The SEC – Crushing Startup Spirit Since 1929

I have been ripped off. It’s freaking painful. I have had to fight to get money back on a few occasions. It is a massive buzz kill and gut wrenching.

Trust is everything.

The institutions have chipped away at it for decades. WorldCon (chip), ShmEnron(chip), Bernie Madoff (chips ahoy), Banking CEO’s (chipzillion). No worries, the SEC has our back. Woops.

We were teased a few months ago by Obama and the SEC with a lift of the ban on General Solicitation. I worry about the Wild West (and Nigeria wire requests) just as much as anyone, so I never expected it to be clean and simple, but now the SEC has buried us in rules that as Fred Wilson aptly describes…’will neuter’ the whole shebang.

Here is Fred’s whole post. He links to some other friends and investors with a lot of skin in the game as well . Fred is of course as polite as can be in his explanation of the buzzkill and waste. We are talking our books, but they are pretty good books for the most part with a lot of experience.

The SEC has not protected us very well from the crazies that wake up to steal our money. No one could. Thieves live to steal. We need to educate investors on what thieves look like, not pass off protection to an understaffed agency.

This is not Syria type news, but it’s a huge economic step backwards in the making.

We need angel investors and we need startups. We need less rules. We need enforcement of the rules we do have. It is not anymore complicated than that.