Crowdfunding Executives Worth Quoting
Congressman Patrick Henry
Congressman McHenry announced, “This legislation simply codifies an intended deadline for Regulation A as part of the JOBS Act. The target date is reasonable, nearly 19 months after the JOBS Act was signed into law and 5 months before the official Reg A review would need to occur. Our economy needs efficient, vibrant capital markets to thrive and this legislation is a step in the right direction.”
Congressman David Schweikert
Congressman Schweikert said, “It was a big win for the American people when we passed the Reg A bill to help small businesses go public. It will be an even bigger success if we can put Washington on a deadline to relieve small businesses from expensive underwriting costs as soon as possible.”
Congresswoman Anna Eshoo
Congresswoman Eshoo said, “This bill puts the SEC on deadline to finalize new Regulation A rules so that startup businesses can have access to additional capital. When Congress raised the SEC Regulation A offering limit, we did so because it was essential in meeting the capital formation needs of startup businesses in our country. It will create jobs, strengthen our economy, and promote the high-tech, sustainable energy, and life science sectors. Now, it’s the SEC’s turn to follow through.”
Congressman Scott Garrrett
Congressman Garrett said, “Congress took bipartisan action to pass the JOBS Act nearly a year ago. The SEC has yet to finalize its rules. This abject failure to implement key components – like Regulation A – stands in the way of economic growth and harms our capital markets. I thank Congressman McHenry for his hard work on this bill, and I look forward to its swift passage.”
Congressman Bobby Scott
Congressman Scott said, “This bill is an important step in providing small businesses an exemption from burdensome requirements by offering a reasonable but firm deadline for finalizing the rules for Regulation A. The JOBS Act passed with strong support in the House, and this legislation builds on that progress by putting the release of the final rules in sight.”
Judd Hollas, EquityNet
Judd Hollas , EquityNet’s founder and CEO, said that the crowdfunding industry is hungry for “more data and less rhetoric.” “We are in the unique position of having 6 years of granular data from our patented platform and prepared this report to provide a statistical industry perspective for investors, entrepreneurs, policymakers, service providers, and others in the crowdfunding ecosystem. Although some high-level information has been available, the trends and statistics that emerge from this report present valuable new insights into the emerging crowdfunding industry.” (Source: PRNewsire)
Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures
Fred Wilson, a partner at Union Square Ventures, asked the audience to consider this scenario: if U.S. families devote just1% of their assets to investing in startups via crowdfunding, that would unleash a torrent of $300 billion annually. “The problems with venture capital now are dwarfed by the potential problems down the line,” he observes. Even with just $40-$50 billion aimed at financing scalable startups (the sum of the sources listed above), VC’s can’t beat the markets. With nearly ten times that amount of capital let loose, the attractiveness of venture capital as an asset class will only deteriorate further. (Source: Forbes – Fred Wilson And The Death Of Venture Capital)
Jonathan Sandlund, The CrowdCafe
Jonathan Sandlund writes, “FundingCircle is a UK debt-based crowdfunding platform that launched in August 2010. Under the auspices of a supportive regulatory regime, as of today, it has crowdfunded over $110 million, across 1,370 loans, to traditional small businesses. It’s a truly democratized marketplace, liquidated by investors both accredited and non. And it’s growing ferociously. By my calculations it grew 12% month-over-month between November and December this year, an compounded annualized growth rate of 290%.
The UK Government isn’t blind to the profound implications of this. Thousands of small businesses being democratically funded by investors and all. While our regulators stalling is causing countless entrepreneurs to go un-funded, and job creation foregone, our friends across the Atlantic recently announced it will invest 100 million pounds in peer-to-peer financial marketplaces in the UK, $20 million of which will go to FundingCircle.” (Source: The CrowdCafe – Crowdfunding Main Street: The Genesis of a Small Business Revolution)
Sandlund reports this on crowdfunding fraud, “ASSOB, an equity CF platform in Australia, is the world’s oldest and most successful crowdfunding platform. It has facilitated $129,205,578 in investments – from both accredited an non-accredited investors – since going live in 2007. Of the 176 companies that have received investment, 152 are still operational (86%). 63% of investments have been made by non-accredited investors. Since inception, not a single incidence of fraud.” (Source: The CrowdCafe – Enough with the Rhetoric: Investment Crowdfunding Works. Here’s the Proof)
Ben Miller, Co-Founder, Fundrise
“When we started, we had no inkling the JOBS Act would come along,” Ben Miller, who co-founded Fundrise with his brother Daniel, said in a telephone interview. “It took us nine months to get the first offering qualified with the SEC, and with the JOBS Act it should end up taking us a day.” (Source: Bloomberg – Crowdfunding Property Deals on Horizon With U.S. JOBS Act)
Danae Ringlemann, Founder, Indiegogo
For aspiring entrepreneurs, Indiegogo’s founder Danae Ringelmann’s advice is simple – don’t wait for perfect. “Get started as early as you can, and don’t try to boil the entire ocean at once. Many people get paralysis from analysis, where they design their perfect business plan, or their perfect non-profit, or their perfect album, and when this analysis keeps you from taking action, that’s no good.” (Source: Financial Post – Indiegogo founder advises startups not to wait for perfect)
Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter
“Most ideas in the world are funded because they have the ability to make someone else’s money. That’s what investment is, what lending is,” the co-founder of Kickstarter, Yancey Strickler said. “Ninety-nine percent of ideas have no ambition to create money whatsoever. The extent of the dream is, ‘I wanna make this.’” (Source: The Wrap – Kickstarter Co-Founder Yancey Strickler: ‘We Don’t Care About Money’)
Douglas Castle, Crowdfunding Incubator
“When the credit card bills from Christmas come rolling in, and when some crowdfunding platforms and sites start to post their actual success and failure numbers, prospective contributors are going to be tougher to come by. They will be more cautious, more skeptical and have less money to gamble with than in 2012,” says Douglas E. Castle, the CEO of CrowdFunding Incubator, LLC (CFI), looking ahead to an inevitable shakeup in the crowdfunding industry. (Source: Crowdfunding Press Center – Crowdfunding CEO Predicts Industry Shakeout in 2013
Alan Patricof, Managing Director, Greycroft Partners
“I’m frustrated with the pace,” Alan Patricof, founder and managing director of Greycroft Partners, a venture capital firm based in New York and Los Angeles, said during the event. “The SEC has delayed implementation for lots of people who would like to take action, and they are getting frustrated and frustrated and more frustrated by the fact that the rules have not come out. This is not rocket science, and I think there is so much concern about the harm it could do, that they are losing sight of the good it could do.” (Source: Washington Post – Entrepreneurs’ regulatory concerns start (but don’t end) with crowdfunding rules
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