The JOBS Act is actually seven different bills combined and was signed into law April 5, 2012. The bills ranged from an IPO onramp to give emerging growth companies an easier way to get into the IPO market which was dying, to a law to fix regulation A which is a great fundraising tool. This fix was a mini IPO that small companies can do to raise a lot of money. There was also a rule to change private placement so that people could go online to raise money through private placements, instead of having to do that behind closed doors with customers and people you’ve already done business with.

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 JOBS Act.

Watch the Full Crowdfunding Law CLE Class

All seven bills dealt with capital raising. Primarily, to deal with opening up the market of capital raising so that small businesses had different ways of raising money. One of those was called the start-up exemption.

The start-up exemption was a bill that allowed people to utilized sites such as Kickstarter, to sell stock in their company online. Kickstarter was the first true method of equity crowdfunding. This opened up a small business to allow anyone who wanted to invest in their company, to do so. The big differentiator of taking the power out of the hands of the rich and elite, and putting into the hands of the people to fund things was the basis of the start-up exemption.

Initially, this wasn’t called the JOBS Act, it was simply a series of 7 bills that didn’t make any sense together, they had different rules and different things that apply, however they all dealt with raising money for small businesses. A bright staffer, had the idea to name combine the bills and call it something that everyone would want to vote for, the chances of passing all 7 would be greater. Thus the name JOBS Act, which had nothing to do with jobs directly, as JOBS stands for Jumpstart Our Business Startups. Obviously, this was a sound decision as the JOBS Act passed with flying colors.