

As Angel Investing Booms, So Does the AngelList - acconrad
http://gigaom.com/2011/02/15/as-angel-investing-booms-so-does-the-angellist/

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iamelgringo
A few months ago, I sat down to talk with Naval because of problems that I was
seeing with a lot of garage stage startups that were showing up at Hackers and
Founders. We talked for a few minutes about how I thought that early stage
funding was the definition of an inefficient market.

He stopped me, mid sentence, turned his laptop around and showed me what they
were building on Angel List. I was floored.

It's exactly what the article talks about: a marketplace for startups to sell
equity. This is revolutionary, and because of it, there are going to be
thousands of startups in the next few years that will have access to capital
that never would have gotten funded otherwise.

Silicon Valley is going to be a very interesting town in the next couple of
years.

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tectonic
Is there a place for micro-angel financing that I could afford? I want to
invest in startups but don't have much (low tens of thousands) to invest.

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us
You probably don't qualify. Entrepreneurs should only accept money from an
accredited investor. If all you have is low tens of thousands, very high
chance you're not accredited. Meaning no one should be taking money from you.

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gojomo
The 'accredited investor' rules make it hard to accept traditional equity
investments from small net-worth investors. My understanding is that ventures
can take a small number of close-family/friends/founding-employee investments
from non-accredited investors, but the added costs and risks of setting this
up limit its use when there are other options.

Yet, there are attempts to hack-around the traditional overhead. Though I know
very little about it, I'm intrigued by 'ProFounder', a funding mechanism that
seems to use revenue-shares rather than equity to get around some of the
regulatory barriers that otherwise prevent crowdfunding by small investors.
See:

<http://www.profounder.com>

The founding team with kiva.org alumni (and recognizable advisors and
investors) suggest this isn't just some dreamy, naive, or fly-by-night
undertaking.

~~~
knowledgesale
Another similar project is <http://www.Prosper.com> (recommended by user
crasshopper)

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DLang
Hi all!

My name is David Lang, I'm the Community Manager at ProFounder. I wanted to
clarify a few things about our platform and also provide some resources for
those who are interested in learning more.

ProFounder is a crowdfunding platform for entrepreneurs that provides an easy-
to-use interface to raise money from friends, family and people that you know.
In the words of the SEC, the investors must have a "prior, substantial
relationship" to the entrepreneur. We're not getting around any SEC rules by
using revenue share. There are SEC compliance requirements for each state.
We've found that - for the entrepreneurs that use our platform - the
flexibility provided by the rev share model is key.

There have been a number of successful raises on the platform, between $10k -
$60k. Check out the blog to read more about the case studies:

<http://blog.profounder.com>

Also, if you have any more specific questions, I'm happy to answer them!

