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142 Locavesting<br />
freely, and normal people who can only invest in what the big<br />
fi nancial companies <strong>of</strong>fer and promote to them—and anything<br />
small or local will never appear on the menu.”<br />
The petition—fi led in July 2010 and <strong>of</strong>fi cially dubbed File No.<br />
4-605—makes the case that such an exemption would promote<br />
capital formation with minimal investor risk. There’s been a relative<br />
groundswell <strong>of</strong> support for the proposal on the SEC’s site—<br />
and Whoopi Goldberg has even thrown her support behind the<br />
effort. But not all are pleased.<br />
Lawton, for one, believes a $100 cap is too restrictive. “You<br />
can’t create the next Google in increments <strong>of</strong> $100,” he says.<br />
Besides, an exemption like that, if granted, could dash hopes for<br />
any further action for a decade or so, since the SEC would not<br />
be likely to revisit the issue, so Lawson is working on his own proposal.<br />
“I want crowdfunding to apply to everything,” from capitalintensive<br />
life sciences and clean- tech ventures to startups with<br />
smaller capital needs, says Lawton. “What we need is something<br />
different from these little exemptions. Let’s prove it out. Let’s not<br />
put limits on it.”<br />
In the meantime, the Dodd- Frank fi nancial reform bill passed<br />
by Congress in 2010 actually raised the hurdles for accredited<br />
investors, by excluding from the calculation <strong>of</strong> net worth the<br />
value <strong>of</strong> one’s primary residence. “That’s really, really stupid,” says<br />
Trampoline’s Charles Armstrong. “That’s going to hurt innovation<br />
in the U.S. and hurt the enterprise ecosystem.”<br />
Shave Ice and Crack Seed<br />
Back in California, Jessica Jackley, the c<strong>of</strong>ounder <strong>of</strong> Kiva, is working<br />
on her next venture, a P2P funding platform called ProFounder,<br />
which she started with fellow Stanford University MBA graduate<br />
Dana Mauriello. From their vantage point in Silicon Valley, the two<br />
women noticed a striking gulf between high- tech startups, which<br />
had ready access to venture capital, and entrepreneurs in less<br />
glamorous fi elds who struggled to raise funds. They also saw that<br />
for the latter group, the entrepreneurs’ community—the friends,<br />
family, customers, neighbors, and others that revolve around a