Tag Archives: SEC regulations

Crowd Fund Investing Wins Startup Weekend Miami Challenge

Posted on June 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

The Initial Pitch

On May 20th Sherwood Neiss, Chief Advocate for The Startup Exemption decided to test the basis for Crowd Fund Investing by pitching the idea to approximately 150 people at Startup Weekend Miami.

Startup Weekend (funded by the Kauffman Foundation – American’s largest Entrepreneurial Foundation) is a 54-hour event that takes place in 100 cities around the world.  It is designed to provide superior experiential education for technical and non-technical entrepreneurs. The weekend events that have launched over 2,000 businesses, are centered on action, innovation, and education. Beginning with Friday night pitches and continuing through testing, business model development, and basic prototype creation, Startup Weekends culminate in Sunday night demos to a panel of potential investors, experts and local entrepreneurs.  Participants are challenged with building functional startups during the event and are able to collaborate with like-minded individuals outside of their daily networks.

Friday Night Crowd Voting

There were 60 ideas pitched by the attendees and the crowd voted.  Crowd Fund Investing received the 4th highest number of votes.  The Top 15 ideas formed teams and started working on their prototypes for the next 50 hours.   Neiss’ team consisted of students; front and back end web developers, and business people.  They divided the work into functional groups and by Sunday had a Minimum Value Proposition “MVP” to present to the judges.

Neiss’ presentation began by congratulating to all the finalists with a reminder that while great ideas are sparked at this event, no one would go very far without funding.  And that’s where their idea came in.  With only 5 minutes to explain and demonstrate their proof of concept, Neiss was able to win over the 5 industry experts and VC judges.  Winning comes with a variety of prizes that include a month of free social media support and 3 months of free office space at a Miami incubator.

After Winning Startup Weekend Challenge

Maris McEdwards Community Manager for Startup Weekend Corporate had the following to say, “Startup Weekend’s mission is to empower entrepreneurs to create new and innovative solutions to real-world problems.  We encourage teams to incorporate customer validation and feedback at every stage of development.  Personal experience provided Sherwood years to think about and perfect this funding and investment option for entrepreneurs. Their win at Startup Weekend Miami was not simply due to a great solution; a large part of their success can be attributed to a thorough knowledge of the problem they were tackling. Given the positive response from the Startup Weekend Miami judges and attendees, they have clearly defined entrepreneurs’ needs and are building some serious momentum for Crowd Fund Investing.”

With 3rd party validation about the business model, Neiss will be using this as further evidence that the time is ripe for the SEC to update the Security Laws to include an exemption based on the framework in The Startup Exemption.

 

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Posted in Crowd Fund Investing, Funding Gap, Investment, Jason Best, Petition, Sherwood Neiss, Woodie Neiss, Zak Cassady-Dorion

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Our Congressional Testimony: Reversing the Decline in Capital Formation

Posted on May 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

“Reversing the Decline in Capital Formation”

 

Testimony of

 

Sherwood Neiss

Entrepreneur

Sherwood Speaks, LLC

Miami Beach, Florida

May 10, 2011

Before the

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

United States House of Representatives

The Honorable Darrell Issa, Chairman

The Honorable Elijah Cummings, Ranking Member

Introduction:

 

Chairman Issa, Ranking Member Cummings and members of the Committee, thank you for holding this hearing today and allowing me to share an entrepreneur’s perspective on improving capital formation through regulatory modernization.  My intention is to explain why outdated securities laws — put in place before the Internet age — need to be modernized and overhauled, and how these reforms can boost our struggling economy.  By revamping the Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) position on solicitation and accreditation, we can open the doors to small business growth and prosperity.  Allowing for an exemption for Crowd Fund Investing, which includes protections for investors, will spur innovation among your constituents, create jobs, increase consumer spending, and reinvigorate our economy. Continue reading →

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Posted in Crowd Fund Investing, Funding Gap, Investment, Jason Best, Petition, Sherwood Neiss, Woodie Neiss, Zak Cassady-Dorion

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Peer-to-Peer Community Investment Presented as a Solution to the Capital Crunch for Startups & Small Businesses

Posted on May 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

Washington, DC –On May 10th the Government Oversight and Reform committee is meeting to discuss Capital Formation and Investor Protection.  Namely, they are meeting to review aspects of our country’s securities laws that inhibit capital formation.  One of the most important aspects of the meeting will focus on access to capital for startups and community-based businesses.

Sherwood Neiss a Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council member in conjunction with SBEC’s President, Karen Kerrigan, crafted a framework called Crowd Fund Investing (CFI) that was presented to the SEC for review and is building support among Americans.

Even though Crowd Fund Investing (CFI) is taking place in the U.K., Holland, India & China, in the U.S. it is not permitted because it breaks the Security & Exchanges’ accreditation and solicitation rules. According to Neiss, “These rules were written at a time when only 4% of Americans invested in the markets.  Today we have technology that has leveled the playing field and increased investor sophistication making these rules outdated.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Crowd Fund Investing, Funding Gap, Investment, Jason Best, Sherwood Neiss, Woodie Neiss, Zak Cassady-Dorion

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O’Reilley’ Radar Blogs About Crowd Fund Investing

Posted on May 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

** From http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/05/crowdfunding-exemption.html **

Improving the landscape for organic startups

A congressional committee will hear a “crowdfunding exemption” proposal next week.

by: Paul Spinrad

Next Tuesday, May 10, entrepreneur Sherwood Neiss will be testifying before U.S. Congressman Darrell Issa and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to advocate a regulatory change that I have been working to support: a small offering exemption, aka “crowdfunding exemption.” It’s a simple change that the SEC has the authority to make, and which I believe would spur grassroots innovation and empowerment the way the NSF’s revision of the internet backbone’s Acceptable Use Policy did back in the early 1990s. (Remember that one?)

The background (which I didn’t know until fairly recently), is that any investment where the return does not depend on the investor’s active, day-to-day involvement is considered a security. And securities, no matter how small, are either regulated by the SEC or state securities departments. There are no de minimis exceptions; shares in a lemonade stand would require registration, which I’m told costs $50,000-$100,000 or more (federal) or $20,000-$50,000 (state), mostly legal fees. For VC-free startups based on people doing things that they care about, these costs are prohibitive. Continue reading →

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Posted in Crowd Fund Investing, Funding Gap, Investment, Jason Best, Petition, Sherwood Neiss, Woodie Neiss, Zak Cassady-Dorion

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How to Provide Investor Protection in Crowd Fund Investing

Posted on April 13, 2011 | 4 comments

Creating prudent investor safeguards is an important part of enabling a vibrant and effective crowd fund investing ecosystem.  With this in mind, we propose a series of steps to increase transparency and accountability while limiting the opportunity for fraud and abuse.

How to Provide Investor Protection in Crowd Fund Investing

 

Creating prudent investor safeguards is an important part of enabling a vibrant and effective crowd fund investing ecosystem.  With this in mind, we propose a series of steps to increase transparency and accountability while limiting the opportunity for fraud and abuse.

 

Investor Risk Proposed Rules to Mitigate Investor Risk
How do you prevent large scale fraud? Limit the maximum amount any one entrepreneur/company can raise via crowd fund investing platforms to an aggregate of $1 million
How do you keep large corporations from using this as a loophole for cheaper financing? Limit the types of companies that can utilize the platform to those that are less than 50 employees (and not a majority owned or wholly owned subsidiary of another entity) with less than $5 million in revenue in the previous calendar year
How do you prevent someone from swindling all of Grandma’s retirement? Limit the amount that anyone can invest to either $10,000 or 10% of their prior year’s Adjusted Gross Income (whichever is lower)
How do you prevent limited disclosure requirements from increasing risk? Have the crowd vet the entrepreneur.  Create a standards based set of data that each entrepreneur must complete in order to attempt to seek funding.  Then enable a communication channel for investors and entrepreneurs to communicate about their questions, ideas and solutions.  Investors only invest in entrepreneurs that have complete information and a product or service that the investor believes in.  Connecting this service to social media groups whereby the entrepreneur and investors are part of the same group, the investors can ask questions of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur can solicit the investors for help, experience, contacts, etc.  Investors can rate the entrepreneur following their investment and entrepreneurs can rate investors.
How do you protect against professional scam artists? Just like when financing a major purchase or renting an apartment, Crowd Fund Investing entrepreneurs must agree to credit checks that match their name, social security number and receive a credit score that the crowd can view.  Make the initial money loans that the entrepreneur is personally responsible for.  If he/she defaults it appears on their credit report.
How do you prevent someone from attempting to raise funds without proper planning? Crowd Fund Investing must be an all or nothing platform.  If the entrepreneur doesn’t raise all the requested funds within the specified timeframe, the funding round closes and the investors keep their money.  By limiting the amount of money individuals can contribute, an entrepreneur has to be careful about how much money he is asking for (if he asks for too much and doesn’t reach his funding target, he doesn’t get funded).
What about nondisclosure/lack of transparency? Make the entrepreneurs fill out standards based information about themselves and how they will use the capital.  Have them attach links to their “social proof” from various online communities (LinkedIn, eBay, Amazon, Facebook, etc) profiles that show how the “crowd” views them.  Most of these investments will be made to individuals that are already known to the investors via social media platforms.  Investors will be provided with standards based agreements and this information will be stored within the community, and a data set of relevant investor and entrepreneur data will be transferred to the SEC on a quarterly basis. Examples of this dataset might include:  company name, entrepreneur name, funding rounds attempted, funding rounds successful, number of investors, total investment raised, investor names, etc.
How do you prevent people from “underwriting” & “reselling” the securities? Restrict the shares and mandate that shares must be held a minimum of 1 year by the acquirer.  Let people know that they are buying restricted shares and there is no secondary market to them.  Make sure they understand that unless the company is sold, merges or goes public they will not see a return. (Shares can be transferred to family)

 

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Posted in Crowd Fund Investing, Funding Gap, Investment, Jason Best, Petition, Sherwood Neiss, Woodie Neiss, Zak Cassady-Dorion

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Hong Kong Invests in US companies where Americans can’t

Posted on March 9, 2011 | 2 comments

American companies are having a very difficult time raising the money they need to grow their businesses. It’s not because the money is not there but rather because it is not flowing from the people who have it to the people that can use it to grow our economy. One of the things that has always made America great is our ability to innovate. Unfortunately, innovation is currently being stifled by overly strict SEC regulations. These regulations however are not stoping other countries from innovating and riding off the coat tails of US entrepreneurs.

GrowVC, a Chinese company, has now launched with its intention to fill this funding void by collecting money from investors (including Americans).  They already have successful cases of US Startups raising capital from them.  What does this mean? First, by being offshore they just worked around the entire SEC process.  And second, the future success stories of the USA as well as their technology, Intellectual Property and future profits will be owned/shipped overseas.  The one major loophole in these regulations is that if you are not an American or an American company, you are not regulated by these security laws. Clearly, these outcomes were not the intention of the Securities law however it is exactly what is happening. I personally don’t feel that selling our nation’s entrepreneurs to foreign countries is in anyone’s best interest.

By making common sense amendments to the 1933 and 1934 Securities laws we can stop this mass export of US entrepreneurs and get back on track to recovery and innovation.

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Posted in Investment, Uncategorized, Zak Cassady-Dorion

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