August 18, 2013
I am CEO of an early-stage startup. In addition, I manage a variety of community events and educational experiences for emerging entrepreneurs.
The SEC's proposed amendments will drastically inconvenience and inhibit startups from utilizing the impending new public fundraising opportunities. A constant need to file forms and excessive penalties are the worst of these amendments.
Startups are all about speed and efficiency. We're focused on creating great products, new jobs, and growing our small organizations to something large. When we're small, we do not have the bandwidth to file excessive legal notifications and updates about our work. Especially not at the early stages where these public fundraising opportunities will be most beneficial to us.
Most of us will either ignore these amendments (thus breaking the rules and resulting in a ban that essentially kills our startup or restricts us to the same old limited opportunities to find capital) or eschew public fundraising entirely. Perhaps even worse -- startups are all about finding unique avenues to skip redtape and move faster. Accordingly, if these amendments stand, I suspect many startups will find loopholes in order to bypass these onerous requirements.
If you overburden us with these amendments, you'll squander this opportunity to do something great for the U.S. entrepreneurial ecosystem. I ask that you remove these amendments.