Featured Headlines

October 26, 2015 @ 11:25 am By JD Alois  |  

Celine Lazorthes is founder and “one damn passionate CEO” of Leetchi and MangoPay. Leetchi is a successful donations-based crowdfunding platform that allows users to collectively accumulate funds for gifts, trips or whatever, making it easy to contribute for a single shared purpose. Mangopay is something… Read More

October 25, 2015 @ 8:44 am By JD Alois  |  

X PlusOne, a drone project launched on Kickstarter in December of 2014, has discovered bigger success on SharkTank as the high-profile investors rushed to back the young company in the episode broadcast last week. The X PlusOne drone, by 3 person company xCraft, entered a… Read More

October 23, 2015 @ 8:16 am By Midori Yoshimura  |  

Before Facebook’s IPO, there was SecondMarket: a leader in the secondary trading market, which enables repurchases of shares in private companies. SecondMarket’s platform saw over $1.4 billion worth of transactions in 2014–quadruple the volume of its transactions in 2013.  And today (Oct. 22), Nasdaq announced it had acquired… Read More

October 21, 2015 @ 6:36 pm By Midori Yoshimura  |  

  Former Googlers Dave Girouard and Anna Mongyat joined with Paul Gu (a Thiel Fellow) to launch Upstart in 2012.  Originally envisioned as a more altruistic lending platform that invested in the person and not the loan – somewhat similar to Pave –  the platform… Read More

October 21, 2015 @ 11:03 am By Samantha Hurst  |  

Latvian-based marketplace lender, Twino, which opened in May of this year and had just reached one million euros of investment, announced this month that it is launching an expansion throughout Europe into markets that are new for the P2P industry. Now, Twino investors will have… Read More

October 20, 2015 @ 8:30 am By Georgia Quinn  |  

Thirty-two years after starting her career in London, Nicola Horlick is still often the only woman in the room. Although she notes that is not a lot of progress, it has never fazed her. Nicola, once called London’s Superwoman, attributes her can-do attitude to a… Read More

October 20, 2015 @ 3:43 am By JD Alois  |  

Funding Circle, the leading UK SME marketplace lending platform, has dramatically increased its footprint with the acquisition of Zencap. Funding Circle will now operate in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. Funding Circle already has a significant operation in the US. Funding Circle representatives state this… Read More

October 19, 2015 @ 8:30 am By Anthony Zeoli  |  

As many of you know, since the release of the final Title IV (i.e. “Regulation A+”) rules earlier this year, Massachusetts and Montana have been vehemently contesting the provisions allowing for pre-emption of State regulation with respect to “Tier II” offerings. They have even gown… Read More

October 18, 2015 @ 5:09 pm By JD Alois  |  

The US Department of Treasury, via its FinCen or Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, is ringing warning bells when it comes to rewards based crowdfunding. FinCen notes a rise in “suspicious activity reports” (SARs). In a report published this past week, FinCen spotlighted rewards based crowdfunding… Read More

October 16, 2015 @ 2:22 pm By JD Alois  |  

The team at Engine, under the leadership of Evan Engstrom, Policy Director of the group, has crafted a must-read document on what needs to be fixed to address the shortcomings of Title III, equity crowdfunding.  While both Reg A+ (Title IV) and accredited crowdfunding (Title… Read More

October 15, 2015 @ 9:30 am By JD Alois  |  

The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Chicago Booth School of Business are jointly launching the 2015 Americas Alternative Finance Benchmarking Survey. This survey will be the first comprehensive and empirical assessment… Read More

October 15, 2015 @ 9:13 am By JD Alois  |  

London & Partners, a non-profit entity funded by the Mayor of London, is pounding the table on the growth of Fintech in London. The promotional company states that the capital’s booming Fintech sector is being driven by “record levels of investment and the rapid adoption of… Read More

October 14, 2015 @ 9:37 am By Ian Rosen  |  

  “Millennials hate their banks” is a common phrase thrown around in some circles.  I’m not sure it’s true. I’m not sure young people care about banks at all, in any practical way. For a long time, people have thought of “banks” as an all-encompassing… Read More

October 14, 2015 @ 7:49 am By JD Alois  |  

ING Belgium has formed a partnership with two leading crowdfunding platforms.  Seedrs, based in the UK, and KissKissBankBank, based in France, will power a fast-track process for clients looking to raise capital.  In recognition of the fact that bank loans are not optimal for entrepreneurs… Read More

October 13, 2015 @ 8:00 am By JD Alois  |  

    RealtyMogul has surpassed a new milestone.  The real estate crowdfunding platform reports that it has topped $150 million of investments transacted via its site.  It was only last July that RealtyMogul announced having passed the $80 million mark indicating a rapid growth trajectory… Read More

October 12, 2015 @ 11:04 pm By JD Alois  |  

The Skarp Laser Razor received the ban hammer from Kickstarter earlier today.  As shared in the comments from an earlier article, apparently the Skarp campaign was banned as Kickstarter deemed the project as in violation of its terms of operation.  As covered previously, Skarp did… Read More

October 12, 2015 @ 2:00 am By Barry James  |  

Crowdfunding and the democratisation of finance where key themes as over 300 experts from banks, startups, technology and finance came together for France’s first conference on FinTech. Perhaps surprisingly, a major centre for MedTech and computer science,  Bordeaux had gone out of it’s way to… Read More

October 10, 2015 @ 3:57 pm By JD Alois  |  

SyndicateRoom, one of the leading equity crowdfunding platforms in the UK, has revealed it has experienced its first company failure.  Soshi Games, which raised £285,000 in January 2014, recently entered into the liquidation process as the company has filed for bankruptcy. Investing in early stage companies… Read More

October 9, 2015 @ 1:27 pm By Victoria Silchenko, Ph.D.  |  

Recently I’ve been noticing a lot of hype in the entrepreneurial community regarding Reg A+ and there have been a lot of cheerful pitches about the new regulation that would allow young companies “to raise up to $50 million without the expense and complexity of a traditional… Read More

October 8, 2015 @ 1:02 pm By Jor Law  |  

For years, most capital raises conducted by private companies have primarily relied on Regulation D as an exemption from compliance with certain burdensome securities laws.  In particular, most offerings were conducted under what was known as Rule 506 under Regulation D.  Those offerings, which have… Read More