Opinion

January 22, 2014 @ 1:08 am By Samuel S. Guzik, The Crowdfunding Counselor  |  

December 18, 2013 may well mark an historic turning point in the ability of small business to effectively access capital in the private and public markets under the federal securities regulatory framework.

January 21, 2014 @ 12:02 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

In an op-ed published to The Digital Journal today, Maryland State Senate candidate Don Quinn presents his case for an intrastate crowdfunding exemption in his home state. It goes without saying that each small business is more than just a single unit employer. Every small… Read More

January 21, 2014 @ 11:48 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Zopa is the UK’s largest peer-to-peer lending service, and one of the company’s co-founders has made a pretty amazing prediction about the size of the peer-to-business lending market in Ireland. In an interview with The Irish Times, Simon Deane-Johns predicted that peer-to-business lending throughput in… Read More

January 18, 2014 @ 6:11 pm By Paul Spinrad  |  

  Dear Governor Brown, Long time listener, first time caller. You’re a busy man, but I want to bring your attention to something that I suspect is right up your alley: investment crowdfunding. California should be leading the way on this promising new economic mechanism,… Read More

January 18, 2014 @ 4:52 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

Greenlight is essentially a crowdsourcing platform where any of Steam’s 75,000,000 active users can help to determine what games get launched on Steam, the Valve-owned video game marketplace. It’s step one in a game development funnel Valve has used to empower smaller developers and studios…. Read More

January 18, 2014 @ 11:49 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Remember Amex Sync? Back in 2012, American Express launched the program as a joint effort with Twitter. It offered Twitter users discounts on products for tweeting certain hashtags. The possibility of Twitter entering the e-commerce game has been the subject of a lot of prognostication… Read More

January 16, 2014 @ 2:06 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

Y Combinator-backed Apigy created Lockitron just as the connected home movement was really taking off. The company promised some pretty slick features. The device integrated with your home’s deadbolt and promised to allow things like remote unlocking from a smartphone. It was even said to have… Read More

January 15, 2014 @ 4:00 pm By JD Alois  |  

Entrepreneur and crowdfunding industry thought leader Kim Wales has outlined her views on Title III  of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2102 which covers “popular” crowdfunding (sometimes called Reg CF).  The comment period for the SEC on the proposed regulations are scheduled to end next month on… Read More

January 14, 2014 @ 11:09 am By JD Alois  |  

CEO of Assetz Capital Peer-to-Peer Crowdfunding Platform Expects Their Platform to Hit £100 Million in 2014. The alternative finance industry has now lent more than £1bn to UK businesses and individuals, according to the Liberium AltFi Index. The latest batch of research shows that Peer-to-Peer… Read More

January 14, 2014 @ 10:31 am By Charles Luzar  |  

The Escapist : Jimquisition : Early Access The video above has resulted in a bit of a kerfuffle on the forums for Star Citizen. It features The Escapist video game review editor Jim Sterling going off about early access games, which are invariably linked to the… Read More

January 9, 2014 @ 10:52 am By Charles Luzar  |  

For a lot of people, crowdfunding is Kickstarter. That is just how big New York City’s rewards-based crowdfunding stalwart has grown. Yesterday saw the release of Kickstarter’s 2013 recap. We covered it here on Crowdfund Insider, and it was inevitably picked up by just about every blog… Read More

January 8, 2014 @ 11:30 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Among ten bold predictions for 2014 made by Dominic Basulto in the Washington Post, one crowdfunding-related prediction sticks out: your next-door neighbor becomes a venture capitalist. It encapsulates some of the highest hopes among crowdfunding industry stakeholders and pundits. The forthcoming ability for anyone to… Read More

January 3, 2014 @ 10:28 am By David Drake  |  

Under the proposed rules, Title III of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) will create a new investor class by allowing non-accredited investors to participate in crowdfunding. These rules will lead to a democratized investment landscape profitable to entrepreneurs, inventors, artists, writers, and… Read More

January 3, 2014 @ 10:17 am By Barry E. James  |  

Crowdfunding exploded in 2013, and so revealed its massive potential in a way that’s impossible to ignore. Not least December’s ‘The Rise of Future Finance” and the World Bank Report which preceded it. These together left no doubt that crowdfunding has become an established part of the… Read More

January 3, 2014 @ 9:34 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Last night during E! News, the movie trailer for Veronica Mars was shown for the first time. The movie is slated to begin appearing in theaters across the United States on March 14th, 2014. There’s something about that big WB that appears in the first ten seconds… Read More

January 2, 2014 @ 10:04 am By Charles Luzar  |  

What caused the financial crisis of 2008? Many would argue that bad loans made to unworthy borrowers were at the core of the entire downturn. For First Principles Capital Management CEO and co-founder Doug Dachille, the current trajectory of the peer-to-peer lending market bears a striking… Read More

December 30, 2013 @ 10:16 am By Charles Luzar  |  

In traveling the country and fielding numerous requests from project creators – both current and potential  – certain questions have a tendency to pop up time and time again. One question that I get surprisingly often: can I crowdfund anonymously? It was echoed in a… Read More

December 28, 2013 @ 12:50 pm By Charles Luzar  |  

We recently stumbled upon a Quora answer from David S. Rose made in July of last year. One of the topics relevant to crowdfunding is IP protection. Crowdfunding is a very public endeavor, and exposing early-stage ideas to the crowd carries some risk of garnering… Read More

December 26, 2013 @ 11:43 am By Charles Luzar  |  

Here on Crowdfund Insider Samuel Guzik, Kendall Almerico and Kim Wales all shared similar thoughts regarding the legal costs associated with crowdfunding in the United States under what is to be Section 4(a)(6) of the Securities Act. In the world of equity crowdfunding, the associated legal and… Read More

December 24, 2013 @ 11:20 am By John Scaletta, Motion Source  |  

In November of 2013 my company, Motion Source Video Production, ran a Kickstarter campaign for a shoulder rig for video cameras. The campaign was very successful, with final totals leaving us at 376% funded beyond our original funding goal. In preparation for the campaign my… Read More