can being the operative word. There is a very significant market for investments where "sophisticated" – er – Accredited Investors get access to purchase securities that are not available to the public.
Frustration from people who want to but cannot access this market is real and arguably valid, a balancing act between preventing fraud and granting access which is tipped a bit too far towards not necessarily preventing fraud but restricting access for the benefit of a few. (on the other hand before you go public there is a benefit to only having investors that really know what they are doing, the rabble of small time less knowledgable investors can be a business risk before your company is ready for the public)
What I am saying is that the people spouting nonsense come from a place where there is truth, but so many people know so little about it that good discussions are hard to come by.
I do agree with you, though access to private market equity isn’t a sure win by any means. A startup fails to raise their next round of funding 90% of the time every time. The riches are survivorship bias largely. This also doesn’t solve for deal flow which you have to figure out yourself anyways, and to get the equity “clearly” headed for the top you better be able to demonstrate value. You can already access “private market” equity via crowdfunding terms in the JOBS act but those exchanges exhibit heckin adverse selection issues.
The reality is if you’re a high profile founder with a great idea and traction you can get money from mostly everyone while maintaining a nice clean cap table. If you aren’t, you then raise from “suckers” (see the ICO market).
It's as though some of the libertarian leaning commenters think these rules were brought in because the government was tired of seeing so many poor people become wealthy. The reality is the government was tired of seeing so many poor people get rekked and thrown into the welfare system, what little of it there is here.
tl;dr: getting rich isn’t easy and deregulation is likely to cause more harm than good.
can being the operative word. There is a very significant market for investments where "sophisticated" – er – Accredited Investors get access to purchase securities that are not available to the public.
Frustration from people who want to but cannot access this market is real and arguably valid, a balancing act between preventing fraud and granting access which is tipped a bit too far towards not necessarily preventing fraud but restricting access for the benefit of a few. (on the other hand before you go public there is a benefit to only having investors that really know what they are doing, the rabble of small time less knowledgable investors can be a business risk before your company is ready for the public)
What I am saying is that the people spouting nonsense come from a place where there is truth, but so many people know so little about it that good discussions are hard to come by.