SEC opens the gates to crowdfunding and a new structure of capitalism

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This is significant. While talk doesn’t necessarily lead to action, a significant shift in capitalism could be coming.

On Wednesday US SEC Chairman Mary Shapiro sent a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa, chair of the House Oversight Committee. The letter is embedded at the bottom of this post.

Many have focused on the potential from the current SEC review to relax limits on shareholders for private companies, notably the rule that if a private company has 500 investors or more it has to disclose its finances. Changes to this and related rules could have a significant impact on capital raising for private companies.

Few seem to have focused on what I think is potentially a bigger issue from the SEC moves: opening up crowdfunding as a mechanism for equity investment. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece called SEC Boots Up for the Internet Age. The article begins:
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Pushstart adds a new start-up seed accelerator to the Australian tech scene

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Today at the excellent SydStart event is the official launch of Pushstart, adding to the increasingly rich network of support available to tech start-ups in Australia.

There are two key elements to Pushstart: a mentor matching service, bringing together a pool of currently over 50 mentors with start-ups through the year, and a Start-Up accelerator, which will offer a small amount of capital, mentoring, and some physical space for a 3 month program.

The reference points for the start-up accelerator are of course the (primarily) US-based Y Combinator and TechStars. 
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The joys of self-employment: 7 reasons to love being your own boss

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This is a significant marking point in my life. I have been self-employed for as long as I was employed, making it 12 years of each. From my first day of employment, I always knew that I would eventually work for myself. I was surprised that it took as long as it did to escape. In fact, when I was working in Tokyo for Thomson Financial in the early 1990s I had firm plans to resign and live in Hong Kong or Macau, working as a freelance journalist covering the region. Then a girlfriend and a series of promotions made me feel there was no rush to leave, and I ended up being transferred to London into a job as Global Director – Capital Markets. This gave me some great senior corporate experience that I would never have got if had gone solo earlier. However it didn’t take too long to reach the point when I was ready to resign and throw myself out into the Big Wide World. The day after I finished at Thomson in April 1996 I boarded a flight to Rio de Janeiro as the first stop on six months travels through the Americas. I had thought that as I traveled I’d think about what sort of business I’d start. I didn’t have time for that on my adventures, only seriously considering what I wanted to do once I arrived back in Sydney after six years overseas.

It was very tough going for a long time, particularly trying to build global work based out of Sydney, but the success of my books really made the difference, and just around now – after many years of hard slog – things are panning out the way I always envisioned. This suggests to me that they have a fair bit further to go yet – time will tell.

When I left work I was completely committed to working for myself and controlling my own destiny. From the beginning I didn’t ever consider taking external capital, because I felt it would make me beholden to someone else. In the near future I will be looking for external capital for a new venture, but it’s not one in which I will be a full-time executive. If I ever sell a company, I’m not going to with the company as part of the sale. When things were difficult for me in the early days, my worst nightmare was that I would have to get a job – that was something that I would do anything to avoid.

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