The Questionable Line Between Crowdfunding And An Illegal Securities Offer; The Pabst Brewing Case Study

from the this-won't-last dept

We're certainly among those interested in various "crowdfunding" options out there for various business models, but the ones that seem to work are situations where people are buying something specific for their money, rather than buying "ownership" in a product or company. Once you're trying to sell ownership, you're basically offering equity, and I would imagine that's a huge no-no to the folks at the SEC who very, very, very carefully regulate any sort of equity offer. Mark Glaser points us to the fact that two ad agencies, upon hearing that the Pabst Brewing Company was up for sale decided to set up a website called Buy A Beer Company, with the goal of getting people to pledge a bunch of money that could be used to buy Pabst.

http://url4.eu/1kyoP