Author: Chad Brooks, BusinessNewsDaily Contributor
Source: BusinessNewsDaily
Interest: While many people thought the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act would increase the chances that business owners would raise capital through an IPO, a survey from Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management found that just 1 percent said it had increased their likelihood of doing so or accelerated plans they already had in place.
Interest: Maine officials recently issued an advisory warning investors to approach crowdfunding investment opportunities with caution, but for several local entrepreneurs such alternative funding has been a lifeline.
"Crowdfunding" describes what happens when businesses solicit small amounts of financing from nontraditional lenders. It's frequently done by smaller businesses appealing to a loyal fan base, or if the business can't get traditional financing from a bank or investment firm.
Author: Kent Bernhard, Jr., Money & Finance Editor
Source: UpStart Business Journal
Interest: The SEC is preparing rules to allow companies to raise up to $1 million a year from just about anyone in return for equity.
Crowdfunding, as the new system is named, could prove to be fertile ground for entrepreneurs. But even the smartest observers of the entrepreneurial ecosystem can’t be sure just how the crowdfunding experiment will play out.
Interest: The University of South Florida ranks 10th worldwide among all universities granted U.S. patents, according to the latest ranking from the Intellectual Property Owners Association.
It’s the second year in a row where USF has been in the top 10 worldwide for universities, joining other institutions including Stanford, MIT, Caltech and Texas.
The Property Owners Association ranked the top 300 organizations worldwide to receive patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2011.
Author: Maurice Lopes and Stephen Temes - Co-founders, EarlyShares.com
Source: Huffington Post
Interest: One of the biggest challenges that prospective entrepreneurs face is generating enough money to get their business off the ground. While bringing on investors has always been an option, another financial backing opportunity know as crowdfunding was technically against the law for small businesses. Crowdfunding is a subsidizing method whereby a large group of individuals combines financial resources with relatively small amounts of money, to help raise capital for a new business venture.
Interest: Crowdfunding isn’t going away. It’s going to increase as companies become more proficient with marketing their products, and as consumers become more acclimated to paying a little to secure hot new product, from hot new companies, before they’re released (and in some cases before the first line of dialog is spoken) or the first line of code written.
Interest: Crowdfunding done right will have a huge positive impact on any economy it touches. But by done right I mean done in a manner that maximizes impact and minimizes both corruption and unnecessary complexity. This is not something that must be accomplished specifically through strict regulation, either. I’m not opposed to regulation, just suspicious of it. I’m suspicious of any government policy that purports to be so elegant as to accomplish economic wonders at little or no cost.
Interest: Two months ago, President Barack Obama signed the JOBS Act into law, making equity-based crowdfunding legal for businesses that want to raise capital in smaller amounts than traditional venture capitalists or accredited investors supply.
Interest: If just one percent of retail investments in savings accounts, money markets and U.S Treasuries was put into crowdfunding of solar projects — that can provide a 5 to 9 percent return to the investor — then that would deliver more than $90 billion for the creation of clean energy projects, according to a new white paper from Bloomberg.
Interest: No less an authority than Forbes says crowdfunding is going to be a major source of small business investment capital very soon.
The growth is not going to be limited to the United States. The European business community is also looking to crowdfunding as a major source of capital according to media reports. Last year the crowdfunding website Kickstarter.com had pulled in $100 million from small-amount investors.
Interest: On April 5, 2012 President Obama signed a new law that holds promise to open new funding sources for franchisees. The JOBS (which stands for Jumpstart Our Business Start-ups) Act is an amalgam of six different bills that were collectively directed at helping small businesses access public capital markets and generate jobs and economic growth.
Interest: In the aftermath of Facebook’s initial public offering in May, smaller, lesser-known companies are preparing for their own debuts on U.S. stock exchanges. Naturally, they are alerting investors in public filings that their small stature and lack of public-company experience can make investing in their stocks a risky endeavor. But some are going even further, listing the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act itself as a risk factor.
Interest: With the economy weighing heavy on everyone’s mind this election season, legislators are hoping it will help them pass a new initiative. The bill is called Startup Act 2.0 and is designed to spark new businesses and jobs.
Although President Obama already signed the JOBS Act into law this year, Startup Act 2.0 is said to be an extension of it.
Interest: Since its enactment, most of the discussion of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) has centered on crowdfunding and the IPO onramp provisions of the Act. However, the legislation’s expansion of Regulation A actually promises to have the greatest impact on small and mid-sized business capital formation.
Interest: Vanderbilt University’s technology transfer program has signed its first local startup in more than two years, signaling the program’s renewed focus on drug, medical device and life science discoveries.
Local serial entrepreneur Shawn Glinter of NanoFerix signed an agreement with the Center for Technology Transfer and Commercialization to research a tech application that he hopes to market to established pharmaceutical companies.
Interest: Texas's $3 billion cancer research fund is taking more steps to defuse a controversy over the role of scientific review in making grant decisions. The Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) now says that a controversial "incubator" grant awarded in March to the University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston will be reevaluated by both scientific and business experts. The institute also plans a broad reconsideration of some of its aims and procedures.
Interest: COLUMBUS, OHIO – Many small businesses get off the ground because a doting parent, a favorite uncle and maybe a few loyal friends believed enough in the concept and its conceiver to help launch the company. Imagine that same dynamic going viral through social media.
Instead of a handful of investors, there are hundreds – maybe even thousands – giving small amounts that add up to a whole lot of startup capital. That’s the power and beauty of crowdfunding.
Author: The University of Colorado Technology Transfer Office
Source: The University of Colorado Technology Transfer Office.
Interest: Five CU licensees were recently selected to receive matching grants through Colorado’s Bioscience Discovery Evaluation Grant Program (BDEG-Co). The State of Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade began the BDEG program in 2007, providing early-stage matching “seed” grants to enable the development and commercial validation of technologies that are licensed from Colorado research institutions by Colorado based start-up companies.
Interest: The group of young technology entrepreneurs in Durham that are working to launch a website where investors can buy ownership stakes in budding new businesses through crowdfunding has raised money to help advance their venture.
The Durham-based technology start-up Motaavi was one of five startups awarded a piece of a $201,000 pie from NC IDEA, a group that provides grants to early-stage companies in North Carolina.
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