In case you haven’t heard President Obama signed into law a bill that is aimed at helping out new ventures, something we are keenly interested in. The bipartisan effort aims to help fast growing new ventures by delaying the point at which they will need to register with the SEC and comply with all of their regulations. The law purportedly helps out crowd funding sites as well.
From FoxNews.com:
The main part of the bill would phase in Securities and Exchange Commission regulations over a five-year period to let smaller companies go public sooner. Firms that have annual gross revenues of less than $1 billion would enjoy this “emerging growth company” status.
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In addition to the emerging growth company and crowd-funding provisions, the legislation removes SEC regulations preventing small businesses from using advertisements to attract investors and raises from 500 to 2,000 the number of shareholders a company or community bank can have before it must register with the SEC.
And Business Week captures some of the statements from the signing ceremony:
“America has always had the most daring entrepreneurs in the world,” Obama said at a signing ceremony at the White House. “Some of them are standing with me today. When their ideas take root, we get inventions that can change the way we live. And when their businesses take off, more people become employed,” he said.
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Helping startup companies “is more concerned with getting Washington out of the way than getting it more involved,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a statement. “This bill is exactly the kind of thing Americans have been asking for — greater freedom and flexibility.”
Here’s a video of the President saying some words before signing the bill.
What do you think of this law? Will it actually help small businesses who are set on going public? How will it affect a crowd funding site like Kickstarter?