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Investment (Equity) Crowdfunding

Update on Mar 27th, 2015

Thankfully, finally, after years of waiting, the rest of this article will become nearly obsolete. Title IV rules are finally approved and released by the SEC:

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Investment crowdfunding (a.k.a. equity crowdfunding or, crowdinvesting) is an exciting opportunity in tomorrow's today's brave new economy, esp. as Title III of the JOBS Act is fully implemented. While many equity crowdfunding companies have running web-based platforms (the aggregator and search-engine crowdability is a great place to start looking into many of them); they are currently waiting for clarity from the SEC and full implementation of the JOBS act, before becoming fully operational (esp. for unaccredited investors, i.e. the "crowd"). There are similar regulatory burdens in the EU. Notable exceptions: In the UK, CrowdCube became the first portal to secure regulatory authorization for equity crowdfunding. It has an innovative registration process in which the user has to self-certify either as (a) being sophisticated, or (b) has having high net-worth, or take a questionnaire to determine the same. The questionnaire is simple and covers basic principles of start-up investing including dilution, risk, realization of gains and diversification. In Finland, invesdor is a similar company (that also allows investment from anybody in the world). eureeca, based in the UAE, provides the "first equity crowdfunding marketplace offering a global solution". Broota, is a similar attempt based in Chile. SliceBiz, based in Ghana, is touting a micro-equity model. Other international equity crowdfunding portals are symbid (Netherlands), fundedbyme (Sweden), companisto (Germany) and seedups (Ireland).

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