Forrest Andrew Jones Insights
Long form explainers on how private capital is raised, how a company goes public, how federal programs are evaluated and won, the systems underneath the work, and one method for learning Mandarin. Written by a practitioner, in plain language.
Featured essay
Capital FormationHow a private capital raise is structured, start to finish
A textbook walk through the apparatus underneath a private placement: the decisions, the documents, the sequence and the record, written for founders and operators seeing it for the first time.
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Published 22 September 2026- Capital Formation 6 min
Rule 506(b) versus 506(c), explained plainly
The two halves of Rule 506 of Regulation D compared on the four things that actually differ: who may buy, how the issuer may find them, what has to be verified, and what the choice costs.
- Capital Formation 6 min
What investor relations actually does after the money closes
The job most people think ends at the closing is where it starts: a reporting cadence, a record of promises, a channel for questions, and a memory that carries from one round to the next.
- Capital Formation 5 min
The CFO seat at an early stage company
What the finance chief actually owns before there is a finance department: the books and controls, the cash and the banking, the reporting to owners, and the judgment about what the company can afford to promise.
- Private to Public 5 min
Genvor's path to public markets as a case study
How an agricultural biotechnology company went from a private research venture to a reporting public company, reconstructed from its own filings and website rather than from memory.
- Private to Public 6 min
What changes operationally once a company trades
The practical differences between running a private company and running one whose shares trade publicly: the reporting clock, the rules on what can be said and when, insider obligations, and the cost of being current.
- Federal Programs 5 min
What an independent program evaluator measures, layer by layer
Federal awards often require an independent evaluator. This is what that evaluator measures, layer by layer, from inputs and activities through outputs, outcomes and the harder question of what would have happened anyway.
- Federal Programs 6 min
How small specialist firms team up to compete for federal contracts
The structures small firms use to compete for federal work they could not win alone: prime and subcontractor arrangements, joint ventures, mentor and protege agreements, and the registration and past performance that make any of them possible.
- Systems and Software 6 min
Building an investor follow up system
An architecture level description of the system that runs after a conversation ends: a contact store with stages defined by actions, a sequencing engine, the calling layer, and the record of who received which version of what.
- Systems and Software 6 min
Reading public filing data at scale: the EDGAR data tool
How the public filing system is actually organized, how a small tool can read the Form D notices in it every week, and what that data can and cannot tell you.
- Systems and Software 6 min
What building ROAM and The Blessing Machine taught me
Two student era applications, a venue booking service and a donation platform, read back from their repositories years later: what the data models got right, what the code got wrong, and what carried into the systems I build now.
- Mandarin 6 min
Learning Mandarin the SenLin way: characters, stroke order and movie scene memory hooks
The method behind the workbook: twelve days of sound before a single character, then three characters a day, each learned as a small movie scene with an actor, a set, a room and props, written by hand in stroke order.
Topics
Five hubsCapital Formation
How private capital raises are structured, documented and closed, written as textbook explainers rather than pitches.
2 articlesPrivate to Public
What changes when a company moves from private rounds to a public market, told through public filings.
2 articlesFederal Programs
Program evaluation and federal contract teaming for small specialist firms, explained from the inside.
3 articlesSystems and Software
The systems behind the work: follow up architecture, public filing data, and lessons from student era projects.
1 articleMandarin
Learning Mandarin the SenLin way: characters, stroke order and movie scene memory hooks.
Learning Mandarin The SenLin Way Workbook 1
The pen and paper companion to the SenLin method: twelve days of sound, then three characters a day as movie scenes, written by hand in stroke order, with a recall ladder on every page and a complete answer key.
About the workbook
Forrest Andrew Jones runs capital formation at Blackwater Investment Group Inc. as its Chief Investment Officer and holds the finance chief's seat at Genvor. He writes here about the mechanics of the work. About the author