Disruption Can Lead to Collaboration, with Crowdfunder's Chance Barnett

Crowdfunding as an entrepreneurial tool is disrupting traditional forms of securing capital. Chance Barnett, founder and CEO of Crowdfunder, explains that collaboration between the new school and old school is necessary to get the most out of a new and emerging capital market.
"We’re seeing a brand-new capital market about to be born and that’s everyday people that can invest in these companies alongside those other more experienced investors. And that’s going to change the face of fundraising for equity and it’s going to change the game for how entrepreneurs speak to the people that can support them financially."
As part of Big Think's collaboration with Singularity University on Exponential Leadership, Chance Barnett explains how the exponential technology behind crowdfunding is revolutionizing the world of entrepreneurship.
In late January 2015, Big Think, where the world’s leading thinkers examine the most essential ideas of our age, and Singularity University, a teaching organization and accelerator, came together to find definitive answers to what constitutes exponential leadership––true leadership for the age of exponential disruption. Chance Barnett is featured in the resulting 2015 Exponential Leaders List.
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Transcript: Well I think every entrepreneur who goes out and dedicates their life and throws everything behind a venture has some moment where they thought this is the thing that I have to do. And for me with Crowdfunder after having done several ventures I actually experienced a bit of anxiety about what am I going to do next. And so in some ways there was this moment of – or several moments of fear of failure or what am I going to do this time. But it was about four years ago that after a long series of a couple of successful startups, a couple of failed ones, I saw this opportunity with a very small group of people who wanted to change how some of the investment laws in the United States really worked.
And they were really about changing those to help small business owners and entrepreneurs. Specifically giving them more of an opportunity to go out and raise money from say their local community or the people around them. Maybe not just friends and family but a broader audience. And it’s actually funny when you look into the securities laws that govern how you can fundraise for a private company in the U.S. that it turns out you’re not supposed to talk to anyone that you don’t already know. So in a lot of ways for an entrepreneur who’s starting a business for their first time even if they’re bright, even if they have domain expertise, if they’re technically skilled but they haven’t started a business and they don’t know a bunch of wealthy investors they’re at a pretty significant disadvantage. So being someone who’s really grown up around the Web who started my first company in the Web 1.0 boom and really have fallen in love with the idea that technology can connect us to like-minded communities and help us in a variety of ways in our lives. I felt really passionate about the idea of hey, couldn’t finance change in this way. Couldn’t finance be more collaborative and help serve entrepreneurs.
And it spoke to me really significantly that there could be an opportunity to change how investing laws work because I had been that entrepreneur in my past. I had had a couple of ventures that had been successful. Started in investing and funding some of my own ideas. I had also failed at a couple of those and actually failed specifically raising money for a company that I had put really about a quarter of a million of my own money in. And that was right around 2008 in a very difficult market to raise venture and kind of was left sitting on my hands and saying oh man, I wish there was a better solution. So Crowdfunder for me is in a lot of ways a combination, kind of culmination of a variety of different passions in my life. It’s about entrepreneurship but it’s also about investing. And I think as entrepreneurs evolve and they have successes and failures they feel compelled then drawn to the idea of I want to help some other entrepreneurs. So really Crowdfund for me is not only putting this disruptive idea of exponential technologies squarely on early stage finance and disrupting that market. But it’s also about helping entrepreneurs at scale and that’s something I’m really passionate about. [TRANSCRIPT TRUNCATED]