> “I think it’s going to really make a difference for businesses that are not especially fashionable for professional investors,” said James Dowd, the chief exe

> “I think it’s going to really make a difference for businesses that are not especially fashionable for professional investors,” said James Dowd, the chief executive of North Capital Private Securities, a broker-dealer that focuses on private fund-raising. “They want to invest in companies that have the potential to be disruptive to an entire industry. You don’t see a lot of capital flow into ordinary consumer and retail businesses.” The statement about professional investors "want[ing] to invest in companies that have the potential to be disruptive to an entire industry" is really not accurate. The vast majority of dollars raised through Regulation D offerings go to financial issuers (investment funds), not "disruptive" startups. Reg D is also commonly used to raise capital for real estate ventures and funds. Although they certainly don't constitute the majority of Regulation D offerings, "ordinary consumer and retail businesses" do use private placements to raise capital, but the real reason it's more challenging for these businesses to raise capital is not that all professional investors are looking for hundred-baggers. It's that they know there's a strong likelihood they'll never see their capital again at all. This said, I don't have a real problem with Title III. The SEC can't protect investors from themselves, as evidenced by the fact that investors are still defrauded to the tune of more than a billion dollars a year by penny stock schemes. But it's worth observing that the biggest proponents of equity crowdfunding are usually those who stand to profit from facilitating the sale of securities to investors. You'll notice that very few of them ever talk realistically about how those investors are going to get their capital back.