Wefunder

founder @ Wefunder

Published on Jul 11, 2013

Today, a little over a year after missing their Congressional mandated deadline, the SEC has finally voted to approve Title II of the JOBS Act. 

This means that for the first time in nearly 80 years, startups will be able to advertise their fundraising publicly, so long as all of their investors are accredited. Tweets, Facebook posts, press mentions, email blasts to all users, even billboards….  It’ll be a whole new world.  Most people underestimate what a big deal this will be.

Unfortunately, we have to wait 60 days until the SEC allows startups to advertise.  It’ll be mid-September until we can release a host of new features on Wefunder that’ll take advantage of this. 

We’re happy with the final rules that were voted on.  They weren’t perfect, but it could have been far worse.  The one negative is a potential pre-filing of a Form D, which could cause 15 day waiting period before a fundraise can commence. We’re lobbying to get that removed.

The reason for the year delay was the controversy of what it means to have a “reasonable belief” that an investor is accredited.  We’re happy with the commonsense approach the SEC took at the end of the day – there are no bright red lines that will require famous and well-known angel investors to upload a letter from their accountant, for instance.

For those who enjoy reading government documents, here is the source:  http://www.sec.gov/rules/final/2013/33-9415.pdf 

Title III of the JOBS Act – which will allow unaccredited investors – won’t see action until 2014.  But we’re pretty stoked that we’ll be able to get started on “accredited crowdfunding” in earnest in a couple of months. That's when the fun begins!  There’s 8 million accredited investors in the US for us to reach.