It’s been nearly a year since Wefunder launched a petition to Congress to legalize crowd investing.

It’s almost here.

The SEC is expected to implement the first part of the JOBS Act, enabling ‘accredited crowdfunding’, in January. For the first time in 80 years, it will be legal to advertise investment opportunities to the general public. This is a game changer: a broader segment of our society can now help fund startups. Innovation is no longer dependent on a few thousand angel investors in San Francisco.

To take advantage of the new law, Wefunder is launching the Startup of the Month in January. We’ll tell the story of some of the most promising startups around the country… and then give you an opportunity to invest alongside the lead investors in smaller amounts.

Unfortunately, only accredited investors will be able to participate for the first few months. The second part of the JOBS Act – enabling anyone, regardless of wealth, to invest – won’t be fully legal until the spring of 2013.

One more thing. Wefunder has raised a round of founding… on Wefunder.

We built Wefunder for ourselves. We built it because we desperately wanted to invest in startups we cared about, and thought it was silly that it was illegal.

But we also built it for startups. We believe that having hundreds of investors is a good thing. This is a community of passionate supporters, an army of evangelists who want to help you succeed.

So, we ate our own dog food. Using current state “blue sky” laws (which prohibited advertising), we raised $533,800 from 58 investors in amounts ranging from $100 to $100,000. Half of these investors were un-accredited. As far as I know, we're the first crowd-funding platform to do that!

We’re pretty stoked. And we’re looking forward to doing some awesome work in 2013!