In the short run, probably not too much. In the longer term, I hope so. There's too much attention on #VCs and how they fuel innovators. Moving forward, at $5 million per raise (per YEAR), Reg CF crowdfunding is poised to fuel more start-ups, be more efficient, and be more founder-friendly than VC investors. 

Don't get me wrong, if you are on the inside track with a VC, stay in that club. They like to pick winners (ie. bet on their friends) and it's not too hard to check the boxes that will free up capital. But for the other 99.95% of founding teams, it's time to take a careful look at crowdfunding. Not rewards or donation based crowdfunding - this isn't a bake sale - but regulated investment crowdfunding. VCs may still co-invest with your crowd -- and the smart ones will start seeing a crowd-raise as market validation. After all, most VCs are just taking the crowd's money through their LP structure anyway. Now the crowd can cut out the middleman.  

Some stats relevant to VCs and startups that every founder show know: 

1. 77% of small businesses rely on personal savings for their initial funds.
2. A third of small businesses start with less than $5,000.
3. The average small business requires about $10,000 of startup capital.
4. Only 0.05% of startups raise venture capital.
5. The average seed round is $2.2 million.
6. The median company running a seed funding round is 3 years old.
7. Of startups that raised seed rounds, 1% reached unicorn status of $1B+ valuation.
8. Startups with two co-founders rather than one raise 30% more capital.

(Source: https://www.fundera.com stats from 2020). 

Given that the average VC seed round is $2.2 million and that the cap on Regulation CF is $5 million PER YEAR, will a founding team want to spend their time chasing lots of VCs trying to get $2.2 million or does it make sense to convince a broad group of strategic investors / early customer adopters to invest early and continue investing as the company hits key milestones? I’m putting my bet on the crowd over VCs. Every prospective customer you get to invest has the potential to serve three objectives:

1. investment capital;  

2. revenue; and 

3. as an enthusiastic "ambassador" or marketing champion of your company.  

Today, VCs are somewhat spoiled with no shortage of quality deal flow – so as the compelling value proposition of crowdfunding becomes better known, VCs will need to differentiate and compete for the same early-stage deals. This is going to change their primary function from being filter bubbles (I’m sure many would argue with this characterization of their role) to providing something value-added, beyond just the capital, to founding teams.   

Crowdfunding won’t take off overnight because there’s still a lot of issuer and investor education that needs to first happen [see the Crowdfunding Professional Association’s (CfPA) and the Crowdfunding Ecosystem for experts, events, and companies that can help with knowledge resources] but in the long run, I expect we’ll all see crowdfunding as the leading method for early phase capital formation and VCs will have to adjust.  

Hi Derrick,

If you invested on Republic.co, you should be able to check your investments if you:

1. Log in

2. Hover over your click the drop-down in the top right

3. Select "My Portfolio"

4. You can then click on any of your investments to read updates.

You can also hover over the lightning bolt next to your picture, which will display all the updates for companies you follow, have invested in, etc.

Hope this helps!

Best,

Brian

Possibly.

However, if that were to be done one business at a time it would likely result in the same difficulties that individual small businesses (especially startups) would have. Liquidity (or lack thereof) in such an investment creates resistivity on the part of the investor public. 

Instead of helping to use crowdfunding on a one-on-one basis, I believe a better approach is to have those agencies form a pooled fund that can be taken public and have that pooled fund do the investments in those individual companies. That way the companies get the money they need but the investors can have the liquidity of a public company.

See this article I wrote on the topic: How to Increase the Flow of Capital to Small Businesses While Enhancing Liquidity for Investors (SBHCs) 9/6/2016 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-increase-flow-capital-small-businesses-while-michael-sauvante//

This question has been the subject of a lot of debate over the years since the JOBS Act was enacted. Some lawyers (and many platforms) take the view that their diligence obligations are limited to those set out in Rule 301 of Reg CF (make sure the issuing company tells you it has complied with its obligations, make sure there's a record-keeping mechanism, and make sure the company isn't disqualified by reason of the bad actor prohibitions). Others point to the provisions of Section 4A(c) of the Securities Act, which says "issuers" are responsible for any misstatements unless by exercise of reasonable due diligence they couldn't have known there was a misstatement, and provides that "issuer" includes anyone "selling" the securities. People in the limited-liability camp argue the portals aren't "selling" and thus aren't "issuers". The SEC says, under certain circumstances, portals may be liable for misstatements by issuers.

This debate may have become largely moot since the 2019 Supreme Court decision in Lorenzo, which provides a separate cause of action under Rule 10b-5 for anyone who "disseminates" a misleading statement. I cannot work out why this decision does not worry portals more.

The other liability provision that should concern portals is Section 9(a)(4) of the Exchange Act, a relatively new addition to that Act, which provides that liability for misleading statements extends to anyone who "willfully participates" in an offering.

In all these cases, liability can be addressed by undertaking due diligence to ensure that the statements made by a company are not misleading.

The costs depend on various factors.  Do you need a lawyer to draft the documents for whatever security you plan to offer?  Do you need help completing the Form C and making sure you do it correctly?  Do you need an accountant to prepare your financials in accordance with GAAP?  Do you need help with marketing and communications?  These services could cost $20-25k or more.  Then of course there is whatever fee the platform charges.

Real estate is in my blood.  I'm an architect and urban designer by training, and cut my teeth as a real estate developer in Pittsburgh, on important and challenging projects in neighborhoods that were just a little neglected. These were difficult projects to finance, and yet the community always rooted for them.  My hope was that Small Change would become a place to raise capital for community-centric projects - a community bank of sorts. Real estate is a powerful tool and we believe that every developer has the choice to make (or break) a community with their investment.  We choose to support the real estate deals that will build better cities.