Here are our 2013 preliminary top US crowd funders contestants pending the legalization of Crowd Funding for Equity under the JOBS Act. We will do a follow up article in a months time to show additional names and order of strength between the leading brands in North America.
You will find that some are operating already as crowd funding firms for donation and rewards (RocketHub) and some are operating as a broker dealer (CircleUp).
The Live Sites & Companies:
1. CircleUp (not because they are going to be the biggest, but simply because they are operational as a broker dealer doing transactions under the regulations of the Securities Exchange Commission). They have positioned themselves as a crowdfunding firm yet they adhere to SEC regulation which allows them at best to accept up to 35 non-accredited investors (accredited investors have minimum $200,000 per year salaries).
2. Angel.co (kind of a strange value proposition, but they have tons of venture capital and are getting deals done via an awkward relationship with SecondMarket). They are doing close to $10 million in deals per month. They only allow accredited investors to browse the companies seeking capital on their site. However, the accreditation verification is done individually by the investor visiting their site.
3. ConfidentCrowd – a broker-dealer with deep relationships have capacity to enter the space pending how they execute the next few months.
The For-Sure-Sites waiting for a legalized Equity Crowd Funding:
4. Rocket Hub – has four young founders whereas two of them were previously working on Wall Street. This team is the third largest rewards-based crowd funding team in the world. Their desire to enter crowd funding will give them an edge as they have years of momentum.
5. Arctic Island – a broker-dealer and very active in developing for the space. Scott Purcell is a former broker dealer and has the insight how the market operates better than most. The firm was quietly developing their platform and a year ago was ready with it. They are very active now in events nationwide and has the quickest acceleration right now to be a top 3 contender in this space.
6. Crowdfunder – They have a competent team and have already expanded internationally with work being done in Mexico. They have executed on their plan strongly and are the leading Los Angeles based crowd funding platform today.
7. EarlyShares – This Miami based crowd funding firm has spent money on marketing and been active at crowd funding events. They have been committed to the space and we expect good things from them.
8. Crowd Valley aka Grow VC is the internationally leading crowd funding team with operations in Hong Kong and the UK that are expanding into the US in 2013. They have 300+ crowd funding ecosystems and will be a player for crowd funding for equity.
9. Launcht – Launcht is run towards being a securities-based crowdfunding player. The CEO Freeman White is active in the community and we expect strong movements from his team this year.
10. SeedInvest – Seedinvest is a Soho, New York based firm that has done a seed round of investments and are executing to be runners up in the space. Ryan Feit has been active in the tri-state area and raised capital to grow well.
There is activity for crowd funding pure plays – firms focused on leveraging the crowd funding for equity law expected to become a practical law by Q1 2014 (yes, a year from now)
Who else do you think should be on our follow up top 20 list and regular updates on developments on these leaders in the space? We want to see commenting and opinion on this list.
Reposted from the Soho Loft blog
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