Want to start a business? Crowdfunding might be the key

Ranked among the top ten most influential people in business crowdfunding, according to many Jason Best is the man who is revolutionizing access to capital. Together with his ex-grad school mates and now partners, Sherwood Neiss and Zak Cassady-Dorion, he promoted a national grassroot campaign to make business crowdfunding a reality.

“With the collapse of the markets in 2008 the traditional means of financing startups and small businesses disappeared.” Said Best. “Banks stopped lending and venture capital shifted away from seed stage investments to larger, more secure deals. What was left was a funding void for businesses looking to raise $250,000 or less in seed or early-stage funding.” This is why when Best saw his grad school friends at a wedding and started to talk about the fact that there was no access to capital, they decided to take action. “We were frustrated. Crowdfunding had so much potential. You could lend money to a small entrepreneur in a developing country on Kiva, or you could help a filmmaker finance his film, but you couldn’t invest in small local businesses in a difficult time like this. We thought it would be a great thing to create a platform like Kiva or Kickstarter to help small businesses .” Unfortunately, they found out that this was illegal.

“We couldn’t use crowdfunding to help entrepreneurs we believed in, because of laws that were written in 1933, that controlled how stocks were sold and were still governing in 2012 with the social web.” Explained Best,  “This is why, being entrepreneurs and doing things that are a little bit crazy, we decided to give it a try and change things.” It all started, back in 2010 when they sat around a kitchen table and began to work on a campaign to make business crowdfunding legal.  They  authored the Crowdfund Investing Framework, started a blog to promote their initiative and went to Washington where they presented their proposal at the White House. “What I learned from this experience is that the key to success, is to bring the solution to the government, because at least they will listen to you.” And their government did listen to them, indeed, because the Crowdfunding Investing Framework, was used to write the JOBS (Jumpstart our business) Act. After the law passed Jason Best, Sherwood Neiss and Zak Cassady-Dorion founded the Crowdfund Capital advisors, which provides strategy and technology advisory services to professional investors, crowdfunding platforms and professional service firms, as well as to foreign and domestic governments and entrepreneurs that are seeking to understand and benefit from the JOBS Act and. “The framework is very simple, it gives the opportunity to raise up to 1 million dollar par year for small businesses and startups through crowdfunding.” The financing process is made transparent and secure by a strict regulation. “All of it is controlled by the SEC and both entrepreneurs and investors are required to go through background checks.  "Besides since this is considered very high risk investment, investing in business crowdfunding is only available for a small percentage of the investor’s income and it is always less than ten percent  of the investor’s net worth. “This kind of investment can really be an important resource for local entrepreneurs and startups.”