CrowdCheck CEO Sara Hanks Helps Clients Avoid Problems

CrowdCheck CEO Sara Hanks says securities law enforcement differs dramatically from traffic enforcement. If you speed and don’t get caught in the act, you don’t worry about later being investigated for a traffic violation. Sara says that’s not how it works for securities:

We often have the mom conversation. “Well, if everybody jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it?”

Part of the problem here is understanding that it takes the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] about two years to think about, well, maybe they really shouldn't have done that. And another year to issue the subpoena and another year to capture the information.

We've got people who are receiving subpoenas for stuff they did in 2017. I mean, the SEC is out there. Just because somebody did something recently doesn't mean, A, that they're going to get away with it and B, that you're going to get away with it if you copy them.
 
  

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William McGuire is the founder and CEO of Incolo, a venture accelerator designed to help entrepreneurs find capital right in their backyard, often via investment crowdfunding. He envisions a world where everyone in the community is invested in its businesses, thereby participating in the upside collectively.

So Easy a Child Can Understand

An intriguing part of our conversation revolved around helping ordinary people understand and value the opportunity to invest in local businesses. To prove that even kids can understand the basics of investing via crowdfunding, Incolo hosted some sessions with “little investors,” some not having even celebrated two-digit birthdays.

Will says, “We just want to see how our kids interact.”

After identifying several companies that would naturally appeal to children, including an app, a film and other opportunities, they held the session with a handful of children. This list also included some boring fare, like an assisted living project.

“We asked all the...more

A Real OG
 
Sherwood “Woodie” Neiss is on a short list of those who deserve serious credit for leading Congress to pass and getting then-President Barack Obama to sign the 2012 JOBS Act. He’s earned the title of Real OG in the investment crowdfunding world.

Now a principal at Crowdfund Capital Advisors and a partner in Crowd Capital Ventures, he’s continuing to grow and advocate for the industry he had such a pivotal hand in creating.

Woodie shared some stories about the work of getting the legislation passed. First, he recalls how the legislation came to have a provision prohibiting the sale of crowdfunded securities for twelve months even though there is no market.

I remember sitting in Senator Bennett's office working with one of his staffers on how we prevent pumping and dumping. We didn't have that in there.

And I, being an entrepreneur, having had that background of starting a business, funding it and exiting it, I really looked at him. I was like, “listen, these are long-term...more

Join us for three days of training on everything you need to know tor raise funding from investors on your own terms with lawyer/coach Jenny Kassan and lots of other great experts!  https://www.jennykassan.com/fundit/

Dear Future Lords of Venture Capital, 

Stop launching RegCF crowdfunding portals. 

Morning Beautiful People! That sentence is the TLDR version of this article. The next line is, “Partner with existing portal owners as the hardest part of crowdfunding is the crowd.” 

The three reasons why you should partner with an existing RegCF portal vs building your own are: 

Affinity Crowd - you’ve never heard of that portal because in 2016 Founder’s egos imploded it before it even got off the ground. That lesson in why entrepreneurship is so hard I only recommend it to my enemies, cost me a mere $500k. Fortunately, since I’ve paid that iron price you don’t have to. Learn from my mistakes, don’t repeat them. 

$3M for 18 months of runway. If you try to launch your own RegCF crowdfunding portal it’ll cost you at least $3M. I know. I know. No one believes this number. Download this excel sheet and play with the numbers and remember, if you’re only charging 3% to 8% of the rais...more

We posted this originally at superpowers4good.com.

The sage advice to “be the change you want to see in the world” is often attributed to Ghandi. Whether he said that exact phrase is unclear, but it captures the essence of his philosophy.

Today, you can also invest in the change you want to see.

• Suppose you want to see better drug development and healthcare for the Latinx community, you can invest in Somos.
• Imagine you’d like to see clearer opportunities to find and patronize small businesses owned by women, you can invest in Inentionalist.
• Perhaps you’d like to see cleaner extraction of rare earth minerals for all the high-tech toys we use today, you can invest in KMX Technologies.
• If you’d like to invest in solar panels that simultaneously produce electricity with PV and heat water, you can invest in PowerPanel.

The opportunities to back founders aligned with your vision of the future, your priorities for solving social problems, your concern for people and the planet are all endle...more

Over the past decade, I’ve written hundreds of articles about what I now call impact crowdfunding, the practice of investing small amounts of money in private companies that are doing some good in the world.

That said, I confess that as big a fan of the idea of impact crowdfunding as I have been, I wasn’t doing it. Honestly, I mostly felt like I didn’t have enough money. When I was the CFO of a global food and beverage corporation, I felt pretty rich. Podcasting about polio doesn’t pay as well.

Here’s the thing. Investing is different from spending. When you spend $100 on a nice dinner with family and friends, the money is gone. The memory of the meal may last forever, but you aren’t getting that money back.

When you invest, it’s like moving a $100 bill from your purse into your fanny pack. You still have $100; it’s just in a different place.

It occurs to me that some readers are thinking that investing via crowdfunding sounds like something they’d like to do but don’t feel ready to do...more