back to article Buy a slice of the next Facebook with just your credit card and browser

America's financial watchdog says anyone with spare cash will be able to buy a slice of a startup online without having to fill out mountains of paperwork. Until now, if you fancied plowing your some of savings into a fledging biz – say a trendy but privately held San Francisco tech upstart – there are all sorts of …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Scammers, start your engines

    I expect about 98% of the new offerings to be designed from the get go as a scam, but people will happily give their money anyway because they'll hope to become rich. After a few well publicized examples and demands that "someone should do something" the SEC will put rules in place that make it pretty similar to participating in the IPO market (which has fewer scams simply because the paperwork puts off scammers who are by nature rather lazy otherwise they'd try to earn their money instead of stealing from others)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Pint

      Re: Scammers, start your engines

      Almost entirely correct. However, for those ideas that need a shove rather than just a bunch of nudges, this works for me. Penny stocks comes to Kickstarter. To add to the foolishness, we need the formation of mutual fund-like organizations that allow we smallfries to pool our cash to buy in to these stocks.

      Have a pint.

  2. Your alien overlord - fear me

    Well dear readers, I am a Nigerian prince who knows one of your relatives very well and they suggested that you may be interested in my start-up company. It involves moving money out of Nigeria. I am only looking for 5% of your net income to give you a gauranteed 10% return. If you could jsut transfer your money to my Bitcoin account.....

    1. Graham Marsden

      Thank you. Since I have another Nigerian Prince who wishes to transfer $43,000,000 to my bank account, please contact him and he will send the funds directly to you...

  3. mathew42
    Pint

    Odds better than a lottery ticket investment?

    The odds are probably better than a lottery ticket investment.

    In fact I think forming a company which takes regular investment payments $170/month and invests that money in a random start-up company (less $100/year) fee, plus 1% of any profits when selling could be an interesting business model.

  4. Tim Worstal

    The scammers will be out in force

    But then they already are on AIM anyway.

    Globo anyone? Sino-Forest? (Not AIM but still). And that telecoms one from last year? Quindell.....not a scam but "interesting" all the same.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Crowd investing

    For all those people who moaned and wailed and gnashed their teeth when their beloved crowd-funded Oculus was bought by Facebook for bajillions, and all they got for their support and loyalty was what they paid for; this here is your answer.

    1. Waspy

      Re: Crowd investing

      "Oh I wouldn't do the stock market, it's a cowboy casino, probably lose all my money".

      "But you've just spunked a load of money on a private project for just a fridge magnet and t-shirt"

      "..."

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is 'afoolandhismoney.com' still available?

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like