Presents
Crowdfunding Webinar Mini-Series
Upcoming Webinar:
"Crowdfunding, Small Business, and the Federal Securities Laws"
April 18, 2012, 1:00-2:30pm ET
Presenter:
C. Steven Bradford
Earl Dunlap Distinguished Professor
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
College of Law
Crowdfunding—the use of the Internet to raise money through small contributions from a large number of investors—could cause a revolution in small-business financing. Through crowdfunding, smaller entrepreneurs, who traditionally have had great difficulty obtaining capital, have access to anyone in the world with a computer, Internet access, and spare cash to invest. Crowdfunding sites such as Kiva, Kickstarter, and IndieGoGo have proliferated, and the amount of money raised through crowdfunding has grown to billions of dollars in just a few years. But the use of crowdfunding for business financing in the United States is limited by federal securities law. If businesses sell debt or equity using crowdfunding, this triggers the offering registration requirements of the federal Securities Act. Registration is prohibitively expensive for the small offerings that crowdfunding facilitates and none of the current exemptions from registration fit the crowdfunding model. In addition, the web sites that facilitate crowdfunding may be treated as securities brokers or investment advisers, subjecting them to expensive regulatory requirements as well. Professor Bradford will discuss the promise and potential pitfalls of business crowdfunding, the regulatory issues under federal securities law, and proposals to exempt crowdfunding from those laws.
