<story><title>FundersClub (YC S12) Wants To Bypass VC And Let You Invest In Startups</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/25/fundersclub/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>switz</author><text>&quot;&lt;i&gt;I don&apos;t think crowdfunding is good for startups. For startups, having large numbers of investors is bad, and having inexperienced investors is bad. So having a very large number of inexperienced investors is the worst scenario possible. The right way to get money from large numbers of people is to sell them your product, like Inpulse did, not to sell them your stock.&lt;/i&gt;&quot;
-pg&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3893783&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3893783&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>FundersClub (YC S12) Wants To Bypass VC And Let You Invest In Startups</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/25/fundersclub/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>This scares me way more than sub prime mortgages. The stories of how granny and gramps put the remains of their retirement savings into &quot;startups&quot; because they have like 1000x returns right? And then want their money back and discover that some large fraction of these companies are kids with no clue, no work experience, and have just burned through their &apos;seed&apos; round buying a server farm that turns out overloads the circuit breakers in the garage.&lt;p&gt;Rational folks will say &quot;Gee, that was a poor choice on their part.&quot; but the rest of the world will be screaming &quot;Ponzi!&quot; &quot;Tricksters!&quot; &quot;Scams!&quot; and it will be sad sad sad.&lt;p&gt;I really hope that I am wrong, but I really &lt;i&gt;like&lt;/i&gt; the accredited investor rules, it selects from a smaller pool of victims.</text></comment>