0301 2012 Crowdfunding – Capitalism for the 99%

We have recently started a new venture as an idea spin-off from our past venture www.reidex.com at REIDeX, Inc. and the current www.farjho.com at InvestorsAlly, Inc. The way both reidex.com and farjho.com have been trying to deliver the economic benefits of SwapRent and FARJHO to consumers are based on the power of Internet by eliminating the financial service middlemen and offer a service that is better, faster and cheaper than the conventional brick and mortar financial services businesses. This concept used to be called simply C2C e-commerce or later, peer-to-peer Internet matching service. Now, it is called crowdfunding.

 
Therefore it appears that we have been trying to provide the Internet-based crowdfunding services for real estate through both SwapRent and FARJHO as early as 2006 before the term of crowdfunding even emerged in the cyberspace. The reason why that InvestorsAlly has been offering crowdfunding service for home equity sharing is that FARJHO simply corporatizes single family homes and hence make it feasible to use this peer-to-peer matching concept for home owners to raise non-debt but equity based financing.

 
The use of C2C and peer-to-peer concepts could even be traced way back to the REIFO Exchange venture ( http://www.box.com/s/mnm7xhel0uhp9hkehad7 ) started in 2002 as chronicled in the Los Angeles Times article in 2003 ( http://www.box.com/s/qh42krrm2biiv55rkloj ). The ideas of the REIFO Exchange venture were later taken by CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) to let consumers trade futures and options contracts on a different real estate index. Details of this would not be released until 2014 when the 10-year NDA we had with CME expires.

 
The later over 10 year’s journey of transforming these sophisticated concepts to simpler new consumer-oriented products and services while keeping the similar economic benefits has not been an easy one. The new cash flow sharing concept and method of the SwapRent service through REIDeX seemed to be a bit complicated to the average consumers and the commercialization effort of SwapRent was perhaps a bit ahead of its time, no matter how powerful and useful the service could become to consumers and for our national economy.

 
To use an analogy again, it was almost like trying to convince people for a test drive by handing over the key of a new Hybrid SUV to people who are only used to riding horses. The shock and resistance to the new way of transportation were severe. Some people say that there is no traffic rules and if you launch it would create a lot of liability. Other people say that it is way too difficult for consumers ever to learn how to use it. Although the consumer acceptance may eventually take place but we could not wait that long to make a business venture commercially viable. So in 2010 we have pulled back the SUV and created a much simpler bicycle to offer to consumers through a new company InvestorsAlly, Inc. The bicycle analogy is the new FARJHO service. The FARJHO matching service is neither a derivative contract nor does it have anything to do with mortgages like what a SwapRent transaction would be, but rather a very simple new home ownership structure.

 
Through our marketing and educational effort the FARJHO idea seemed to have taken off and become viral in the Realtor community in Southern California since early 2010. Home owners and Realtors have begun to beat a path to our door for helping aspiring home owners with this new equity sharing FARJHO service to own homes since then but there is only one problem left – there have not been enough joint property investors in the current market to satisfy the demand from the aspiring home owners for the FARJHO transactions. Much more effort would be necessary to conduct more educational training under the current regulatory environment for potential investors. In the regard, I am glad to report that we have recently launched our first $20 million FARJHO Reg D private placement fund. More info is available upon request for qualified accredited investors in the US.

 
Nonetheless, we have yet again temporarily put aside the bicycle for more sophisticated users only and created another much simpler tricycle for the vast consumers for an even easier commercialization. Hence the Crowdfunders Choice (CFC) was born in January, 2012.

 
CFC simply focuses on introducing the peer-to-peer technology platform to help entrepreneurs raise equity financing. It is not a proprietary concept that we will need to sell again, which has always made launching new businesses much more difficult. It therefore seemed to be much easier to introduce these crowdfunding concept and method as there have already been many tried-and-true web sites offering similar platforms to conduct peer-to-peer micro-lending or to raise donations for creative projects or for political purposes.

 
The reason it is a much simpler tricycle vs. the bicycle of the equity crowdfunding business model of FARJHO is that the real estate component has been removed from the crowdfunding business model and therefore the new peer-to-peer matching services offered through CFC could be offered to a much broader audience, i.e. people would not have to have prior knowledge or experience with the real estate industry. In addition, people who would like to use the service no longer have to learn some new economic innovative concepts or methodologies any more. Sales calls would not turn into another economic lesson or a heated debate anymore!

 
As explained in the introduction at its web site ( http://www.CrowdfundersChoice.com ), our goal at CFC is to become the Crowdfunder’s Choice for helping entrepreneurs raise start-up equity financing with a special twist – we would like to make this new venture, crowd-sourced, crowd-funded and crowd-owned whenever permissible under securities regulation in order to act as a living proof that this new crowdsourcing business model would work under an unfettered free market capitalism.

 
Our target is to get the 99% of our population to have access to entrepreneurial start-up financing on Main Street in order to keep our free enterprise capitalism alive through promoting and maintaining a more democratic version of capitalism vs. the crony capitalism being practiced and abused by the privileged economic elites on Wall Street. The political image also seems to be a perfect match to the values of PeoplesAlly Foundation.

 
Hopefully through our new alternative funding services some of these entrepreneurs may get to rise up to become a member of the 1% one day. If not, even the top 10% or even top 30% will do, in the true spirit of capitalism. That indeed is our intention – wealth creation for the 99%. It is quite all right to take risk and work hard to become a member of the 1%, as long as they do not transform into a 1%’er or a member of the 10%’ers at the expense of the rest of the 99% or the 90%.

 

 

Filed under: Cash Flow Sharing, Crowdfunders Choice, Crowdfunding, Economic Viewpoints, Equity Sharing, FARJHO, InvestorsAlly, REIDeX, SwapRent, 99%, Capitalism., CFC, Corporatizing homes, Crowdfunders Choice, Crowdfunding, Crowdfunding for real estate, FARJHO, Peer-to-peer, SwapRent

1028 2011 Don’t let the 1% left wing opportunists ruin the good cause of the Occupy WS protesters supported by us 99% Main Street capitalists

One thing that has been very hard for many people to figure out is that what the Occupy Wall Street protesters want. The answer could be very simple as nobody really knows what they want and the reason why nobody really knows what they want is that nobody really knows who could be the legitimate voice to represent the entire OWS protesters. You would get a very different answer every time you bump into one of them.

Squeaky wheels either get some oil or they get ear plug treatments. Without knowing exactly where the squeaky sound comes from, it seems most people just put on their ear plugs. I wonder why this could be an advantage for the OWS protestors that some of the OWS protestors have been trying to tout.

Without some specific goals and/or executable methods, the movement could potentially render itself to the exploitation by the extreme opportunists for a short cut ideological change. Somebody may have to come up with a way to organize them soon in order to rid the movement of these potential harmful abuses by the destructive extremists. Otherwise squeaky wheels may soon become flat tires that could paralyze our country’s economy.

Other economic pundits have predicted that this Occupy Wall Street movement might run out of steam before it gets to achieve anything significant. Personally I am not sure about it as most likely these people who made those comments did so right after they returned back from a shopping trip or from a business lunch in an expensive restaurant. While they got their living necessity fulfilled on schedule, the protestors’ situation has not change and would not change in the foreseeable future. It does not seem that the protestors would stop until they get what they need, let alone what they want, when they figure out what it is later. That sounds like a perfect hot bed for the left wing extremists.

The OWS protestors could have started out with a good cause to fight against the inequality from the abuses and abusers in our capitalistic society but if nothing drastic is done to fix the incompetent government leadership in DC and the crony establishments on Wall Street soon to correct the situations, something bad to our country would very likely evolve from here.

What PeoplesAlly Foundation’s efforts aim for is trying to provide the disadvantaged working class people in our capitalistic economic society some additional free market based choices specifically created for them to stand up and unite to fix the faulty and abused system before they get to resort to toggling between the conventional ideological switches.

There could indeed be many other new free market based alternatives brought about from new innovations such as the new equity sharing based home ownership structure of FARJHO, the new peer-to-peer cash flow sharing based housing finance system of SwapRent and the new foreign exchange rate pegging system of TARELV which could bring the economic and political power from the crony hands of Wall Street back to the common people on Main Street. Innovations on our economic policy management systems that is, not the conventional technological gadget inventions that people would normally associate the word “innovation” with.

With these new innovations on economic systems and policy management tools, disadvantaged working class people could finally get to try some new free market alternatives designed for them for the first time in order to fight for and gain equality against the privileged minorities on Wall Street and DC rather than simply giving up on capitalism and resorting to doing the futile historical toggling between capitalism and socialism/communism again.

Filed under: Cash Flow Sharing, Economic Viewpoints, Equity Sharing, FARJHO, Federal Government, Housing, Occupy Wall Street, PeoplesAlly, SwapRent, TARELV, 1%, 1%'ers, 99%, 99%'ers, Capitalism., FARJHO, Left wing extremists, Left wing opportunists, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy WS, OWS, Socialism, SwapRent, TARELV