Today the President will sign the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act in to law, a complex and by no means perfect bill that contains at least one 'no-brainer' win for both businesses and investors: crowd funding. This bipartisan legislation fulfills the President's call to reduce regulatory burdens that prevent many small and young businesses from raising capital -- specifically by allowing crowd funding and expanding mini-public offerings.
The legislation is remarkable, as it (rightly) reverses more than 90 years of restrictions on raising capital at the grass-roots level. How we got here is historic as well -- it illustrates what power lies in everyday individuals. An impact that will now be felt around the country as small businesses and startups look to crowd funding and other non-traditional means of raising capital.
The movement began in 2009, when author and economist Michael Shuman wrote an article for Community Development Investment Review, a publication of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. In it, he wrote:
"Existing laws place huge restrictions on the investment choices of small, 'unaccredited' investors -- a category in SEC vernacular that includes all but the richest 2 percent of Americans. The regulations prohibit the average American from investing in any small business, unless the firm is willing to spend $50,000 to $100,000 on lawyers to prepare a private placement memorandum or public offering -- thick documents with microscopic, ALL CAPS PRINT that no human being has ever been observed actually reading."
The good news is that local businesses could get a huge investment boost with some modest securities reforms that would cost little or nothing. That simple idea gained momentum in the summer of 2010, when the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC), a nonprofit based in Oakland, California, wrote a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requesting an exemption for crowd funding. The SEC received approximately 150 letters of support for the proposal.
SELC volunteers then talked to staff at the President's Office of Technology about the idea and the President supported the idea of an exemption for small securities offerings, which he announced in his jobs speech in September 2011. Legislation creating an exemption for small "crowd funded" investments passed the U.S. House of Representatives in November by an overwhelming majority -- almost a unanimous vote of approval.
With the final law being signed today, it reverses laws restricting investments that date back to the 1930s. What impact will this have on Main Street? The opportunity for growth, new startups and entrepreneurs whose ideas never make it past the dinner table due to lack of funding is vast. The impact on local business is undoubtedly also going to produce more resilient communities and cities where investors can now invest their money to build real wealth in the communities they care about.
The vast majority of the American public, the 99 percent of us who are "unaccredited" investors, will soon have the opportunity to keep their money local. The half of our economy made up of small, independent businesses will now have access to capital that previously could only go to giant public companies. Americans have $30 trillion dollars invested in securities -- imagine if even 10 percent of that went from Wall Street to Main Street. What could $3 trillion dollars do in our communities?
Of course there is the potential, and frankly the likelihood, for abuse and failure. Investors who don't proceed cautiously can (and some will) lose money on failed investments. There will be a rush of companies offering portals that will potentially fleece customers by charging unnecessary fees. But while some will try to make a quick buck, the broader opportunity gives me cautious optimism. There are some mechanisms in place that protect consumers from losing everything (they cannot invest more than 10 percent of their net worth for example) and there will be opportunities for savvy networks of small businesses to connect and create their own portals thereby owning an even bigger piece of the investment market.
Next month I'll be leading a conversation around how to accelerate community capital for small entrepreneurs at the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The topic of crowd funding will no doubt dominate interest and hopes for many. While crowd funding alone isn't a silver bullet, it does play an important role in revitalizing the entrepreneurial small busines ssector of the economy. Its simplicity and ingenuity is American capitalism in its finest form.