Is Crowd-Funding Small Businesses A Good Idea? Ian Schuster Says Yes

A few weeks ago we did a to pass a crowd-funding initiative.

Schuster, president of Schubros Brewery, is expected to open up a brewery in San Ramon soon.

The initiative would allow entrepreneurs to increase investors by selling smaller shares via the Internet. Similar to Kickstarter, a website the crowd-funds a variety of creative projects including documentaries and art projects for relatively small amounts of money.

Schuster recently wrote a piece for sfgate.com's Open Forum where he discussed the benefits of crowd-funding to small businesses.

Sfgate.com, March 30:

Banks are not lending, so small businesses can't get the cash they need. Equity is harder to come by nowadays, given that angel investors and venture capitalists are not as open-walleted as they used to be. Fortunately, we still have friends, family, customers and community we can look to for support, right?

Unfortunately, no. Regulation shuts that financing option down with the 35 "unaccredited" (oversimplified, read non-millionaires) investor-count limit that a non-SEC registered company can entertain. Small business is out, and with that goes our primary job-growth engine.

Schuster goes on to say that the limitation of 35 should either be eliminated or, at the very least, increased.