Six discrete bills, all tied up with a bow. Together, they would have the following impacts:
- Raises the number of shareholders a company can have before it is forced to go public. You could call this part The Facebook Act. Facebook, among others, was growing rapidly as a private company but quickly bumped up against the 500-shareholder limit, reducing its ability to compensate employees in one of the main coins of the Silicon Valley realm: stock. The new limit would be 1,000.
- Permits entrepreneurs to “crowd-fund” their businesses -- that is, would let small businesses raise money from large pools of small investors (limited to $10,000 or 10 percent of an investor's annual income, whichever is less).
- Creates a new category of firms called “emerging growth companies” that would be allowed a slower accession into the Security and Exchange Commission’s full regulatory and fee structure. The idea is that if small companies have fewer fees, they can go public faster and use the money they get from the public markets to create more jobs.
- Allows small firms to use advertisements to solicit investors, a practice previously banned by the SEC.
- Lets companies looking to raise up to $50 million in share sales avoid SEC registration, up from the $5 million level set 20 years ago.
- Increases the number of shareholders allowed to invest in a community bank from 500 to 2,000.
