sudo-crowd

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22 discussions

by Eddan Katz

via New Economy Coalition > > > Join Slow Money's Next "Gatheround" To Support Restorative Soil Practices > > Join our friends at Slow Money for their next Gatheround online crowdfunding event at 9pm EST on Dec. 10th. Learn about nourishing the soil from organic pioneer Eliot Coleman and engage with three farmer entrepreneurs putting restorative soil practices into action. Your $25 entry fee goes toward funding the entrepreneur of your choice. > Learn more at Gatheround.org » >

12 years

WSJ.com: Several states let resident entrepreneurs secure financing through 'equity crowdfunding.'

by Eddan Katz

> > > > > > WSJ.com - Several states let resident entrepreneurs secure financing through 'equity crowdfunding.' > Subscriber-only content will be available to non-subscribers for up to seven days after it is emailed. > > > > > This article can also be accessed if you copy and paste the entire address below > into your web browser. > http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303722104579237862… > > 'Crowdfunding' Gets State-Level Test Run By Ruth Simon and Angus Loten Dec. 4, 2013 7:46 p.m. ET Shaun Lee, left, and Adam Lee, whose company, Bohemian Guitars, is one of a dozen small Georgia companies making use of new rules in the state that pave the way for 'equity crowdfunding.' Dustin Chambers for The Wall Street Journal Entrepreneur Adam Lee and his brother couldn't get a bank loan. Then they learned that Georgia state officials had taken steps that might make it easier for their startup, Bohemian Guitars LLC, of Marietta, Ga., to raise the funds it needs. The pair, who make and sell oilcan guitars priced at $250 and up, are among a small but growing number of entrepreneurs taking part in a sort of test run for new federal rules: Officials in nearly a dozen states, including Georgia, Alabama, Kansas and Wisconsin, have enacted or proposed new laws—or tweaked existing policies—to make it possible for resident entrepreneurs to secure financing from everyday local investors, also known as "equity crowdfunding," according to the North American Securities Administrators Association. Photos Bohemian Guitars sells oilcan guitars priced at $250 and up. Dustin Chambers for The Wall Street Journal Generally, these arrangements are structured as equity deals, with investors receiving a share of the profits, says William Carleton, a Seattle-based lawyer for startups. The push to make it easier for entrepreneurs and small businesses to raise money comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission continues to mull over the finer details of what, where and how small firms can use crowdfunding as mandated by the 2012 federal law known as the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. The agency issued a 580-page notice in October, but hasn't said when final rules would be implemented. Bohemian Guitars is one of a dozen small Georgia companies that have notified the state they plan to use the Invest Georgia Exemption, adopted in December 2011. The startup has raised $126,000 using the new rules, according to Mr. Lee. That's about enough to make at least 1,000 guitars, with some leftover to put into marketing and operations. Mr. Lee, who started Bohemian Guitars with his brother Shaun, spent six weeks meeting with family, friends and Atlanta investors, laying the groundwork for the guitar offering. "It's not just throwing up a profile on a website and investors swarm at you. It's a lot of effort," he said. "I had to educate them on crowdfunding and the Invest Georgia Exemption, and had to explain why we were raising money on this unique format," he said. "After all those educating points, I had to then move into courting the investors by sharing my business plan and investor deck." For Daniel Popovic of Atlanta, efforts to take advantage of the Georgia provision proved less fruitful. He recently pulled the plug on his three-month effort to use the Georgia exemption to raise $400,000 for cMEcompete, a website that connects people with fitness activities in their communities. Lining up investors "is a full-time job," said Mr. Popovic. "My energy is best spent building up the platform and growing customers." Mr. Popovic also worried that follow-on investors would be reluctant to fund a company where "thirty or forty people" have small stakes. The mixed results highlight the challenges facing entrepreneurs trying to raise funds from the general public, rather than just wealthy or professional investors. In 2011, Kansas became the first state to allow intrastate crowdfunding, after fundraising by a local dairy and efforts to build a new, small town movie theater inadvertently ran afoul of state securities laws barring the "general solicitation" of ordinary investors. The measure was also designed "to encourage capital formation, especially in the smaller communities," said Steven Wassom, executive director in the Office of the Kansas Securities Commissioner. So far, eight companies have filed under the Invest Kansas Exemption, including two microbrewery restaurants, a cafe, a defense contractor and a dairy. But there were some kinks in Kansas' initial approach, according to Steve Piper, an entrepreneur in that state. The owner of a small grocery store, Mr. Piper said he tried to use the exemption to raise $500,000 to relocate the Valley Café, a restaurant that he owned, into a building he hoped to buy in Marquette, population roughly 640. Mr. Piper closed the establishment after securing pledges for just $200,000, less than the $300,000 minimum he needed to relocate and update the restaurant. "We tried it for about a year and came up a little short," in part because the maximum investment at the time was $1,000, said Mr. Piper, who would nevertheless recommend other local businesses try out the exemption. In June, Kansas increased the maximum an ordinary individual could invest to $5,000 from $1,000. At the local level, equity crowdfunding "is really an extended friends and family round" for small, local shops and restaurants that aren't likely to seek or receive professional angel or venture capital investments, said Zach Brandon, president of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce in Wisconsin, and an investor in several local retailers. The Wisconsin measure, signed into law in November, allows any state resident to invest as much as $10,000 per venture and limits total fundraising to $1 million—or $2 million if the firm raising the capital agreed to a financial audit. Alabama State Senator Arthur Orr, a Republican, in November introduced legislation drafted by his state's securities commission to allow local companies to raise up to $1 million from ordinary in-state investors in amounts of up to $5,000. "I was waiting on the SEC to finish promulgating their regulations" pertaining to the JOBS Act, he said, "but they have not seen fit to get that completed." The SEC says it won't issue final rules until sometime after a public comment period ends in February. Justin Bays and his partner, Jeremy Johns, raised roughly $100,000 from about 20 local investors for Radius Brewing Company LLC, a brew pub slated to open in January in Emporia, Kan. When the cost of the project climbed beyond what they had originally budgeted for, the pair sent postcards to members of the local community inviting them to a private meeting where they made their pitch for financing. That was something they couldn't do before the exemption because it would have been considered "general solicitation." "It helped us fill some of our financing needs, while also allowing the community to get involved," Mr. Bays said. Write to Ruth Simon at ruth.simon(a)wsj.com and Angus Loten at angus.loten(a)wsj.com Copyright 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

12 years

Interim Form for Crowd-funding Portals - FINRA

by Eddan Katz

FINRA - the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority - is the non-profit that does the accreditation of investors. In order to be a crowdfunding portal, an entity needs to be registered with them. I am filling out the Interim form as expression of interest and will post the text of the application to the Sudo wiki. http://www.finra.org/Industry/Issues/Crowdfunding/ - The FINRA page for crowdfunding. > FINRA invites prospective crowdfunding portals to voluntarily file an interim funding portal form. > > > If you intend to act as a funding portal under the JOBS Act, you may voluntarily submit this form to inform us about your future funding portal business. Your filing will help us to develop rules that reflect the funding portal community and its business. FINRA will treat the information that you file on the interim form as confidential. > > > Note: Filing of this interim form will not entitle you to FINRA membership. We will make membership available to funding portals after the SEC adopts funding portal rules and approves FINRA's funding portal rules. > > > Once funding portal rules are in place, FINRA will issue a final funding portal application that will be necessary for you to file to become a FINRA member. In applying for membership, you will not be bound by the responses you provided on this interim funding portal form. > > > In addition to the information we request on the interim form, you may provide any additional information or documents that you believe would be helpful. > >

12 years

Vote for SELC for Sungevity GiveBack $20K

by Eddan Katz

if you have not already, please vote for the Sustainable Economies Law Center for the Sungevity Give Back $20K grant. They're currently in 4th, behind (among others) Save the Frogs - so with some more support from our community - I think can probably rise to the top of the leaderboard. The voting period ends 12/11/13 at 11:59:59 p.m. Pacific Time. Begin forwarded message: > From: "Caroline Lee" <caroline.SELC(a)gmail.com> > Subject: Vote for the Sustainable Economies Law Center and help my organization earn $20,000! > Date: November 12, 2013 6:59:19 PM EST > To: undisclosed-recipients:;@arboretum.liminoidforest.org > Bcc: eddan(a)eddan.com > > Hey friends and family, > > I don't normally send out these group emails, but I work for this awesome organization and we are in the running to win $20,000. If you could take a moment to vote for us and consider maximizing your vote by 10 points by signing up for their OurSungevity campaign (easy and free), it would be GREATLY appreciated. Help us continue our important work. Please forward to others! > > Thank you to all! > Caroline > > > > The Sustainable Economies Law Center is a people-powered organization, sustained by generous and dedicated supporters like you. Help SELC win $20,000 by taking one minute to cast your VOTE for us! > > Four Quick Steps: > Click VOTE > Include your email and zip code > Select Sustainable Economies Law Center from the list of organizations and submit your vote! > Don't Forget to BOOST YOUR VOTE BY 10 EXTRA POINTS: > Sign up for OurSungevity after you vote--it's EASY and FREE! OurSungevity is a online platform that allows you to spread solar in your community through different media (if you choose). You can even earn $500 if you refer Sungevity a new client. > Sign up for an iQuote to get solar on your home > > > > Vote on! > -Caroline Lee > > What will SELC do with this $20,000? > SELC believes communities shouldn’t BUY power. We should OWN power! We’ll create model policies and legal structures for community-owned renewable energy. This includes viable replicable models, essential legal documents, and model policies for community- and cooperatively-owned renewable energy projects. > > Who is funding this Competition? > Here at SELC, we're conscious of where we get our funding. Sungevity is an innovative solar company focused on creating the world’s most energized network of customers who power their lives with sunshine. > > > -- > > Caroline Lee > Legal Fellow, Community Enterprises > Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) > 436 14th Street, Suite 1120 > Oakland, California 94612 > (760) 569-6782 > Caroline.SELC(a)gmail.com

12 years

Collecting articles/resources for wiki

by Eddan Katz

hey there sudo-crowd - i'm reposting several articles i've found interesting and useful as part of the resources section of the Sudo wiki. this one is from about a year ago, actually. please feel free to share relevant articles/resources/events/ other info to this list. thanks, eddan > > > Good day, > > This is a notification to inform you that there is a new blog posted on the site. > > Crowdfunding – Everything You Wanted to Know but Were Afraid to Ask > Posted by Andrew Romans on Saturday, December 8, 2012 > The crowdfunding space is unfolding as I write. The Founders Club is actually signing up numerous players in the crowdfunding sector and so this is a game changing space we are following closely. When I say signing up that means that the founders of some crowdfunding portals / businesses are investing some of their founder stock into our equity exchange funds in return for ownership in the fund owning all of the underlying stocks from these and other technology companies. > > > Crowdfunding is not really a new idea. Raising funding for the Statue of Liberty in New York City was one of the biggest crowdfunding transactions in history. The people of France gave the actual statue as a gift to the US ambassador to France, but lack of funds delayed the building of the pedestal. Fundraising efforts came to an impasse until Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of The World newspaper and noted for the Pulitzer Prize, leveraged his newspaper to ask Americans to donate. Mr. Pulitzer used his newspaper to access millions of readers and solicited donations to fund the construction of the pedestal. Over 120,000 individual donations with average 85 cents per donation raised the funding needed to build the pedestal. The funding campaign took five months to complete. Today, the Internet serves the function that the newspaper served in 1884. Crowdfunding is nothing new in this context, but just another example of using the Internet to do online what is done in the real offline world. > > Equity investment crowdfunding has been in the making since at least the year 2000, but became a legal reality on April 5, 2012, when President Obama signed the JOBS Act into law. The crowdfunding sections of the JOBS Act authorize online “funding portals” or broker/dealers to offer crowdfunding investment opportunities of up to $ 1m per year per company raising investment. Investments will be limited to between $2,000 and 10% of the investor’s annual income depending on the investors net worth or annual income (we are told this is being revised to 5% in the SEC rules). Although Obama shot the starting gun on April 5th, all equity based crowdfunding web sites and organizations must be registered with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and comply with their regulations, which are only now being drafted and may not be released until early 2013. While the crowdfunding sections of the JOBS Act gave the SEC 270 days from April 5, 2012 to draft their rules, the US government is notorious for missing deadlines. Crowdfunding CEOs, VCs investing in or tracking the industry and many others have speculated on when the SEC will release their rules and this game changer will be implemented. Further FINRA rulemaking following the SEC’s final rules may extend implementation of investment crowdfunding yet further. To help shape the outcome of this rulemaking process, a group of early crowdfunding companies banded together following the passage of the JOBS Act to advocate for rules that protect investors and work for the new investment crowdfunding industry. David Drake, a founding board member of Crowdfund Intermediary Regulatory Advocates or CfIRA, recently wrote that he believes the aggregate delays will push implementation of equity crowdfunding into 2014, but our crowdfunding CEOs and Carl Esposti, CEO of massolution, a division of Crowdsourcing LLC, believe we will expect equity based crowdfunding to launch in Q1 2013 possibly as early as January or February. > > Eric Mack posted this on Crowdsourcing.org last Monday. “Outgoing Securities and Exchange Commission chair Mary Schapiro opted to slow down the process of implementing Title II of the JOBS Act at the last minute over concerns about her legacy at the SEC and after receiving pressure from a lobbyist.” With the US presidential election now over and SEC chair Mary Schapiro leaving on Dec. 14, we are hoping the new chair Elisse Walter will stop the delays and get equity crowdfunding implemented in Q1 of 2013. > > The SEC wants to come up with rules to protect naïve investors from being taken advantage of by con artists gaming the system. It is pretty easy to imagine someone in Miami coming up with a business pitch every week that raises a few thousand dollars, goes bust and the founder keeps the company car and company yacht. Imagine this con artist going from one crowdfuding web site to another, recruiting new accomplices to be the listed CEOs to avoid being caught as a serial failure. Crowdfunding companies want to figure out how to stop that from happening. They are keen to put in place barriers to entry and carve out market verticals for themselves. We will see some crowdfunding sites focus on a single niche like charity, film projects, high-tech startups, individuals’ university education, large art projects or a poets’ and painters’ pilgrimage to India. > > While equity investment crowdfunding is most relevant here, it is worth noting that there are other types of crowdfunding platforms that specialize in different Crowdfunding transactions. These fall into four main categories: > Donation-based > Rewards-based > Lending-based > Equity-based > Each of these types of crowdfunding platforms uses a different approach, but in brief the way this works is that a person or startup can list their cause, product, or investment opportunity on one of these platforms and then leverage their social networks to make some noise and get the attention of funders, raising small amounts of funding from many people. > > Massolution, a crowdfunding research company, conducted a survey and found as of April 2012, there were 452 crowdfunding platforms active worldwide. Massolution projects that could reach 530 CFPs by the end of 2012. North America was the largest market, raising $837m in 2011. Globally over 1 million campaigns raised nearly $1.5bn in 2011. A senior executive at Kickstarter told me that they do not believe these numbers are accurate considering that Kickstarter raised only $100m of funding in 2011 and they are considered to the be largest. Kickstarter concluded that these Massolution numbers must include microfinance and other forms of fundraising that they do not consider to be crowdfunding. Kickstarter also explained they do not do equity crowdfunding and that 95% of their projects are creative artistic projects such as music and art rather than the next technology startup seeking funding. Note that much of the $100m number Kickstarter is quoting is pledged and not been paid out yet. The CEO of Massolution told me the reward category in total was $116m for 2011 which included ~$48m from Kickstarter. > > Source: Massolution > > Equity-based crowdfunding is a small cross section of the bigger picture. Rewards-based is even smaller, while roughly half of crowdfunding is donation-based, with another 40% being lending-based. The chart below shows funding by category in USD millions. > > Source: Crowdsourcing.org > > Over $1.5bn was raised in 2011 via crowdfunding; that number is expected to double in 2012. As a single platform, Indiegogo has funded over 60,000 projects. While investment crowdfunding is still a very small slice of the pie, the potential addressable market is huge. > > For example, Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures made the point that if every American family were to put just 1% of their investments in crowdfunding, this would bring $300bn into the venture asset class and blow out VCs. This illustrates the potential for crowdfunding to be a game changer. I believe VCs should not feel threatened by this, but leverage the trend. VCs might put down 10% of the risk capital for a new deal and let 90% be shouldered by the crowdfunding unwashed masses. VCs would also be smart to follow the leading trendsetters rising to the top of the crowdfunding platforms as a measure of user validation. Then, when the company is ready for proper $5m+ VC funding, the VC is there and incumbent in the deal. In this hypothesis, the fact that the VC would lead the deal would give the crowd confidence to follow the branded VC into the crowdfunding / angel round. This is all good for entrepreneurs, VCs and angels. > > Seeing the game changing rapidly, several hundred crowdfunding platforms have been launched in recent months to capitalize on current rewards-based crowdfunding and to prepare for the changes likely to come from the JOBS Act. > > Separate from investment crowdfunding, reward-based crowdfunding campaigns are like those found on Crowdfunder, where the investor receives a tangible item or service in return for their funds. For example, if your startup wants to raise $500k to produce a great new widget, you put a profile and video on Crowdfunder and if enough people pledge to buy your widget, a form of a reward, and the target amount has been raised, then the cash is transferred to the startup. The new company makes the widget and distributes the promised products. Kickstarter was founded in 2009 and is growing nicely. They have raised $380m for 70,00 projects, giving their projects a 43% success rate of meeting the target and raising funding. The money pledged on Kickstarter grew in the early months of 2012 from $4m in January, $5m in February to $7m in March. Indiegogo as a single platform has funded over 60,000 projects. Thousands of other crowdfunding websites have been launched in recent months. > > Beyond rewards-based crowdfunding, investment crowdfunding provisions of the JOBS Act are slow in coming, as outlined previously. That said, a few key changes in the JOBS Act took effect more quickly and updated the archaic laws that limited what entrepreneurs could do to raise funding in the past. These are in effect now and should be understood. Previously it was illegal to promote one’s angel or VC funding round (often referred to as a “506 offering” or “Reg. D offering”) too broadly as doing so would trigger requirements to register the offering with the SEC at considerable cost. I remember participating at funding events in New York many years ago where the organizers strictly forbade us from listing the amount of funding we were seeking to raise with over 500 live investors sitting in the audience. Now there are no restrictions on promoting your 506 offering and conducting general solicitation. There is no longer the limit of 500 shareholders before a company must file IPO reporting with the SEC. This has now been expanded to 2,000 shareholders and crowdfunding investors will not count towards that number anyway. This may change when the new regulations have been announced, but it appears that investors making direct investments without the crowdfunding web sites must still be accredited investors. The definition of an accredited investor in the US as listed on the SEC web site as I write is the same now as it was in the late ‘90’s when I was first raising angel funding. Individuals must have a net worth of $1m or more or have annual income of at least $200k for the last three consecutive years. Depending on the type or stage of the company, different offerings targeted at the accredited investor or unaccredited investor community may be most appropriate. > > In either case, more companies will get funded and we will see more startups launch. The failure rate of startups will remain high, but some of these will get traction and provide better deal flow for classic angels and VCs. Clearly this is good news for entrepreneurs, sophisticated angels and VCs; although it will be bad news for some naïve retail investors. Crowdfunding investors will have some rights to get their cash back if they prove that the entrepreneur misrepresented the opportunity; some investors will lose their investment, if the company fails despite their best honest efforts. Hopefully this does not lead to increased litigation risks for the startups involved. > > At The Founders Club, we considered managing our own crowdfunding web site where any deal we put on the web site would be vetted by us and should therefore be funded quickly; but we decided against doing this. We prefer to raise cash funds, avoid some of the pain points of crowdfunding and work with these emerging platforms for the seed deals. We have developed relationships with the strongest crowdfunding portals so that we can work with them to both generate the best deal flow to come from these portals, but also to harness these funding platforms to raise seed financing for companies we are helping. We also believe that our equity in the best of these will become valuable equities for our exchange funds > > From my perspective, crowdfunding is a wonderful development and will result in many folks getting the seed funding necessary to take the entrepreneurial plunge I wish all the crowdfunding companies best of luck and hope the SEC does a good job both regulating this incredibly important industry. > > View post » > To unsubscribe from the site, please click here.

12 years

repost - SEC JOBs Act crowd-funding provisions comments

by Eddan Katz

I'm reposting some of the earlier messages to the sudo-discuss list. This one was about the JOBs Act Crowdfunding provisions general comments. On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 11:51 AM, Eddan <eddan(a)clear.net> wrote: Dear Sudo folk. I am pleased to announce the formation of a new mailing list focused on crowdfunding, theory and practice. We will be collecting background resources and commentary on crowdfunding to fill out the JOBS Act page on the Sudo wiki - http://sudoroom.org/wiki/JOBS_Act. To sign up for the list, please go to: http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-crowd. In addition to discussion, we will use the mailing list to collaborate on crowdfunding related projects. The first one being the drafting of public comments on behalf of Sudo Room (http://www.sec.gov/spotlight/jobsactcomments.shtml). You can see the comments currently submitted to the SEC at http://www.sec.gov/comments/jobs-title-iii/jobs-title-iii.shtml. There are a bunch of them, so I think the most substantive comments to perhaps start with are the two Rockethub white papers on Regulation (http://www.sec.gov/comments/jobs-title-iii/jobstitleiii-39.htm) and Implementation (http://www.sec.gov/comments/jobs-title-iii/jobstitleiii-39.htm). sent from eddan.com _______________________________________________ sudo-discuss mailing list sudo-discuss(a)lists.sudoroom.org http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss

12 years

NPR on Equity Crowdfunding

by Eddan Katz

My friend Yoki Noguchi, who used to write about Tech policy for the Washington Post, just did this piece for NPR on equity crowdfunding. Small Firms May Soon Turn To Crowdfunding To Sell Shares http://www.npr.org/2013/11/26/247170871/small-firms-may-soon-turn-to-crowdf… --- Currently, private companies are only allowed to solicit funding from accredited investors — essentially wealthy people with a net worth of $1 million, excluding their homes. But the new rules would allow companies to raise as much as $1 million a year from lower net-worth people by selling shares. Regulations are needed because last year's Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act allows small investors to obtain equity stakes in startups and other small businesses. ---

12 years

The Port Workspaces: "How to Create a Successful Crowd funding Campaign!" - 12/3

by Eddan Katz

this is about non-equity fundraising, but is at the Port Workspaces this Tues. and may be interesting to some. > > > > > TUESDAY > How to Create a Successful Crowd funding Campaign! > LocalPreneurs-Build Ventures, Ideas and Companies > Tuesday, December 3, 2013 > 6:00 PM > The Port Workspaces 101 > 101 Broadway > Oakland, CA 94607 > Price: $10.00 per person > Do you have an idea for a product or project? > Do you need funding? > Have you thought about putting together a crowdfunding campaign? > Did you have a crowd funding campaign that wasn't successful? > Join us for an indepth discussion from 3 individual... > LEARN MORE > More Meetups from this group > DEC > 19 > Entrepreneurs, Techies, Startups and Professionals Mixer at Tribune Tavern > Thursday, December 19, 2013 5:00 PM · 28 attending > > > > Sponsored by Jonathan Fleming & Associates, Tech Liminal,W Silicon Valley, Complete Plumbing Works and DocuSign, Inc. > > Add info(a)meetup.com to your address book to receive all Meetup emails > To manage your email settings, click here > Meetup, POB 4668 #37895 NY NY USA 10163 > Meetup HQ in NYC is hiring! meetup.com/jobs >

12 years

CrowdFunding Launch Party Extravaganza - Thurs. Dec 12, 2013

by Eddan Katz

of likely interest. i know several of you are already going. > > Check out this event your friends are going to. > > Find events Create an event Log in > > > Hi Eddan, > 6 of your friends just bought tickets for this event. Just a heads up, so you don't miss out: > CrowdFunding Launch Party Extravaganza - Thurs. Dec 12, 2013 > > Thursday, December 12 at 6:00 PM > Check out this event > > > > Create your own event > Anyone can sell tickets or manage registration with Eventbrite. > Learn More > > > Get the app > Find events, buy tickets, and access them on your phone. > Download > ABOUT HELP MY ACCOUNT CONTACT US PRIVACY TERMS BLOG > This notification was sent to eddank(a)aya.yale.edu. To adjust your notifications, go to your email preferences page or just click here to stop receiving these notifications. > Eventbrite | 651 Brannan St. Suite 110 | San Francisco, CA 94107 > Copyright © 2013 Eventbrite. All rights reserved. >

12 years

sudo crowd

by Eddan Katz

http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-crowd As Vicky has already mentioned - the Legal Café that the Sustainable Economies Law Center hosted at LOLSpace was super-helpful for all of us who went. I had the good fortune of talking to Sushil Jacob of the EBCLC about the cooperative corporations he's been working on creating within the Green Collar economy initiative he's helping lead. More on that later. I also got to talk to Caroline Lee of SELC, who's a recent Berkeley Law grad who has been doing research on the JOBS Act crowdfunding provisions. She recently wrote about it on Shareable for those interested in more detailed information - http://www.shareable.net/blog/investment-crowdfunding-poised-to-take-a-gian…. I also learned of a the crucial Crowdfunding intermediary process going on at FINRA (Financial Industry Regulation Authority). Their portal for further information is at http://www.finra.org/Industry/Issues/Crowdfunding/ - and there's even a short form to send FINRA for those entities interested in being registered as crowdfunding intermediaries. http://www.finra.org/Industry/Issues/Crowdfunding/. I am planning on filling this out soon and sending it in case anyone else is interested in working on that. There is also a public comments period until Feb. 3, 2014 (all crowdfunding intermediaries must be registered with them). The request for comments is at http://www.finra.org/Industry/Regulation/Notices/2013/P370744; and unfortunately means going through another ~600 page document, which I have only started to do. If anyone is interested in further discussing this and all things related to crowdfunding, I will be moving this thread over to the Sudo-Crowd list. http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-crowd. There are some people outside of Sudo Room interested in participating in the coordination of these public comments and applications and so I'd rather have the discussion there separate from this list. I think that the combination of SEC comments, FINRA comments, and the SASB comments I mentioned earlier on reporting requirements for sustainability accounting really covers all the issues that need to be taken into account at this point to understand what a Crowdfunding platform might have to deal with. So please join the list. http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-crowd I'll be putting together more organized wiki pages with info on this and where people could collaboratively put these comments together. The scratch pages I had up somehow got deleted. sent from eddan.com

12 years

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