Ask HN: Democratization of Investment

[mpg33]

So i was thinking that the creation of the many platforms("App Stores") for developers has made it incredibly easy for developers to enter the market, and also relatively cheap to do so.

So why inst there (is there?) investment platforms that would connect ideas/develoeprs to investors that are just everyday people. ie say there was a website that i could go on and view start-ups that needed money...and i could choose how much i wanted to invest and all of the financial and legal aspects of investing in a private company were automated.

It could be a kind of "social network" (i hate using that term now) where companies could create a company profile with maybe a video/slideshow of their product and i could choose how much money to invest.

Does this make any sense? lol

[wmf]

The SEC tends to frown on such ideas because they're a gold mine for con artists. If you can steal a little money from a lot of different people, no one has much incentive to hold you accountable for failure.

The closest thing that's legal might be Kickstarter, because people aren't really investing.

[mpg33]

I guess technical this would be just like a public company on the stock market.

But i guess i mean this could work for small start-ups that are having a hard time getting funding from the traditional investment routes and will not become large enough to go public.