In a Nutshell: In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the world is facing healthcare and economic challenges the likes of which it has never seen in modern times. Wefunder is an investment crowdfunding platform that is doing its part in this crisis by using its tools and infrastructure to help deliver solutions and help [...]

Since Regulation Crowdfunding began on May 16 last year, 335 companies have filed offering documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to fundraise on securities-based crowdfunding platforms. Of those companies, 43 percent were funded, 30 percent failed, and the remainder are still open and trying to get funding.

Why and How Wefunder Filed to Become a Legal Benefit Corporation When Kickstarter announced it would become a public benefit corporation in September 2015, it was a fairly radical idea, especially for a high-flying tech company that could have reaped millions or billions of dollars by selling or going public.

Wefunder, the Reg CF platform that has now crowdfunded over $8.4 million since May of this year dominating the sector, has now added a new feature. Wefunder now accepts Bitcoin transactions making it even easier to invest in early stage companies. Bitcoin is generally thought of as a highly secure and efficient method of transferring value.

Now that US law allows privately held companies to raise investment from everyday people - so-called unaccredited investors - anyone can now financially support the companies they care about. (For more on the law, see previous page.) A number of investment crowdfunding platforms have emerged to meet the growing demand for these opportunities; think Kickstarter, but for investment deals.

Reg CF, created under Title III of the JOBS Act, was launched on May 16th of this year as the new securities exemption became available to SMEs seeking investors. Under Reg CF, issuing companies may sell securities to both accredited and non-accredited investors to raise a max amount of $1 million.

Annie Gaus Reporter San Francisco Business Times Email |Twitter SAN FRANCISCO - Crowdfunding platforms have been around for years now, helping entrepreneurs and artists fund everything from gadgets to feature films through crowdsourced donations.

A company creating an "artificial pancreas" for diabetics this week became the first startup to raise $1 million using new type of online stock sale open to the public at large.

The immersive theater experience "The Speakeasy" might be set in the 1920s, but its funding mechanism, equity crowdfunding, just came into being in 2016. Made legal through Regulation CF of 2012's Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, but available to the public as an investment option only since May 16, equity crowdfunding allows anyone, not just accredited investors, to invest in a company or project.

A bill passed the House of Representatives last night that would allow entrepreneurs to raise up to $5 million with equity crowdfunding, five times the current $1 million cap. Called the Fix Crowdfunding Act (H.R. 4855), the bill was one of two pieces of legislation aimed to help small-business owners get access to capital that representatives passed with a strong bipartisan majority.

Building any company is hard, but building a biotech company is particularly hard. Not only do biotech companies have significant inherent costs due to lab space, DNA, and reagents purchase, but the life cycles of the organisms in question limit product development speed.

The middle class might not have to bend over and kiss its ass goodbye after all. Two events at the end of May point the way to a more equitable future-as in, a future that's good for a broad swath of society, not just the tiny slice that can blow $55,000 on a Louis Vuitton City Steamer alligator bag.

Starting today, companies using crowdfunding websites to raise money can offer stock options to donors. More than four years after equity crowdfunding was signed into law through the 2012 JOBS Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission is permitting start-ups to offer stock in their companies to the investing public through consumer-facing websites.

Yesterday, the world of investing shifted dramatically, and in large part thanks to a group of people who rolled through Fargo earlier this year. The group, Wefunder, came through on a cross-country quest to meet the startups of underdog cities - that is, everywhere outside of the Silicon Valley bubble.

The S.E.C.'s long-awaited crowdfunding rules take effect today, but the waiting continues as platforms rush to launch offerings.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has ushered in a new era of small-investor equity crowdfunding under Title III of the JOBS (Jump-Start Our Business Start-Ups) Act. It allows ordinary investors, subject to various regulatory restrictions, to purchase equity shares in small businesses that publicize their investment opportunities on new crowdfunding platforms, such as NextSeed, FlashFunders, SeedInvest and Wefunder.

If you've ever wished you could invest in cool startups like they do on "Shark Tank," you may be in luck. New rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission will now allow anyone to invest $2,000 a year or more in a small company in exchange for a stake in the business, the New York Times reported.

Nick Tommarello has been waiting four years for this: The day when everyday people can start investing directly in companies over the internet. Today Title III of the JOBS Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2012, goes into force, enabling anyone-not just "accredited investors," who have at least $100,000 in assets-to invest in startups, small businesses, and other private firms. And that means Tommarello's Wefunder platform can move into the next stage.

Tom Williams | CQ Roll Call | Getty Images A change is coming to private investing markets, and it could revolutionize how small businesses are financed: unaccredited investors can start buying stock in start-ups.

The idea behind equity crowdfunding is to “create a new kind of stock market” where people can support causes and companies they care about, even if the chances of a big payday are remote, said Nick Tommarello, chief executive of Wefunder Inc.. “It’s basically a socially good lottery ticket,” he said. “You make an investment in some early stage company, and it either does really, really well, or it works out badly.”

WeFunder is one of a handful of crowdfunding platforms that have received regulatory approval to operate as a Title III (Reg CF) funding portal by May 16th launch. WeFunder is a big believer in the potential of Reg CF and what it can do for capital formation and entrepreneurship in general - even with the intrinsic challenges.

But what got people excited was the crowdfunding provision allowing companies to raise up to $1 million with few regulatory obstacles. Sounds simple, right? Not to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Concerned about protecting investors from charlatans, bad ideas and their own poor judgment, the agency spent years drafting its proposed rules.

People like Tom Lix, who's keen to raise $1 million on the Wefunder portal so he can expand his Cleveland liquor startup. "I would love for my customers to be my shareholders," says Lix, whose Cleveland Whiskey LLC says it can age whiskey in 24 hours. "I couldn't ask for better fans."

When his friend started building an exoskeleton to help disabled people stand and walk again, Tommarello wanted to invest. The crowdfunding regulation will allow businesses to offer equity to people regardless of their net worth.

Fees will vary. NextSeed Inc. expects to charge 5% to 10% of the amount raised. SeedInvest LLC will charge a fee that is 5% of the amount raised and take a 5% equity stake. Wefunder Inc. plans to collect 3% from issuers and 2% from investors.

Another equity crowdfunding site, WeFunder, does plan to open to non-accredited investors beginning May 16. "I think we’re going to help a lot of companies that wouldn’t have been able to get off the ground get started," its founder said in an interview earlier this month.

“Entrepreneurs will be able to raise money like they did generations ago, from their neighbors and communities that know them, not from some conglomerate risk-averse bank headquartered on Wall Street," says Nick Tommarello, the co-founder and CEO of equity crowdfunding platform Wefunder, in an email with Entrepreneur. "We expect that this is that start of a renaissance of entrepreneurship in the United States.”

New crowdfunding rules taking effect Monday will allow anyone to invest in startups-not just wealthy people. The change overrides a longstanding Securities and Exchange Commission requirement that investors backing private companies be "accredited," meaning they make at least $200,000 a year and have a net worth of $1 million or more (excluding their home).

Monday, May 16, 2016, will be a very big day in the world of crowdfunding. More people will be able to invest in entrepreneurs through crowdfunding than they were just the day before. And that means that more entrepreneurs with more innovative ideas will be able to launch more businesses.

Amy Cortese | May 4, 2016 The crowdfunding platform WeFunder began five years ago with a simple premise: everyone, regardless of their net worth, should be able to invest in small businesses that they believe in. The only problem was, securities laws basically prevented all but the wealthiest individuals from investing in private companies.

Happy National Small Business Week, May 1-7! How many of us haven't said something like "if only I had invested in (fill in the blank: Starbucks, Whole Foods, etc.) back when they were getting off the ground? I'd be set now!"

Crowdfunding evangelists Wefunder are getting out of what they call the "Silicon Valley bubble" and hopping an Amtrak train for a cross-country trip aimed at finding and funding small businesses. In 2012, the startup literally helped Congress pass the JOBS Act, a new law that allows businesses to raise up to $1 million online.

News Corp is a network of leading companies in the worlds of diversified media, news, education, and information services. High-growth firms face powerful discentives to use JOBS Act provisions Allowing everyday Americans to invest in today's high-growth startups-picture grandma and grandpa putting a portion of their retirement savings into the next pre-IPO Facebook-has long been the dream of advocates of so-called equity crowdfunding.

So you want to be the next Marc Andreessen? Friday could be the day when you start trying. New federal rules will allow the American public at large to go online and buy shares in startups.

Investment crowdfunding platform WeFunder, a site that has raised over $10 million using Accredited Crowdfunding, sees a serious flaw in final rules of Title III of the JOBS Act. In a recent open letter to the SEC, WeFunder CEO and co-founder Nicholas Tommarello said while the final rules were much better than expected there remains "one critical flaw".

Everyday people will soon be able to invest thousands of dollars in small companies and receive an ownership stake under new rules passed by the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday. The SEC approved a set of long-awaited regulations that will allow companies to "crowdfund" up to $1 million from investors online.

We have all heard of the incredible entrepreneurial ecosystem in San Francisco. Last week, I had the opportunity to visit San Francisco, thanks to Jason Calacanis who was kind enough to invite hundreds of founders for free access to his two-day conference called SCALE, which saw 3,000 investors, founders and potential entrepreneurs attend.

“We got involved to really help them understand how entrepreneurship works, how the Internet works, and how to formulate some legislation that would actually work in practice,” says Norman, who was in the White House when President Obama signed the JOBS Act into law on April 5, 2012.

“It was a pleasant surprise for us,” said Mike Norman, co-founder of online investment company WeFunder, which plans to help businesses seek investment under the new state rules.

Dealflicks, a discount site for movie tickets, based in Los Angeles, used Wefunder this year to raise $173,450 from 64 backers.

In its concurrent fourth round of crowdfunding in two years, Dealflicks has now raised $1.7 Million on Wefunder. Investors in this most DealFlicks gets butts in Movie Theatersrecent round include 500 Startups, Siemer Ventures, Archer Gray, Rubicon VC, Wefunder, Be Great Partners, Rosepaul Investments, Mogility Capital, Sierra Maya Ventures and Warner Brothers Media Camp.

“There are a few things they’ve done which actually are going to make it hard if the proposed rules wind up being finalized as written,” said Mike Norman, president and co-founder of Wefunder, which plans to operate a portal under the new rules.

"For publicly traded companies, individual investors don't have the ability to influence the success and failure of a company," Dietrich said. "But for small start-ups, they absolutely have the ability to influence success and failure. That's exciting and something we haven't seen before."

Terrafugia signed on with Wefunder last month, and it is now the “Startup of the Week.” The website says more than $10 million has been raised, but that’s from the angel investors that have supported the company so far. The Wefunder model is newly legal equity crowdfunding, which means larger amounts invested and bigger payoffs—not just the insider CDs and books that sites such as the wildly successful Kickstarter have been able to offer.

For the first time in 80 years, private companies hunting for capital can now advertise to all-comers. The $22bn that angel, or individual, investors invested in private companies last year – and perhaps even the $27bn put to work by more established venture capitalists – is about to see some competition.

The shift allows retirees, doctors, lawyers and the like to get a piece of investments with a little more razzledazzle than they are used to-- say Terrafugia, the flying car company using Wefunder to find investors, or Rick's Picks, "artisanal pickles crafted with nuance and wit," working with CircleUp. Both Wefunder and CircleUp are among the relatively new sites that put young companies in front of potential investors.

One such website, WeFunder, is already accepting money from accredited investors. Mike Norman, co-founder of the site, says this new approach to venture funding will eliminate inefficiencies he associates with courting venture capitalists and angel investors through in-person meetings. “A lot of this is about their investor experience,” he says. “We’re going to have the ability for everyone to get involved in helping out a company or a startup that they think is really important to get off the ground and be successful.”

Wefunder was founded last year out of the MIT startup community with the JOBS Act specifically in mind. Since then, it has worked hard to curate a diverse stable of consumer-relevant, high-quality startups, and present them in an appealing magazine-like fashion designed to attract widespread interest. Example offerings launching on the site include Terrafugia, a startup that has prototyped a real-life flying car that’s FAA approved, street legal, and folds its wings up with the touch of a button; and Meta, whose augmented reality glasses render manually manipulable 3D objects like you see in sci-fi movies. Many of Wefunder’s startups come from the alpha Silicon Valley accelerator program Y Combinator, of which Wefunder itself is also an alumnus.

After the SEC changes were put in place Monday, Wefunder’s site immediately began promoting 25 companies seeking investments, including Terrafugia, a Woburn company working on developing a flying car, and RoomHunt, a San Francisco apartment rental start-up.

"If you're a company building something in the legal space, it's super valuable for you to have maybe 50 attorneys that are all coming in at smaller dollar amounts," he says. "They're in your sector, they can help you with sales and connections and get users on your product. It's not just about money. There's a ton of people that can provide tactical, grassroots value that people haven't had the opportunity to access before."

"It’s the first step in a long process," says Nick Tommarello, founder of WeFunder, a company backed by the prestigious Y Combinator incubator that serves as a platform for startups raising money. WeFunder is planning for the future when startups will be allowed to accept funds from anyone, says Tommarello. He’s hoping that non-accredited investors — which would be your average internet user — will see that nifty new startups are fundraising and start to pressure the SEC to hurry up on its rulemaking on equity-based crowdfunding.

WeFunder is a Y Combinator startup that has a platform similar to RockThePost. While the company is not going so far as to host a public event, founder and CEO Nick Tommarello said that WeFunder’s site will look more like Kickstarter, where anyone can browse through the opportunities without signing up. “If you are a founder fundraising, you want to stop fundraising as soon as possible and go back to work,” he said in an interview with VentureBeat.

Backed by Y Combinator, WeFunder launched earlier this year in response to the new post-JOBS Act investment market. It's a lot like other investor-entrepreneur matchmaking sites, but it already expresses a strategy to add on all investors if Title III of the JOBS Act is passed, which would allow for non-accredited crowdfunded investing. It also looks and feels super user-friendly like Kickstarter.

Of the three funding networks, WeFunder is leading the charge, encouraging startups to take advantage of the new rules. AngelList is opening its network to general solicitation, with some cautions. FundersClub isn't opening up to public appeals at all.

Wefunder’s website, with a menu of companies and short promotional videos, looks a lot like Kickstarter, the popular site where filmmakers, authors, and technology companies can raise donations for individual projects. That site has already spawned several technology companies, like Pebble, maker of a smart watch (see “A Smart Watch, Created by the Crowd, Debuts in Vegas” and “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2013”). With crowd investing, however, people will actually be buying shares in new companies.

It is the mother's milk of Silicon Valley startups – money, often from investors, to get going and keep growing. And next week new federal regulations will give startups and investors more ways to find each other.

With the new rules, a startup could go as far as buying advertising to state it's raising money. "Previously, most of us never had a shot at investing in the rounds of the best companies. The insiders only had that kind of access. That's all about to change," writes WeFunder cofounder Nick Tommarello.

... If you’d like to learn more about this topic, I highly recommend the WeFunder FAQ section. Also, keep an eye on the Securities and Exchange Commission as its rules, when they are eventually issued, will make huge waves in the startup community.

With General Solicitation it will be much easier for investors to find companies they are passionate about supporting,” writes Mike Norman of crowdfunding website, WeFunder, to us in an email.

The basic premise of WeFunder is that it will allow anyone to make a small crowdinvestment in young companies, meaning that instead of pitching angel investors, start-ups can go directly to early users, fans, friends and family for their early capital rounds.

We are not just giving startups dumb, quick, and easy money," said founder Nick Tommarello on stage at Y Combinator's demo day. "With the power of the crowd, we are giving them an army of evangelists that feel a sense of ownership and are driven to help their startup succeed.

Wefunder allows people to invest in startups with as little as $1000. The startup eliminates the need for some startups to raise an initial round of funding from traditional investors, and creates a group of evangelists for a company in the process.

We’re not replacing their current fundraising efforts," said WeFunder co-founder Nick Tommarello. "If you open up a small part of your round to the crowd, if your users and evangelists can have that feeling of ownership, they’ll be much more inclined to help you.

Wefunder, founded in Cambridge last year as a site aiming to eventually enable crowdfunding of startups, may remain on the West Coast after taking part in this winter's Y Combinator accelerator, CEO Nick Tommarello said in an interview.

The platform, which launches on Tuesday to certain accredited investors (more on that in a minute), ostensibly allows anyone who sees promise in one of the startups featured on WeFunder’s platform to invest in it, pitching in a mandatory minimum amount of cash (currently $1000, but as little as $100 when the site rolls out to all). The idea, according to CEO Tommarello, is to “fill the funding gap between angel investors and that first major round of capital.”

The ultimate goal is to enable anyone to invest in startups that they find promising. To that end, founders Mike Norman, Nick Tommarello, and Greg Belote lobbied hard last year to get the JOBS Act passed. That act should help overturn a few rules which, to date, have held back greater adoption of crowdfunding for startups. And with a new SEC Chairwoman in place, the whole thing could finally move forward.

In his opening remarks, WeFunder’s Mike Norman described the advocacy process they’ve undertaken thus far, grown out of a simple online petition. "Because of its success we were down in D.C. just a few weeks later meeting with the White House," he said. "It was really an affirmation of our belief that the startup communtiy needed to have more of a voice at that table."

Crowd investing startup Wefunder is announcing a $530,000 seed round from just under 60 investors, over half of whom are unaccredited. Nihal Mehta, Jim Pallotta, Dharmesh Shah, and Bill Warner also participated in the round.

With rules about actually investing in companies about to become a bit more lax, the crowdfunding floodgates might open even wider, with new crowdinvesting site WeFunder, based in Cambridge, hoping to join the ranks of Kickstarter and IndieGoGo as a marquee crowdfunding platform. The fundamental difference with this new breed of sites is that, rather than receiving swag, warm feelings, and early products, crowdinvestors actually buy a (very small) piece of the company.

While some investors will be in it for money, the riskiness of investing in startups is likely to mean that equity crowdfunding ends up resembling the donation model, says Nicholas Tommarello... "technologies that are fun or solve social problems are likely to be popular categories. People want to give back, see progress, live vicariously, and learn something.

A slew of these portals is already popping up, including Wefunder, Crowdfunder, and Motaavi. The founders of these companies were pushing hardest for this legislation.

We're not a bunch of finance guys who saw a big number on a spreadsheet and decided to do this," Norman says. "We're focusing on the quality of experience for people who are just like us.

The SEC needs to determine the actual guidelines," said Nick Tommarello, one of the founders of WeFunder, an equity-based crowdfunding platform that decided to launch a preliminary site before the law passed. "Then we apply to the SEC.

There is tremendous value in having your most passionate users be your investors," says Nick Tommarello, founder of the site Wefunder.com. As New Scientist went to press, more than 3000 people had signed a petition on the site, saying they would invest if the law passes.

Big Idea: Wefunder provides a platform that allows startups to hold fundraising with a crowd of investors. Why It’s Working: WeFunder drives innovation by giving startups the ability to go through a formal funding series, and it also takes crowdsourcing to a new level by giving equity to funders.

But Nick Tommarello, a Boston entrepreneur who has become something of a crowdfunding activist, shares the view of many who have real-life crowdfunding experience. He says incentives are already there for intermediaries to regulate themselves. Tommarello believes crowd investing platforms will need to do due diligence on businesses they host in order to attract investors

Crucially, Brown’s bill would require that people invest through an intermediary, an organization that would have to register with the government and would broker the deals, the way eBay brokers auctions. The Boston-based WeFunder hopes to be one of these intermediaries. It is hosting a petition drive in support of the legislation: More than 2,500 people have signed, pledging to invest $6.5 million if the law is changed.

At the least, crowdfunding appeals to Boston-area startups because it would offer a new funding option. Mike Norman is a co-founder of Wefunder, a brand new Cambridge-based company that’s hoping to become a crowdfunding intermediary. “And if you have a way to demonstrate that you have a good idea, that it’s been vetted by someone who’s trustworthy, and that you can raise capital in a much shorter period of time and you can get back to focusing on your business, I mean what entrepreneur is not gonna be excited about having that as an option?" Norman said.

Such supporters of crowdfunding as Nick Tommarello say it will give businesses—from neighborhood restaurants to high-growth tech companies—a fresh source of capital. Tommarello is co-founder of Wefunder, a site he hopes to turn into a crowdfunding platform in the event the law is changed."If this happens, what we can do is fill that funding gap in between angel [investors] and first round venture capital," he says

Brown, sponsor of one of the bills now before Congress that would legalize the funding source, spoke during an event organized by Cambridge startup Wefunder.com. The startup has launched with an online petition asking Congress to legalize crowdfunding, but has also built a crowd-fundraising site in the event that legislation passes.

As an entrepreneur who works with other entrepreneurs, Nicholas Tommarello has seen many great ideas in which he'd like to invest. The problem is that he doesn’t have a lot of money to invest, so he can’t legally do it at all. He is among a growing number of people lobbying for changes to decades-old federal regulations that he says are outdated in the Internet Age.

For now, the WeFunder crowdfunding petition has been a runaway success. Launched with a modest goal of attracting $100,000 in pledges and raising awareness about the democratization of capital, WeFunder has now attracted nearly 2,000 funders who have pledged a total commitment of nearly $5.5 million.

We can gamble in Vegas. We can donate on Kiva or Kickstarter. But it's illegal to purchase $100 of stock in a job-creating business? That makes no sense." That is the tagline to a new project called WeFunder from three TechStars Boston alum who are trying to garner support for the "Democratizing Access to Capital Act" (S.1791) that would allow entrepreneurs to crowdfund startups.

From the makers of Startup Workaway comes WeFunder, a Kickstarter for startups. Trouble is, Congress hasn't yet approved the law that makes amateur investing legal.

Step one: Build a site that lets anyone invest a small amount of money into a startup. Step two: Build support for actually legalizing the site. That's the strategy at new Cambridge startup Wefunder.com, a project of local tech startup veterans Nicholas Tommarello and Nick Plante.

"I'd love to give a small portion of my income to entrepreneurs changing the world, rather than blowing it in Vegas, or investing in GE," Tommerello said. "I want to invest in start-ups, and I'm frustrated that I can't.

Within a couple of hours this morning, this petition quickly passed 1 million in pledges, and if it gets enough signatures, the people behind it have the opportunity to present it to Senate Majority Chair Mary Landrieu on Wednesday.