Since 2013 crowdfunding has grown from a 7 billion dollar industry, to a 34.4 billion dollar industry in 2015. Just 2 short years the crowdfunding industry has quadrupled globally. A phenomenal growth, crowdfunding took the power of raising money out of the hands of Wall Street and put it into the hands of the people.

Prior to the JOBS Act passing, unless you were a public company and trading on Nasdaq or other markets you couldn’t raise money from ordinary people, you could only raise money from rich people.
The JOBS Act was passed to change all that, allowing small companies to raise money easily from anyone they wanted to, particularly from the people who support their business already.

Kendall Almerico
“One of the top Crowdfunding & JOBS Act attorneys in the country” Forbes magazine
Named 17th most influential thought leader in the crowdfunding industry, VentureBeat
“Top 19 Crowdfunding Experts Startups Need to Know” Inc. magazine

Mr. Almerico is CEO of BankRoll Ventures, who owns and operates BankRoll, an equity crowdfunding web site focused on Regulation A+ Mini IPOs and 506(c) and 506(b) private placements. Mr. Almerico is a regular crowdfunding columnist for Entrepreneur.com and a highly sought after keynote speaker on both a national and international level.

In this CLE class clip, Mr. Almerico discusses the Crowdfunding.

Watch the Full Crowdfunding Law CLE Class

Crowdfunding itself is not anything new. When France gave us the Statue of Liberty, we didn’t have anything to put it on. Joseph Pulizer ran an article in the New York World newspaper asking his readers for help in funding the base for the Statue of Liberty. Joseph said anyone who is willing to donate a dollar or less, will get a little copy of the Statue of Liberty. He raised over $100,000 from 125,000 readers, which of course today would be several million dollars.

Modern crowdfunding was born as a result of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Banks prior to 2007-2008 would give small loans to start a business. After the financial crisis, you couldn’t borrow money from a bank even if you had great credit. Interestingly enough, shortly after the financial crisis, Indiegogo in 2008 and Kickstarter in 2009, launched online to give people a way to fund their endeavors.

One of the first modern success stories of crowdfunding, Pebble watch company needed money to start development of their E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android. They began a crowdfunding campaign where they raised $10,266,845 from 68,929 people who purchased a product that did not exist yet. After that, crowdfunding exploded on the scene as a popular way to get a small business off to a great financial start.