Crowdfunding ECO Town Hall Ask to Join

On April 5, 2012, real estate finance changed forever when the JOBS Act was passed by a bipartisan Act of Congress and four visionaries took their first steps to revolutionizing the industry. 

Join in an historic event marking the 10-Year anniversary of the day real estate finance changed as founders of the top private equity real estate syndication platforms, hosted by Dr. Adam Gower, GowerCrowd, come together to commemorate this momentous occasion: 

Tore Steen, CrowdStreet 
Jilliene Helman, RealtyMogul 
Adam Hooper, RealCrowd 
Charles Clinton, EquityMultiple 

Hear from these industry leaders as they reflect upon how they changed real estate investing for investors and capital raisers over the last ten years. 

Learn what their vision is for the industry and what it means for you and your financial future. 

Join us on April 5, 2022, to celebrate the democratization of commercial real estate investing and learn from the people who made it happen. 

FREE WEBINAR - Apr. 05, 2022 1:00 PM EST, 10:00 AM PST

Register here: https://learn.gowercrowd.com/10-year-anniversary/?utm_source=cfpa&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=promo 

Event announcement: Valuations - How to determine your startup’s valuation

Date and time
Friday, March 18, 2022

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM EDT

About this event
In this class participants will learn the factors used in determining an existing business valuation, as well as walk through financial modeling of how to determine your Startup or existing business’ value.

Instructor: Prof. George S. Pullen
Course fee: $249 for non-members. $49 for members.
Time: 1.5 Hours + 30 minutes of Q&A
Offered: Quarterly
Class size: Maximum 10
 

This course is two hours long and taught by Professor George Pullen. Professor Pullen is an Adjunct Professor at UNH School of Law and Instructor at Columbia University in NYC where he teaches financial theory and modeling for blockchain, space and cryptocurrency business. In his day job he is the Senior Economist for the Commodities Future Trade Commission in Washington, DC and has over 20 years experience as an investment banker, trader and economist. If you are struggling to understand or explain your business’ valuation to potential and future investors, this course is for you.

MINIMUM LEARNING OUTCOMES

Understanding how businesses are valued.
Insights into how to model your business’ value.
Framework for you to model your business’ valuation.
  

REGISTER: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/valuations-how-to-determine-your-startups-valuation-tickets-237881900167

A report by UNC's Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise ... 

The venture capital financing picture looks rather bleak for small businesses located away urban centers or the coasts. SBIC fills some of the gap but not entirely.  

https://www.sbia.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Kenan-FundingGap_02042020.pdf 

Abstract

Despite having the deepest and most diverse capital markets in the world, the United States still struggles to provide sufficient capital to many small businesses outside of major commercial centers as well as to women-owned and minority-owned businesses regardless of size or location. This paper reviews the academic literature and provides an analysis of some recent data to gain understanding of the causes of these gaps as well as the solutions for filling the gaps. 

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Not included in this paper is the following thesis: In the same way that community banks are more effective than large national banks at lending to local businesses, crowdfunding could be an important tool to bring and keep investment capital local.  

CfPA President, Samson Williams, sent a letter on behalf of the CfPA to the SEC.  

It begins ...

The Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA) has been closely following the growth of NonFungible Tokens (“NFTs”) and are concerned by the increasing number of NFTs that appear to be offered as unregistered securities. The CfPA is very familiar with decentralized ledger technology that enables the creation of NFTs and digital assets as a whole and has petitioned the SEC in the past to adopt rules on the regulation of digital assets that are securities, such as initial coin offerings (ICOs) and so called stablecoins... 

To read the whole letter, login to download the attachment or visit the ecosystem media library: https://www.crowdfundingecosystem.com/g/crowdfunding-eco-town-hall/medialibrary#media-library 

Times are changing for investors. A lot.

For decades, “angel investors” have been working in groups to invest in startups. Over the past 15 years, a parallel movement has developed called “impact investing,” primarily institutional investors funding projects and enterprises with social impact. A decade ago, the U.S. Congress passed the JOBS Act, allowing ordinary investors to invest in startups in much the same way angel investors have been. Bringing this all together, startups with social missions have begun raising money from ordinary investors.

 
This evolution means that everyone can be an impact investor with as little as $100. The great thing about impact investing is that it provides you with a way to have a social impact without giving your money away. When it works, you invest the money, good happens, and you get your money back with a return. Some wealthy folks have been doing this for a while now.

Angel investors traditionally invest at least $25,000 in each company. They often work in relatively small groups of 15 to 50 people, sometimes aggregating more than $1 million in funding for startups. Most often, they invest in companies that don’t yet have revenue.

In recent years, angels have been using platforms like AngelList.com to screen investment opportunities. Small investors are not welcome.

About a decade ago, Tim Freundlich founded a nonprofit called Impact Assets to allow affluent individuals to invest similar amounts of money through donor-advised funds in impact investments. Giving them access to investments that had previously been available only to institutions has been a hit. The nonprofit firm now has over $2 billion under management.

Since 2016, when the JOBS Act provisions allowing for entrepreneurs to use crowdfunding via FINRA-registered portals to raise money and sell securities to ordinary investors became effective, thousands of companies have done so. Many of these companies have social impacts.

Using a portal called Wefunder, I’ve invested small amounts in several startups. All accepted investments as small as $100.

• PowerPanel is developing solar panels that generate electricity from both photovoltaic (like the solar panels you’re familiar with) and the heat that traditional panels not only waste but are impaired by.
• Halcium Energy and Harmony Turbines both make residential, backyard-scale wind turbines to generate electricity.
• OpenGrants has developed a database leveraging artificial intelligence to help nonprofits find more grant money.
• C-Combinator converts seaweed into sustainable products while simultaneously restoring ocean health.

As more social enterprises are successfully raising money via crowdfunding, more are attempting to do so. There are too many for me to evaluate, even at a cursory level. So, I’m organizing an informal little angel or cherub group focused on impact. Would you like to be an impact cherub?

If you want to join the group or even just want to think about joining the group, please let me know by leaving a comment or signing up here. Even a small group of us, working together, could screen the available offerings each month in a much more thoughtful way, looking for opportunities to do good and earn a return.

See the original post here.