You can learn more here at http://www.startupexemption.com/crowdfunding-101#axzz1o5kOL9YM -the creators of the framework for the bill that passed the house by 407 to 17. So as the senate moves toward (we hope) the passing of the Jobs Act, which also passed the house with overwhelming bipartisan support, (that has the Crowdfunding bill in it), one thing is certain: its passage will provide startups and early stage small businesses with expanded access to capital.

This bill will create a regulatory framework to let private businesses use crowdfunding to raise up to $2 million annually from investors pledging no more than $10,000, or 10 percent of their annual income, opening up far more resources to entrepreneurs, promoting entrepreneurship, sparking innovation, accelerating economic growth and creating jobs,

What will happen next?
Most agree that current laws prohibiting crowdfunding exist to protect investors from scams, but those laws were written 80 years ago, before the Internet and social media were around to disclose negative information about a business project instantly to interested investors. Crowdfunding comes with crowd feedback. Public forums make the environment more transparent and fraud-resistant, helping to vet and weed out the shady characters that operate all over the world, even in the public markets.
The inevitable proliferation of thousands of crowdfunding sites and millions of participants will impel reasonable levels of investor protection. Participating startups will have to provide a detailed business plan, complete and transparent due diligence, great execution and popular emotional appeal to be seen and considered by investors able to make informed decisions, and they will also need to provide this same kind of disclosure and reporting to the SEC and state regulators.
Crowdfunding sites will need to implement a proper, standardized, business plan and due diligence reporting system to handle the coming demands for transparency and due diligence. And once funded those new entrepreneurs will also be expected to have the ability to communicate their progress on the cloud to a large group of people who will now be shareholders in their companies.
As crowdfunding takes hold, entrepreneurs will begin to use it as the go-to source for initial stages of capital formation. The flood of crowdfunding capital for startups will expand the pool of viable startups qualified for consideration from Angels, VCs and Bankers.
These professional investors will bring a more exacting analysis to the table, giving entrepreneurs an even greater reason to be prepared with a complete business plan and compliant and transparent due diligence information.
crowdfundingroadmap.com/

Simple Standardized Design – Present your business plan to investors and lenders in a simple and easy-to-read format that’s SBA and GAAP compliant.

Collaborate with professionals and partners – Share and build your Fundingroadmap in an easy multiple choice format with your co-workers,

advisors and mentors to receive advice and refine the plan anytime from anywhere.

Enrich your story – Easily embed a video, pictures and drawings in PDF to tell a fuller story.

Communicate on all fronts! – Share and broadcast your listing from our marketplace via Twitter and Facebook and gather votes and attention. Tweet it, Like it, Share it.

Social media integration – Within the reporting system with Twitter and Facebook: gives investors and lenders a context to your story in real-time even on a smart phone or tablet. Have access to everything you will need to present wherever you may meet.

Be reachable -Secure reviewer login system stores all your contact info in one secure place so investors and lenders know how to contact you and you control who has access to your report.

Easy to consume – Your Fundingroadmap is divided into separate sections (including

Business Plan, Due Diligence and Numerical Summaries) where questions are hyper-linked to the relevant answers right away so investors and lenders can make a decision faster.

Get your idea in the spotlight! Increase your online exposure by posting on our virtual Dealflow Marketplace -expand your access and pitch to a world of potential investors, and lenders.

Your Dealflow -  Give investors and lenders access to a complete and accurate report and “Get funded faster.”

Disaster Resistant – Cloud-based storage allows for instant access to relevant documents for FEMA assistance or insurance claims.

In states struck by natural disasters, tens of thousands of small businesses have been damaged or gone in an instant! This has caused unprecedented challenges to the public and private mechanisms designed to address small business access to capital and community recovery

Nothing but the shirt on their backs: Affected business owners are too often left without the necessary documentation or information for FEMA/SBA to process their claims and applications after a disaster.

The longer it takes for a small business person to painstakingly re-construct their documentation, the more likely it is that they will give up and the JOBS they created and their tax revenues will be lost forever.

Look at the facts: SBA and the Department of Labor statistics indicate over 40% of businesses that experience a major fire or natural disaster never reopen and over 50% that do fail within two years.

Preemptive Disaster Planning tools for a FEMA/SBA loan need to be accessible on websites such as http://www.preparemybusiness.org/  and http://www.ready.gov/ to provide a way for small business people to beprepared for an SBA Disaster Loan, as opposed to downloadable PDF list.

Why we need to solve this problem now

Mitigate the economc impact: Responsive and prepared government agencies can mitigate the economic impact of disasters.

Businesses that reopen quickly after a disaster realize increased business revenue, can put people back to work, create new jobs, and provide much needed sales, property and payroll tax for the impacted communities. Early successes are also critical to boosting morale during recovery efforts and can have a substantial positive effect on the community rebuilding effort.

The technology solution

Make it easy, make it available: We have the technology to solve this problem now and increase the success rate of rebuilding American small businesses and towns long before they may need it.

It’s called the http://fundingroadmap.com , a standardized private label licensed cloud-based SBA and GAAP compliant, transparent multiple choice business plan and due diligence reporting system and repository, where all information required by the SBA for a disaster loan is included and can be retrieved from anywhere at any time.

See the list here: https://disasterloan.sba.gov/ela/InfoNeeded.aspx  as required by the SBA.

Cloud-based: Fundingroadmap technology can instantly play a very important role in preparing entrepreneurs and small business owners ahead of time so they can compile and protect financial documents and information in an SBA compliant standardized reporting system that is ready in an emergency for the process of applying for FEMA/ SBA small business loans and other necessary capital.

Completing a Funding Roadmap document enables a business to look ahead, allocate resources, take key steps, meet challenges, solve problems, and embrace opportunities. It provides a place to compile facts, upload and store securely online all of the answers to the mandatory questions and the documents lenders and investors require during the review process for capital.

Keep moving forward: We all recognize the importance of a plan for startups. Less obvious is the need for established companies to maintain long term effective plans that are flexible enough to adjust to changing challenges and goals and can be made instantly available for review by FEMA/ SBA online should an emergency strike.

Improve staff efficiency

Go virtual: Instant access to this critical information will allow FEMA counselors to assist the recovery efforts of those FEMA staff on the ground in the disaster states, remotely and quickly helping determine the current and future status of a company.

Go mobile: This information is accessible on mobile devices and provides instant access for review by investors, lenders, SBA/FEMA or insurance companies, helping small businesses back to productivity much more quickly than current methods. Fundingroadmap helps claims processors to quickly and accurately determine resources to be distributed to claimants after a disaster with complete security and transparency.

You can learn and see more on this short webinar below we presented with our partners the ASBDC:

http://asbdc-us.org/Resources/Webinars.html

The participants’ journey

Keep everyone calm, make the process smoother: Post-disaster processing staff, instead of commiserating with victims and giving them a nearly impossible to-do list of required documents, could instead be receiving applicants armed with everything they need. Claims and loans could be processed in hours, days or weeks, instead of months, years or never.

Bring back jobs: Providing a faster more efficient and successful process for small business owners desperately trying to access capital, to quickly recover after a disaster strikes, rebuilds a community faster, bringing back jobs, community morale and tax revenues.

By implementing a new technologically advanced standardized reporting system, governments can reach victims faster and farther away, engage more easily, and deliver a more successful experience while creating quantifiable results.

This holistic, integrated approach to data management empowers everyone involved and will revolutionize the government’s ability to preserve the businesses of the hard working entrepreneurs who have built this great nation.

By adopting the Fundingroadmap, government can solve the problems as outlined above quickly, and systemically ensure better results.

Here’s how it works.

Register your company on our http://startupsacrossamerica.com Marketplace with a free listing. Include the amount of money you’re trying to raise and where you are located, or sign in to your company’s Funding Roadmap. Bring your A-game to convey the compelling essence of your proposition in your Executive Summary. If you’re a subscriber to the Funding Roadmap Hone your executive summary and upload your video pitch to get across. Fill out the full Funding Roadmap and be ready for serious investors and lenders when they come calling. Whether you’re a subscriber or a free lister, make it exciting for people to invest in you and the public to vote for your idea.

Use social networking to get the word out.

Share your business idea with your friends, followers and fans, let the world know about your vision and innovative business. Use Twitter and Facebook to spread the word and learn more about your company. Encourage friends, followers and fans to vote for you on the marketplace. Impress investors with how the public feels about your idea and the transparent and compliant information you choose to present  to them within your Funding Roadmap .

People love to be the first to discover the next big thing. Their vote for you helps them to be a part of your success. Once you are funded you’ll be aware of a roster of great startups to whom your newly funded company can donate a small percentage of your funding or samples from your inventory, or special discounts for other businesses or non profits that need your product or service. Everyone can recommend and vote for other startups who might receive some of your or others’ largesse. This is how we all “Fund the World Forward”.

Simply register a free listing or subscribe to the Funding Roadmap, post on the Marketplace, then let the networking begin!

We have no influence over Mother Nature but we do have the ability to diminish the amount of pain and suffering that follows in the aftermath of her wrath. When time is of essence and deadlines loom to return applications for recovery dollars, the Funding Roadmap can help speed access to capital quickly and assure the long term survival of vulnerable small businesses. Funding Roadmap securely stores every necessary fact and document for instant access by SBA and FEMA reviewers, to fast track the funding process.

Please watch the linked video and see how easy it is to take advantage of this crucial technology.

View mini-webinar video: http://ginormous.web.officelive.com/FundingRoadMap.aspx

Now you can demonstrate this support to investors in real time. With tens of thousands of twitter followers, credible linkedIn business associates or the enthusiastic comments left on your facebook page, investors can see that you have the ability to influence and inspire potential customers. The involvement of your team with other respected business leaders, mentors, and associates is reflected in social media and helps to bolster confidence among potential investors and lenders.

Helping you capitalize on the power of social media is just one the of the ways the Funding Roadmap –a web 3.0 business planning and due diligence platform on the cloud- can provide transparent information so investors and bankers can make better informed and faster funding decisions.

Networked human capital has become an asset category like any other and can be considered in the valuation of your company. We make it accessible as a click-through for our subscribers to use as part of a truly transparent and complete presentation to investors and lenders on what you have accomplished on the way to realizing your goals. By integrating these networked groups into our cloud based reporting system, reviewing investors and lenders can immediately view a company fan page, youtube video or twitter or linkedIn page as part of the discovery and due diligence process.

Take advantage of Business Planning reinvented for Web 3.0

Explore it here: http://fundingroadmap.com/

Try it here for free: http://www.fundingroadmap.com/free-trial.php

Funding Roadmap is a virtual business plan and due diligence reporting system with video streaming for elevator pitches or other information. It integrates with loan applications and is accessible anytime from anywhere. The Funding Roadmap also provides an ongoing working plan, helping entrepreneurs to run their businesses with the objectives established during the planning process, updatable with ease as the enterprise progresses.

Our multiple choice platform provides comprehensive, compliant information and unique structuring guidance for the entire business planning and due diligence process in a transparent online format only available in the patent pending Funding Roadmap, but which can be private labeled and distributed through any website. Once completed, entrepreneurs use it to present to friends and family, angels or VCs or to be discovered online by investors globally, and also serves as part of their submission for an SBA or other small business loan.

Funding Roadmap compliments business start-up curriculum and courses and business planning books, but is much more efficient, effective and user friendly than the templates and workbooks that usually come with these classes or are available online. Those alternatives require students and entrepreneurs to redo their entire plan into other formats or software like Power Point, excel, and Word to eventually create a presentable document. Then they are challenged to find investors to send or present it to while it sits on a shelf collecting dust. Then just when they get that rare opportunity to show it to an investor they realize it’s outdated and needs a major overhaul. This process is crippling innovation and access to capital for so many talented entrepreneurs with their brilliant ideas who end up on the sidelines when our country and economy desperately need them in the game, launching successful businesses and creating jobs.

Funding Roadmap’s live virtual nature is a boon to coaches, instructors, mentors, SBA, SCORE, SBDC and Chamber personnel who up ‘til now have been conduits for these templates, PDFs and how-to workbooks. These business development and counseling professionals understand the challenges of planning and funding new businesses, and welcome the flexible and confidential collaboration and application opportunities: online, over the phone or one-on-one.

We can file a patent online, we can file our taxes online, it’s time to plan a business and get access to capital online.

http://fundingroadmap.com

The Funding Roadmap planning platform is the perfect vehicle for sharing an entrepreneur’s vision within an expanded circle of support.

http://fundingroadmap.com/

Using friends and family money creates perhaps even more of a moral imperative to plan and manage funds responsibly. Whether friendly investors are demanding or not, the entrepreneurs should be fully prepared to succeed through sound planning.

Time and again, small loans or investments have created seemingly disproportionate numbers of jobs. See this article about the impact of SBA “Express Loans” made through Sams’ Club: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/business/05loan.html in which entrepreneur Michael Golata secures $10,000 and is able to hire three people.

In 2009 there were approximately 7.8 million millionaires, and 1 million “ultra high net worth individuals” with assets of more than $5 million in the U.S. Certainly it is time for these people to stop sitting on their hands and seek out the investment opportunities in their communities and in their fields of interest to benefit themselves and the economy.

We need to usher in an era of activist investors concerned with the bottom line, yes, but also with the well-being of their communities and the growth and health of the American economy. Startups Across America is a free state-by-state interactive map of potential investments for friends and family –and other- investors. Visit at http://startupsacrossamerica.com

Funding Roadmap is the cloud-based business planning tool that takes advantage of the connectivity, collaboration and networking abilities afforded by current technology. Look at and Subscribe to this groundbreaking platform at http://fundingroadmap.com/

When the going gets as weird as it is now, entrepreneurs and investors need to find each other and get going. Together.

“Give us your fired, your under-funded start-ups, your huddled masses of innovative entrepreneurs yearning for access to capital. The wretched refuse of your economically broken shores. Send us the Twitters, the LinkedIn and Facebook tempest-tossed pioneers fighting to claim their piece of the American dream and let them stake a claim on the Startups Across America map, so we can all walk through the golden door.”    -Ruth E. Hedges (with help from Emma Lazarus)

StartupsAcrossAmerica.com is the first entrepreneurial map of the United States, where startups can stand up and be counted. “As it grows it will detail the number of startups in each state and the funding they need to launch. By highlighting the numbers and listing the actual enterprises seeking funds, we intend to help level the playing field for access to capital,” said Ruth Hedges, CEO of Unismart Capital Software Inc.

Startups Across America

While spotlighting the innovation, imagination and self determination that abounds among this country’s entrepreneurs, the Startups Across America map and its listings intend to give investors, community leaders, and other finance-related decision makers a keener understanding of the real dollars needed, state-by-state, for these new enterprises to succeed. ”We encourage every startup to register and stake their claim on the map to bring attention to their efforts individually and collectively,” says Hedges.  The interactive map is being launched in response to lean times for start-up capital. Although start-ups contribute profoundly to job creation, the economic meltdown and the resulting recession have dried up seed capital for such ventures.   Hedges hopes the map will inspire wealthy Americans who may never have invested in early stage startups to discover the volume and depth of investment opportunities across the country and to invest as way to contribute to economic recovery.

“While Americans currently have 3.7 trillion dollars sitting on the sidelines in money market accounts, countless brilliant ideas, technology, research and innovation have been squandered for lack of investment, with ongoing consequences for our health, our economy and our society says Hedges, “

we need to encourage investment in entrepreneurs and innovation in every way possible and provide a fast track system to launch viable new ventures.”  ”The Startup America map allows us to see where startups are located, how much capital they need and what they will do with the funding, so investors can find, research and make sound investments. An interactive picture of the entrepreneurial landscape can help to proliferate reality-based economic activity and renewed prosperity for everyone,” says Hedges. It can be argued that the ambition and innovation of our entrepreneurs are keys to rebuilding the nation’s economy. With more than 15 million Americans unemployed and vying for a scarce number of jobs, entrepreneurship is the crucial means for growing our economy  locally and nationally.  It’s one thing to believe in “the American dream,” the challenge is to fund and facilitate it in the real economy.

This project is to encourage private investors to power a resurgence of small business development in America by backing the creation of new ventures. More than one new business is born every minute. In 2009 business startups reached their highest level in 14 years – even exceeding the number of startups created during the peak of the dot-com heyday. Unfortunately the under-funding of too many of these businesses prevents them from getting safely off the ground, resulting in lost innovation, revenue and job creation, a national crisis we are paying for now more than at any other time in our nation’s history.   As Pulitzer Prize winning NY times columnist Thomas Friedman said:

“We owe our young people something better and the solution is not that complicated, although it is amazing how little it is discussed in the Washington policy debates. We need three things: start-ups, start-ups and more start-ups.” “We couldn’t agree more.

So to be able to see who these entrepreneurs are, where they are, and how much capital they need to launch and succeed, we decided to build a digital map showcasing Startups Across America. Now anyone launching a new company in the USA can stake their claim for a piece of the American Dream on the map and broadcast their funding needs to a nation of possible investors,” said Hedges.  The number of start-ups and the funding dollars they are trying to raise will be totaled by state and showcased on the map so everyone can see where the opportunities are and the money is needed. We can no longer wait for or depend on conventional forms of capitalization, i.e. small business loans, angel and venture capital to provide access to capital to get us out of the economic crisis. Last year the number of applicants who got venture or angel capital was shockingly low, and too many great ideas, products and inventions never saw the light of day. We must provide another option.

To achieve a more level playing field for access to capital, wealthy individuals need to take a more active role investing in entrepreneurship and innovation to help rebuild the American economy. But they can’t do that if they don’t know where the need is, where the pioneers are, and how much capital entrepreneurs need to launch and succeed. And we need to remove certain regulatory roadblocks that for too long have limited access to investment.

We hope entrepreneurs everywhere will join our campaign and encourage startups to sign up onto the map as a first step in a new process to create an expanded flow of investment capital and a new way of clearly seeing the promising Startups Across America.

http://startupacrossamerica.com

For information contact 877-780-8955