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Everything we value, from democracy to racial justice, is endangered every day.

Everything we value, from democracy to racial justice, is endangered every day.

At Rise Up Crowdfunding, we believe the world is ours to change if we work together and use equity crowdfunding when appropriate so entrepreneurs can have an opportunity to create or grow a business.

Think about how many small businesses are forced to operate. In some cases, their existence is determined by creditworthiness, or the assets or collateral of their owners, by a group of gatekeepers at a bank. In some cases, small businesses are limited by a lack of access to angel investors or venture capitalists.

Imagine all of the potentially important businesses that have never seen the light of day because of these processes. With significant amounts of potential investments dollar sitting on the sidelines, equity crowdfunding can help create some of those businesses and potentially all the jobs that they have a chance to create.

Investing in early-stage private companies (unlike investing in large public companies on stock exchanges) has been around for a long time, but these investments were mostly limited in the past to wealthy accredited investors and institutions. Access to these types of private investments for the general public was limited until the passage of the JOBS Act and new laws like Regulation Crowdfunding.

The JOBS Act made significant changes to investing in the United States by making it easier for businesses who did not have access to capital to accept investments from people considered “non-accredited investors” who, in many cases, also did not have easy access to this type of investment possibility.

The JOBS Act and Regulation Crowdfunding took friends and family financing and provided infrastructure, technology, and an ecosystem to expand the process in a manner that can be helpful for both companies and investors.

We believe that Regulation Crowdfunding is a transformational concept. We believe some people will be more likely to patronize local shops, restaurants, hotels, and businesses that they invested in. We also believe some of these investors may become brand ambassadors and help spread the word to others they know about the companies they invested in.

We believe that Regulation Crowdfunding has the ability to bring a new pool of investment dollars into more women-owned, minority-owned, veteran-owned, and LGBTQ-owned businesses and startups.