Featured Headlines

November 8, 2015 @ 5:00 pm By JD Alois  |  

First Real Estate Crowdfunding Platform to Be Purchased Five real estate crowdfunding platforms have joined together to purchase Tycoon Real Estate based in California. Tycoon gained notoriety during an appearance on ABC’s Shark Tank.  Billionaire Mark Cuban bailed on the offer in under a minute…. Read More

November 8, 2015 @ 7:22 am By JD Alois  |  

Karen Mills, former Administrator of the Small Business Administration and current Senior Fellow at Harvard University, co-authored a study on credit markets and SMEs back in 2014.  She recently presented at LendIt Europe on the state of Marketplace / Peer to peer lending. While at… Read More

November 7, 2015 @ 12:38 pm By Spencer Li  |  

  Last month I attended LendIt Europe in London (Oct. 20-21) to learn more about developments in the marketplace lending industry in the UK and in broader continental Europe. LendIt has once again done an excellent job organizing the conference and brought together a wealth… Read More

November 6, 2015 @ 1:31 pm By Anthony Zeoli  |  

  With all the excitement last week surrounding the SEC’s release of the final Title III rules implementing “Regulation Crowdfunding,” the SEC’s vote in favor of proposing amendments to the current Rule 147 to help foster Intrastate Crowdfunding amounted to little more than a side-note…. Read More

November 5, 2015 @ 2:00 pm By Midori Yoshimura  |  

  It was an accident that led Krista Morgan to peer-to-peer lending in 2008–a jolt caused by the high interest rate she was quoted when applying for a personal loan, during a time of notably low interest rates in the UK. After finding Zopa, one of the… Read More

November 5, 2015 @ 11:29 am By Erin Hobey  |  

“Major non-traditional financial services companies have been investing in fintech payments in China for the past year.” According to Accenture, fintech investments across Asia-Pacific experienced a boom in 2015 – from about $880 million in 2014 to nearly $3.5 billion in just the first nine months… Read More

November 4, 2015 @ 2:19 pm By JD Alois  |  

Karen Mills is currently perched as a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Business School and at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. She spends her time focusing on competitiveness, entrepreneurship and innovation – all extremely important areas of economic… Read More

November 4, 2015 @ 3:00 am By JD Alois  |  

investUP has claimed the title of the “world’s first crowdfunding brokerage”.  The company has announced today receiving the approval of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).  investUP believes they now have a clear path to provide retail investors a method to fund multiple crowdfunded offers via… Read More

November 3, 2015 @ 10:34 am By Erin Hobey  |  

The Centre for Alternative Finance at University of Cambridge Judge Business School and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation team at Chicago Booth School of Business have joined forces to initiate the  2015 Americas Alternative Finance Benchmarking Survey.  This landmark survey is the first comprehensive and empirical assessment of crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending (marketplace lending)… Read More

November 3, 2015 @ 8:13 am By JD Alois  |  

The Future of Banking is Online. Tech Titans Want to Lead the Way as Financial Innovation Now Coalition Announced. All financial services are being turned upside down as the relevance of brick and mortar locations and surly customer service representatives is diminishing.  Big tech, including… Read More

November 2, 2015 @ 4:00 pm By JD Alois  |  

Lost in all of the excitement of last weeks’ announcement from the SEC on Title III crowdfunding rules was a case of crowdfunding fraud.  According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency halted a “fraudulent oil and gas crowdfunding scheme”.  The SEC has frozen… Read More

November 2, 2015 @ 8:00 am By Ryan M. Feit  |  

For most people, digesting the 686 pages of the final Title III rules over the weekend would be some sort of Tartarus-like punishment.  Yet for me, after 3 ½ years of waiting, it was the equivalent of unwrapping a present, with each sentence laying out… Read More

November 1, 2015 @ 7:41 am By JD Alois  |  

Equity Crowdfunding Platform Quire Prepares to Leverage New Title III Crowdfunding Rules Quire, originally operating under the name Alphaworks, is part of the Betaworks ecosystem.  Betaworks is a startup factory and seed stage VC company that is associated with some big VC names. Betaworks, founded… Read More

October 30, 2015 @ 5:10 pm By Sherwood Neiss and Jason Best  |  

When we showed up in Washington, D.C., Karen Kerrigan, of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, became a champion for our cause to legalize debt and equity crowdfunding. Karen, and the SBE Council, is the closest thing small businesses and entrepreneurs have to a lobby… Read More

October 30, 2015 @ 12:32 pm By Georgia Quinn  |  

What took place this morning is nothing short of revolutionary. For the first time in the history of the Securities and Exchange Commission (82 years), retail investors (ordinary people without income, wealth or sophistication qualifications) will be able to invest in private businesses en mass…. Read More

October 30, 2015 @ 1:00 am By Therese Torris  |  

Insights from the European Crowdfunding Convention 2015 The European Crowdfunding Network (ECN) has been holding its 4th Convention in Paris. The main topic of the first day was the Capital Markets Union and its implications for crowdfunding. The European equity funding gap The Capital Markets… Read More

October 29, 2015 @ 8:41 am By Kiran Lingam  |  

At long last (3 years, 6 months, 25 days since signing of the JOBS Act to be exact), we will get Title III equity crowdfunding rules tomorrow potentially opening up a new novel avenue for small businesses to raise capital. When the original rules were… Read More

October 29, 2015 @ 6:00 am By Matt Burton  |  

Last week, Mike Cagney, the CEO of SoFi, gave an interview in the San Francisco Business Journal in which he made some fairly controversial comments. It instantly made the rounds in the industry and has become  a topic of much debate. I recommend reading the… Read More

October 28, 2015 @ 9:00 am By Samuel Guzik  |  

I will not be discouraged by failure; I will not be elated by success.” Joseph B. Lightfoot The bigger than life headline yesterday? The long-awaited news that the SEC’s five Commissioners would be convening this coming Friday to vote on, and presumably approve final Title III… Read More

October 27, 2015 @ 11:00 am By Erin Hobey  |  

  “We think that the research will provide useful metrics on which sound policy can be built and measured.  Ideally, policy should encourage opportunity and entrepreneurship.” Working at the intersection of entrepreneurship and marketing communications, Professor Robert Rosenberg of the University of Chicago Booth School of… Read More