Ideas from the Capital Matchmaker(tm)

The finance bill includes changes to the definition of accredited investor and requires that any private placement be filed for review with the SEC for 120 days.  I encourage you to contact your legislators to make sure that the changes to the finance bill with regard to Angel investing be modified as recommended in this article: http://digg.com/d31PURs?t

Specifically, leave the $1MM accredited investor limit the same expect exclude housing, and eliminate the provision to file with the SEC.  Requiring filing with the SEC for every Reg D filing would only hurt startup businesses and make money for lawyers.

Another aspect that hurts small businesses raising less than $5MM is the current SEC regulation that limits the help entrepreneurs can receive for raising capital to registered broker dealers (and soon investment banks). Other regulations require broker dealers to be responsible for disclosing all the risks of an offering they help with.  This means that they have to spend time and money evaluating an offering, even for a startup raising only $250K.  As a result, nearly all firms don’t allow their members to raise capital for these types of offerings.  This leaves startups that are not experienced in raising capital with no one to turn to.  The American Bar Association has recommended a change to the SEC regulations: “In undertaking this effort, the SEC staff should focus specifically on whether to create an exemption from broker-dealer and/or investment adviser registration requirements for certain finders or instead issue a new regulation enabling these finders to register under a simplified regime aimed at regulating finders engaging in a defined category of activities.” http://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/gbfor22.pdf

Making these changes would help small business.