Sherwood Neiss

In your business plan and in your crowdfund investment campaign pitch, you told the crowd what you needed to do, when you needed to do it, and how you were going to do it. Those are your milestones. Summarize them into bullet points and put them on a piece of paper. In his book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits (Gazelles, Inc.

One of the most valuable networking tools you can use is an infographic. Kelly Hoey of WIM says she wouldn’t have been so successful without diverse relationships. The figure shows her infographic indicating the relationship to organizations and people critical for the success of her organization. Credit: Women Innovate Mobile network map 2012 You can use Post-it notes on the wall, a mind-mapping program, or a free infographic program, but get it down.

If you haven’t been scared you away from crowdfund investing yet, that means you probably have some tolerance for financial risk. How much tolerance? That’s a question only you can answer (ideally with guidance from a financial advisor). Creating an investment portfolio that meets your needs demands first assessing your level of risk tolerance.

Crowdfund investing is a new funding opportunity for small businesses and startups that holds tremendous potential, but it's not a free-for-all. Entrepreneurs, business owners, and investors alike should know the legislative boundaries set by the JOBS Act (which opened the door to this funding resource in 2012), the risks involved in this type of funding, and the potential rewards it offers both to companies and their supporters.

If you’ve seen the movie The Social Network, you understand the need to protect your intellectual property. When using crowdfund investing strategies, you need to protect yourself and your business. You can do so in several ways: Don’t tell anyone about it. This strategy is foolproof, but it means that you can’t run a crowdfund investing campaign.

On average, 50 percent of investments in early-stage companies fail. So, the risks of crowdfund investment seem pretty clear: You can lose some or all of your money. Among the failures, 50 percent of early-stage companies run out of cash before they can succeed. The other 50 percent of failures suffer from poor management decisions, poor hiring decisions, poor use of funds, and so on.

Crowdfund investing doesn’t compete with or replace the need for professional private money. Crowdfund investment campaigns have funding caps that are significantly lower than most venture capital and private equity investments. Instead, crowdfund investing runs parallel to private money, funneling funds to types of businesses that previously didn’t stand a chance of receiving private support.

Crowdfund investing is possible because of the passage of the JOBS Act. So, what exactly did the JOBS Act legislation change in the U.S. financial regulatory system? And how do these changes stand to benefit business owners and investors? Promoting emerging growth companies The JOBS Act created a new category of companies called emerging growth companies (EGCs) and gives small, growing companies a five-year window in which to become fully compliant with accounting regulations.

If you’re an unaccredited investor, you can’t invest every dime you’ve got in crowdfund investment campaigns. (An unaccredited investor has a net worth less than $1 million excluding primary residence, and hasn’t earned more than $200,000 for each of the past two years.) Doing so would be a nightmare for your portfolio (you’d be doing the opposite of diversifying), and it also wouldn’t be legal.