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Crowd Funding – A Critique for Entrepreneurs and Investors

Crowd funding enables entrepreneurs to raise money in relatively small amounts from large numbers of interested investors.  In the sum, substantial amounts of money (as much as a million dollars) can be raised for each startup company.  Recently, entrepreneurs in many countries have been soliciting investment through “crowd funding” websites designed specifically for fundraising purposes.  But, in the US, only wealthy accredited investors* have been allowed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to invest in entrepreneurs and their startup companies (without extensive disclosure of th
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The 10 People You Need To Know To Open Doors In Silicon Valley

Everyone knows who the most famous and influential people in Silicon Valley are: Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen. Ron Conway, Jack Dorsey, etc.

But who are the people that can introduce you to them? Who are the connectors, the master networkers, the people who can open doors?

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Revenue Based Financing — often non-dilutive to founders, no valuation impact

A revenue-based finance (RBF) investment provides capital to a business by “selling” an ongoing percentage of a company’s future revenues to the investor.  For simplicity, you can think of it as a revenue share type of arrangement. Investor gives capital to company in exchange for a small percentage of gross revenues. RBF lives as a hybrid of bank debt and venture capital. This kind of financing has been around for a while in non-tech industries such as mining, film production and drug development, but it’s recently been gaining traction in the world of growth finance and early-stage techno
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What Will the JOBS Act Mean for U.S. Start-Ups?

The JOBS Act, signed into law last week, stands for “Jumpstart Our Business Startups.” So how will the bill directly impact small businesses and start-ups themselves?  The Journal’s Angus Loten points to the bill’s support for “crowd-funding,” a way for small businesses to raise money. Under the bill, Loten writes:

Start-ups can raise up to $1 million a year by pitching to thousands of small-dollar investors online with little disclosure beyond a rough business plan. (They can raise up to $2 million if they provide audited financial statements.)

Read the transcript to see the chat session.
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Equity-Based Crowd-funding – JOBS Act of 2012 Summary and Analysis

The Act provides for a new category of a transactional exemption, ……., for transactions involving the offer or sale of securities provided the offering meets three conditions: 1)the aggregate amount sold to all investors is not more than $1,000,000.00, 2)the aggregate sold to any investor does not exceed the greater of $2,000.00 or 5% of the annual income or net worth of such investor (if either the annual income or the net worth of the investor is less than $100,000.00), and 10% of the annual income or net worth of such investor, not to exceed a maximum amount sold of $100,000.00 (if either the annual income or net worth of the investor is more than $100,000.00), and 3) the transaction is conducted through a broker or “funding portal”
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Want to Raise Money With Crowdfunding? Consider These Tips To Avoid Some Headaches

Crowdfunding promises to give some startups access to capital they wouldn’t have had otherwise, but it could set up unwary entrepreneurs for a headache.

Crowdfunding is a way of raising capital that involves getting small amounts of money from a large number of investors. A new law, called the JOBS Act, changes the formerly donate-to-my-cause-for-a-tote-bag industry into a popular way for small companies to raise the cash in two ways: It allows businesses to raise money from investors in exchange for a piece of their company (equity) and it allows non-accredited investors (regular Joes and Janes like your neighbor and
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The Crowdfunding Accreditation for Platform Standards

The Crowdfunding Accreditation for Platform Standards (CAPS) program is an initiative by Crowdsourcing.org to promote the adoption of best practices for the operation of crowdfunding platforms. Designed to protect both crowdfunders (people pledging or investing capital) and fundraisers (people raising capital), the CAPS program’s mission is to foster the sustainable growth of the crowdfunding industry to provide much needed capital for projects and initiatives, start-ups and small businesses. Supported by an advisory council of leading platform operators and industry experts
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Tips to Find the Right Angel Investor

There are roughly 265,000 active individual angel investors . If you want to go the route of tapping an angel network — a group made up of up to 150 individual investors who pool their finances and share the due diligence work — there are . In short, there are lots to choose from and . The challenge is finding the right angel investor for you and your business. What a lot of founders don’t realize is that not all angels invest for the same reasons. Backing a startup is a bit like shopping for a car: Do you want a sports car that does zero to 60 in four seconds? A dependable sedan? A Prius t
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JOBS Act: 5 things to look forward to (and 5 to dread)

As Obama signs the JOBS Act into law, crowdfunding becomes legal and companies get more flexibility in going public. Here’s the good and the bad.
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4 Crowdfunding Cautions for Small Businesses

The so-called crowdfunding term essentially means pooling resources or money together from a group. Under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, or JOBS Act, small companies will have the ability to raise up to $1 million in equity on an annual basis through crowdfunding, without having to go through the rigorous disclosure process by the Securities and Exchange Commission. To be sure there are a host of unknown answers regarding crowdfunding, but as more companies take to social media to tell their story and gain a following, the strategy could become a major player in the
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