For the investors, we believe it’s a terrific time. There will be overhead of getting up to speed on the new portals, but early-adopter investors will have opportunities that may not be available as equity crowdfunding becomes more mainstream, plus the chance to gain experience that will serve them will as the ecosystem grows.

Jeff Annison and Paul Scanlan

Categorized in : U.S.

It also creates a marketing challenge -- the pioneering companies are bearing the burden of building networks of investors for these crowdfunding portals.

Jeff Annison and Paul Scanlan

We don’t expect these companies to experience much success. Equity crowdfunding isn’t easy or inexpensive, and the SEC has important safeguards like bad actor checks and reporting requirements that will eliminate most of the riff-raff, plus, the public is sophisticated these days and has access to enough information to make well-informed decisions.

Jeff Annison and Paul Scanlan

We’ll see novel and innovative ideas from entrepreneurs that haven’t had access to VCs and angels. For example, if you are an entrepreneur with a great idea for an app but happen to live in Kansas, it’s probably pretty hard to break into the VC community.

Jeff Annison and Paul Scanlan

At its worst we’ll see companies turn to equity crowdfunding because their business plans aren’t strong enough to get funding elsewhere.

Jeff Annison and Paul Scanlan