Re: Start Up the Risk-Takers

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Adam Shostack <adam () homeport org>
Date: February 25, 2009 12:52:24 AM EST
To: ctb () msu edu
Cc: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:  Start Up the Risk-Takers

There are strict laws which prohibit speculative investments, such as
VC funds, from taking money from investors who are not "qualified."
Qualified means roughly $250k in annual income, or $1MM in assets.

The laws are intended to protect the middle class from investment
scams, the idea being that the rich, being sophisticated, can and will
do due dilligence before giving their money to such investments.

The open source community ran into these laws when Linux companies
starting offering pre-IPO "friends and family" shares to developers.
Those shares were also (formally) supposed to go only to qualified
investors, who shockingly, make up a small portion of Linux
contributors.

Adam

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 12:01:17PM -0500, David Farber wrote:
|
|
| Begin forwarded message:
|
| From: "C. Titus Brown" <ctb () msu edu>
| Date: February 24, 2009 10:20:50 AM EST
| To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
| Subject: Re: [IP] Start Up the Risk-Takers
| Reply-To: titus () idyll org
|
| (for IP if you wish)
|
| On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 03:49:38PM -0500, David Farber wrote:
| -> Begin forwarded message:
| ->
| -> February 22, 2009
| -> Op-Ed Columnist
| -> Start Up the Risk-Takers
| -> By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
| ->
| <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/opinion/22friedman.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
|
| [ ... ]
|
| -> Call up the top 20 venture capital firms in America, which are  
short
| -> of cash today because their partners ? university endowments and
| -> pension funds ? are tapped out, and make them this offer: The U.S.
| -> Treasury will give you each up to $1 billion to fund the best  
venture
| -> capital ideas that have come your way. If they go bust, we all  
lose.
| -> If any of them turns out to be the next Microsoft or Intel,  
taxpayers
| -> will give you 20 percent of the investors? upside and keep 80  
percent
| -> for themselves.
|
| This is an interesting kind of idea, and reminds me of a thought I'd  
had
| back when this financial crisis started to cascade (sometime between  
May
| and August of last year) -- is there a VC fund for people without big
| pots of money?  I'm thinking of something like Kiva, but for VC.  If I
| could contribute (say) $5000 to such a fund, along with 2000 other
| people, that could bankroll a few startups; it might be a "fun" way to
| participate in VC funding.
|
| Does anything like this exist?
|
| cheers,
| --titus
| --
| C. Titus Brown, ctb () msu edu
|
|
|
|
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