Shares can only be sold directly by a public company to qualified investors. Qualified is a legal term in the regs which means for individual investors a person who can demonstrate that they have assets (maybe $1M?) and/or income (maybe $250k pa?) enough to prove that they have a certain amount of financial experience, enough to protect their own interests and do not need the protection of having a broker mediate to 'protect their interests'. Not that discount brokers do that, but the regs predate discount brokers. Anyway direct sales of shares to qualified investors is allowed by the SEC but not to any TDH (Tom, Dick and Harry).
BTW, I'm not a lawyer or securities professional but I'm aware of the category and that for example with prior NWBO offering where individual investors could participate it was limited to qualified investors. Makes sense from a company legal liability perspective too.
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