I dont think you understand the issues. The article and the other posters are talking about the ability of a small company to issue publicly traded shares via

I dont think you understand the issues. The article and the other posters are talking about the ability of a small company to issue publicly traded shares via an IPO. 2. The internet is not a capital market. If you try to issues shares in the US or to make a market in them you will quickly be visited by the SEC. 3. No. I worked for a $35m revenue company a few years ago which wanted to go public. The cost of preparing for the offering would have been in excess of $3 million. That pretty much eliminates IPOs for small companies. 4. ??? Once a company goes public, it is subject to the costs of Sarbanes-Oxley which entails costs of $3 million and up per year. Sure, simplification of the IPO process for smaller companies entails more risk, but the trade off is a more vigorous startup arena. I once did some back of the envelope calculations that convinced me that the yearly cost of SQ exceeds all the losses from Enron.