When you think of the U.S., you often think of the word “opportunity”.  For hundreds of years, people have immigrated to the U.S. because it was the “land of opportunity”.  That isn’t to say that there aren’t many hurdles – you need an idea, skills, drive, sometimes capital, a dash of luck, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.  But generally speaking, with enough of those ingredients you stand a chance of being successful.
You also need to be conscious of the laws that apply to your business.  If …

By @RoccoTarasi
In the last month the SEC has said that it will consider changes to certain capital markets regulations, including:
1. Raising the 500 shareholder threshold that triggers a public disclosure of financial results (and usually results in a public stock offering);
2. Adjusting the ban on general solicitations that prohibit or restrict publicizing share offerings; and
3. Allowing some form of crowdsourcing to raise smaller amounts of capital from a larger group of investors.  (via Mashable and VentureBeat)
Changing these and other rules are long, long overdue.  Our capital markets operate under some …

Facebook’s sometime-in-the-future IPO is one of the most anticipated stock offerings of all time, and with good reason: in a short time the company has become the de facto standard social network with over 500 million users and a private-company market capitalization of somewhere over $20 billion.  You can even bet on their IPO date on Bodog if you’d like.
But I think that Facebook going public is a bad idea, and here’s why:  a public Facebook will be under pressure to continually increase earnings, putting it in an escalating conflict …

President Obama has signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law.
Besides my general opinion on the size and role of government(*), I wasn’t happy about the initial drafts of the law due to its impact on a start-up companies’ ability to raise angel funding.
Under the previous regulations, start-ups raised angel funding from only “accredited investors” to minimize their legal costs, hassle and time to close.  During the initial drafting of this new law, Congress proposed raising the bar to quality as an accredited investor from a …

At first it was (sometimes) amusing when the airlines started instituting their new fees.  They smelled of desperation, but at least a few made logical sense.  Premium pricing for exit row seats?  Okay, I get it.  Early checkin fee on Southwest?  Not a problem.
You see, every day consumers are faced with basic cost-value decisions.  I can buy a $20 pair of jeans, or a $120 pair – they will both keep my legs warm.  

What a coincidence that on the day I finished listening to the audio version of The Big Short by Michael Lewis, the SEC announced charges against Goldman Sachs for improprieties from the subprime mortgage mess.  A lot has been written about Goldman’s central role in the subprime industry since the meltdown, so it is not a surprise that they were the first investment bank to be targeted.  Will they be the last?  Only time will tell.

First an important disclaimer – this article is NOT for OR against healthcare reform!  I (and most reasonable minds) can agree that (1) having ~50 million people uninsured is terrible, (2) our government is not exactly the model of efficiency in almost anything it does, (3) healthcare costs are growing out of control, and (4) our economic problems (read: deficit) provide serious obstacles to paying for expensive initiatives.
I’m not opining on whether a plan will work or not and what it should look like.  What I am very interested in …

As the saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch.   With disruptive innovation, someone is the disruptor and someone else is the disrupted.   Unfortunately the government may be increasingly on the wrong side of this equation.
An interesting article was penned by Joe Weisenthal titled “Internet Startups will Destroy the Government”.  A catchy title sure to lure tech entrepreneurs (and some would-be anarchists too).