NC JOBS Crowdfunding Update

The following update is submitted by Mark Easley of the NC JOBS Act of 2013 Team

Today we have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that the North Carolina Senate has adjourned for the year without taking up consideration of HB680, the North Carolina Jump Start Our Business Start-ups (NC JOBS) Act of 2013.  

Despite excellent support around the state and around the nation for this new type of financing for small business using investment crowdfunding, and despite the fact that the bill passed the North Carolina House by an almost unheard of bipartisan vote of 103 to 1, the North Carolina Senate leadership did not think it was a high enough priority to consider this session. The bill is sitting on the table in the Senate Commerce Committee, along with over 20 other bills that the Senate did not get around to acting on. Perhaps your own NC State Senator can explain to you why a pro-small business, pro-jobs, bipartisan bill that doesn't cost the taxpayers a single penny and which allows North Carolina residents the opportunity to invest in their own future and economy in a safe and fair way is not a priority.

The good news is that the bill has now been magically transformed into the NC JOBS Act of 2014. The bill will still be active in the Senate when the North Carolina Legislature convenes next year in what is known as the 'short session' beginning in May of 2014. That means we will still be able to implement this opportunity in North Carolina, but it will be delayed by a year. 

In the meantime, we would like to thank all of our many supporters and friends who have helped us with this effort over the last 5 months, including the team that created the bill, the excellent advice and assistance we got from many experts in the crowdfunding industry nationwide, and the thousands of enthusiastic small business owners, start-up founders, and potential North Carolina investors who followed our progress on the blog and provided us with encouragement. North Carolina has an excellent and rapidly growing start-up community and we are proud to be a part of it.

We would also like to thank the crowdfunding platforms that have expressed an interest in coming to North Carolina to get this program off the ground. We can still do that under the accredited investor crowdfunding models now coming on-line, so we would encourage our partners to consider proceeding with this step in North Carolina. Please contact us to discuss in more detail if you have interest. 

We invite supporters who have interest in doing something similar in their own state to contact the NC JOBS Team and we would be glad to share our experience and advice. Studying this blog and using the links to the legislation would be a great place to start. Then let us know what questions you have. So far Georgia and Kansas have gotten it done, and we would encourage you to help investment crowdfunding become a reality across the nation.

Onward to 2014, and thank you for your support.

Best regards,

The NC JOBS Crowdfunding Team