[financial promo letter -but not bad thoughts] *America's Next Golden Age Starts in 2014 by Ryan Cole, Contributing Editor, Unconventional Wealth*
Do you remember your first million-dollar idea? Chances are great it hit while you were young, dumb and broke. I know mine did. Back in college, I thought up all sorts of concepts – from redesigned ball-bearing fans that would never squeak to fashionable clasps for scarves so they wouldn't blow off your neck, to computer screens you could control through touch. (Hey, I got that last one kind of right.) Of course, I didn't do anything with any of those ideas. Who knows what might have happened? Plenty were dumb (as I was at that age), and most weren't fully cooked (like me)... but maybe, just maybe, one or two might've had a chance. However, the hurdles were so great – and I was so preoccupied with the rest of life – that I never tried to get anything off the ground. The biggest obstacle? That's easy – aside from the general laziness of a college kid, I knew that getting enough funding to get my ideas into prototype form was prohibitive. It would require tens of thousands of dollars, at least – and well into the six figures to get a real business up and running. Sure, every once in a great while, you can start a company like Apple with little more than the spare computer components a friendly mentor lends you. But for the most part, to get any sort of business going, you need money. Lots of it. However, that hurdle is changing – and fast. Two things are most responsible. *Not Your Father's Office* First, the cost of starting a business is dropping drastically. Today, not only can you register a new company for as little as $100 – but your overhead has been smashed as well. Thanks to the Internet and cloud computing, it's perfectly reasonable to have a company that doesn't own a single office. All projects can be shared and completed online by numerous employees living in different time zones – or different countries. With the Internet, location just doesn't matter anymore. Leasing office space, relocating employees, even storing inventory – all of those costs have been reduced or eliminated for new businesses. What's more, some of the more expensive aspects of a new business can be outsourced. Don't know a thing about computer code? Someone in India does – and will create your software for a fraction of what a US programmer would cost. That's not to say a business will never need to worry about such things – offices are still useful, and when it comes to outsourced labor, you tend to get what you pay for. But while a new company is getting on its feet, there are a number of expenses that used to be necessities and are now luxuries. That's freeing up a lot of people to pursue their own business ideas. In fact, since 1982, the number of small businesses in the States has grown 49%. Since 1980, while big businesses have shed 4 million jobs, small businesses have added 8 million. But it's also just the beginning. *Not Your Father's VC, Either* In addition to needing less money to start up a business, getting the money one does need is about to become a whole lot easier too. Starting (hopefully) next year, a person with a new business idea won't need to take it to a bank for a loan. Won't need to take it to the Valley and present it before a bunch of venture capitalists. Won't need to find angel investors. That's because, thanks to the JOBS Act passed in 2012, ANY private business will be able to get funding... from ANYONE. Think of Kickstarter or Indiegogo – platforms that allow anyone to contribute money toward a project or product. Usually, those contributions are met with little more than thanks – or sometimes an advanced copy of a good. All that's about to change. The JOBS Act allows for equity crowdfunding on a massive scale –instead of contributing out of goodwill, investors will be able to buy a piece of the company. That bakery down the street you've always loved wants to expand? You can go online, buy a piece of the action, and the bakery now has the capital to grow. Your nephew has a zany idea that just might work? Well, you don't need to risk $20,000 finding out – get him set up with a crowdfunding site, convince 40 friends, relatives, and strangers it's worth a $50 flier, and see what happens. Most of the time, the business will fail (just as 75% of VC-funded ventures go belly-up). But as an investor getting in this early, you need only one success for every 10 failures to make great money. And for anyone wanting to start a business – we're about to enter a new golden age. If anyone tells you American ingenuity is dead, feel free to laugh in their face. We're about to see an age of business growth unlike anything this country has ever experienced. Crowdfunding is to business much what the printing press was to the written word. This is the great democratizing force business has needed. The SEC has been dragging its feet setting up the rules, so we're still waiting for this new epoch to open. But it soon will. And when it does, you're going to want to be there at the beginning. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
