Well I think every entrepreneur who goes out and dedicates their life and throws everything
behind a venture has some moment where they thought this is the thing that I have to do.
And for me with Crowdfunder after having done several ventures I actually experienced a
bit of anxiety about what am I going to do next.
And so in some ways there was this moment of – or several moments of fear of failure
or what am I going to do this time.
But it was about four years ago that after a long series of a couple of successful startups,
a couple of failed ones, I saw this opportunity with a very small group of people who wanted
to change how some of the investment laws in the United States really worked.
And they were really about changing those to help small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Specifically giving them more of an opportunity to go out and raise money from say their local
community or the people around them.
Maybe not just friends and family but a broader audience.
And it’s actually funny when you look into the securities laws that govern how you can
fundraise for a private company in the U.S. that it turns out you’re not supposed to
talk to anyone that you don’t already know.
So in a lot of ways for an entrepreneur who’s starting a business for their first time even
if they’re bright, even if they have domain expertise, if they’re technically skilled
but they haven’t started a business and they don’t know a bunch of wealthy investors
they’re at a pretty significant disadvantage.
So being someone who’s really grown up around the Web who started my first company in the
Web 1.0 boom and really have fallen in love with the idea that technology can connect
us to like-minded communities and help us in a variety of ways in our lives.
I felt really passionate about the idea of hey, couldn’t finance change in this way.
Couldn’t finance be more collaborative and help serve entrepreneurs.
And it spoke to me really significantly that there could be an opportunity to change how
investing laws work because I had been that entrepreneur in my past.
I had had a couple of ventures that had been successful.
Started in investing and funding some of my own ideas.
I had also failed at a couple of those and actually failed specifically raising money
for a company that I had put really about a quarter of a million of my own money in.
And that was right around 2008 in a very difficult market to raise venture and kind of was left
sitting on my hands and saying oh man, I wish there was a better solution.
So Crowdfunder for me is in a lot of ways a combination, kind of culmination of a variety
of different passions in my life.
It’s about entrepreneurship but it’s also about investing.
And I think as entrepreneurs evolve and they have successes and failures they feel compelled
then drawn to the idea of I want to help some other entrepreneurs.
So really Crowdfund for me is not only putting this disruptive idea of exponential technologies
squarely on early stage finance and disrupting that market.
But it’s also about helping entrepreneurs at scale and that’s something I’m really
passionate about.
I do believe that there are parts of the market that are being disrupted through equity crowdfunding
but that’s not really my viewpoint.
I’m probably more of a collaborator than I am a jabber meaning I don’t think that
crowdfunding and equity crowdfunding should disrupt and replace VCs.
And I don’t think we should do away with angels or angel cribs.
However, I am a strong believer that over the long term distributed technologies, automation
can really scale beyond the limits of what humans can do and start to do a lot of the
more rote, mundane or analytic jobs a lot better.
And then they can also help communicate at scale.
But it still takes human beings with relationships with many, many years of experience to really
add value on top of that and make meaning out of all of that.
So I see that we’re complementing and disrupting venture capital at the same time.
Our business today works best when we work alongside great venture investors whether
that’s at the seed stage or its later stage.
And we get involved and help raise money for companies that are proving and have some validation
and we really further validate them.
But I do think as this market evolves it’s really year one for equity crowdfunding and
we’ve done nearly a quarter billion dollars in financing the first year.
That’s going to exponentially grow.
What happens then when you can invest alongside these much bigger institutional funds?
That’s a huge opportunity and it wasn’t available even several years ago and it’s
going to be widely available to the eight-and-a-half million accredited investors in the U.S.
So I feel like we are disrupting it but its best in my mind when you collaborate with
the thought leaders, when you collaborate with the smartest people and the most wisdom
and experience in this area.
I also see that Crowdfunder is disrupting early stage finance as a whole by looking
to create an entirely new capital market.
So in a variety of Internet and technology driven businesses you see that there’s a
couple of winners in this given niche.
But crowdfunding is different and finance is different because it’s really about creating
a giant capital market.
So if I was to say to you at the dawn of capital markets in the public markets in the U.S.
like the New York Stock Exchange that there would be one investment bank that would help
raise money and do all the banking for public companies on Wall Street you would look at
me and say this person doesn’t understand what a capital market is.
They’re crazy.
What we’re seeing is the dawn and the birth of a brand new capital market that is in itself
a disruption and a creation of a new capital market for entrepreneurship and for venture.
And there’s going to be a variety of players, Crowdfunder included in them, that can help
serve a really important function and role in this market.
So not only are we seeing the 30 billion dollar venture investor annual market being disrupted
and brought online through equity crowdfunding, we’re seeing the 20 to 25 billion dollar
angel investment market being brought online and partially disrupted.
But we’re seeing a brand new capital market about to be born and that’s everyday people
that can invest in these companies alongside those other more experienced investors.
And that’s going to change the face of fundraising for equity and it’s going to change the
game for how entrepreneurs speak to the people that can support them financially.