The SEC Is About To Make Crowdfunding More Expensive 366
PapayaSF writes "Proposed new rules require that funding portals register with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Intermediary Regulatory Authority. In addition, investors must have access to a business plan, use of proceeds, a valuation of the company, and financials, so Certified Public Accountants may be needed. The SEC estimates that for amounts under $100,000, the fees will be 12.9% to 39% of the money raised, though it may drop to under 8% for higher amounts. Is this needed regulation, or bureaucratic overreach?"
Re:You have money (Score:0, Interesting)
The solution is simple: don't have money.
Re:sounds like! (Score:4, Interesting)
Set up a company in a more start up friendly part of the world and see how that works out in the digital age.
With todays faster broadband - art, music, design, code, languages, support and unique skills can be pulled together from around the world at lower prices.
Why not just create not the entire project in a more understand area of the world?
Re:So the solution (Score:4, Interesting)
They're already here.
http://www.kickstarter.com/canada [kickstarter.com]
This isn't about Kickstarter (Score:4, Interesting)
This is about selling shares: Crowd-sourced investing.
However, this sort of thing may come to other types of crowd funding.
I'm not sure what the answer will be if they require you to already have a business setup to do a Kickstarter. Business registration, incorporation, trademark registry, etc. is whole reason I'd even do a Kickstarter in the first place.
Perhaps we'll start to see 501(c)3 businesses that you can donate towards, who divide the money amongst projects? It would then be basically the same as kickstarter, except you don't get your pledge back if the project doesn't meet its goal -- You'd have a credit to apply it to another project instead.
What we really need is to put starving artists on the endangered species list, or maybe start a fake Fascist Hate Group that wears plaid Hoods and hates art. Then we can get some anti-discrimination laws for artists, as well as artist-shelters just for the down and out and artistically gifted. Anyone who says their art stinks can be accused as being an art-hater. There could even be 12 step self help programs for victims of artistic abuse. We could get even get funds to research cures for the artistically impaired. Those Kickstarter people are thinking small, if the government is getting involved, we need to play the government's game: Scaremongering to protect women and children's art from the evil plaid philistines.
Re:Overreach (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't about conservatism. I'm very much a liberal, but I still think that this sort of regulation is utterly stupid and harmful.
Re:Overreach (Score:3, Interesting)
You should be fully aware that major investors and big finance companies and the major mutual fund houses really don't have any problems trying to invest in anything they want. Either those kind of investors have a senator or congressman in their pocket to make legal anything they want to do or at the very least a team of lawyers and accountants to bullshit their way into doing quite literally anything they want to do. In other words, the SEC doesn't really regulate "Big Finance" as you put it and any additional regulations don't matter for those guys as it simply keeps any other potential competition from becoming the next Warren Buffet. In fact, Warren Buffet could never have built his business if he started in today's regulatory climate with the cash & position he was in when he started.
This is all about small time investors and the attitude that somebody with a spare hundred dollars is incapable of being able to make an informed decision about a potential investment opportunity. Crowd sourcing is all about ordinary people with small projects that can't afford lawyers & accountants trying to get other ordinary people to invest in their ideas.