner of transactional matters, including asset purchase, sale and leasing transactions.

Jeff has worked closely with regulators and experts in the state and national crowdfunding community to design capital raising campaigns (primarily “intrastate” Invest Georgia Exemption campaigns) that are compliant and safe for issuers and investors, and his company SparkMarket hosted the nation’s first successful securities-based crowdfunding campaign in U.S. history. He practices law with a philosophy based on the practical and affordable, for companies of all sizes.

Jeff is also a prolific writer, speaker and thought leader in his areas of practice and interest, and regularly lectures and provides content to and in connection with capital raising conferences, co-working space meetups, incubators and accelerators, institutions of higher learning, and government agencies. He is also the practice leader in our Corporate Education & Training group.

University of Florida

J.D. (2006) | Law

2004 - 2006

Honors: 5th in Class.

Activities: Law Review

University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign

B.A. (2002) | International Studies

1998 - 2002

Honors: Highest Distinction

Activities: Daily Illini

Associate Attorney

Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP

2006 - 2014

Associate Attorney in Corporate Department

State Bar of Georgia  # 076217

Member

Current

Georgia

Since 2007

• Credit Cards Accepted

• Crowdfunding
• Mergers and Acquisitions