Links To Capital

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Links to Capital

This site is dedicated to the entrepreneur -- whether high school student or senior citizen -- who has a fledgling business in need of a boost; garage capital has made every effort to keep these pages current and correct, but cannot warranty them for correctness or suitability to the viewer's circumstances; securities lawyer comments welcome...

Government Agencies:

http://www.sec.gov

The Securities and Exchange Commission of our federal government has done a very good job with its site. I don't suggest spending too much time here, unless you actively invest in securities. Edgar, the computerized public stock filing system our taxes pay for, is located here. So are a number of consumer and legislative links that you may want to visit in the course of preserving opportunity by simplifying capital sourcing. Edgar is a free service.

http://www.sba.gov

I used to frequent the Small Business Administration's "bulletin board" site some years ago, so I respect that the SBA has tried to meet the information needs of small business people through the years. In Funding Garage Inventions , I do not mention SBA lending much, for one main reason: having experienced the long term obligation traumas of a student loan, I cannot recommend either of the other two bankruptcy-surviving obligations of outstanding taxes and SBA guaranteed loans. The SBA can be where miracles happen, though. I once walked in with an idea for a desalination machine, and the SCORE advisor I spoke with had just finished some years in desalination research.

http://www.corp.ca.gov

The California Department of Corporations. This is the regulatory arm responsible for many responsibilities: from regulating HMO's, to handling investor complaints, to "internet offerings," OTCBB and ULOR stocks.

http://www.ss.ca.gov

The California Secretary of State is the authority responsible for registering corporations whether closely or publicly held.

SBIR

The following are government links for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program which makes grants to inventors, in amounts up to $75,000, and follow-on funding in larger amounts for commercialization. To my knowledge, the EPA did not solicit proposals this year. There is an excellent link to a Foundation supporting the development of SBIR grants in the western states here: http://www.sbir.dsu.edu/ . It includes all of the links below, with resources for having one's grant reviewed prior to submission to an SBIR agency. The following is believed to be a complete list of SBIR links at this time.

http://www.sbirsttr.com The Department of Defense. There are many departments incorporated in the DoD, including the Army, Navy and DARPA.

http://www.eng.nsf.gov/sbir The National Science Foundation.

http://www.ed.gov/offices/OERI/SBIR/ The Department of Education.

http://www.reeusda.gov/sbir/ The Department of Agriculture.

http://www.grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/sbir.htm The National Institutes of Health.

http://www.volpe.dot.gov/sbir/index.html The Department of Transportation.

http://sbir.nasa.gov/ National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

http://www.atp.nist.gov

This is the link to the Advanced Technology Program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This is a program that allows a pre-proposal review process. The typical ATP "grant" is a matching grant for a body of research shared among several companies in joint venture and may use sophisticated accounting. The NIST SBIR program I believe is being phased out, but this can be checked at http://www.nist.gov . NIST and EPA have had research budgets large enough for mandatory small business research programs in the past. When budgets become smaller, then government procurement becomes listed only in the Commerce Business Daily, listed below.

http://cbdnet.gpo.gov/

The Commerce Business Daily is a national institution which brings news of government contract bids to savvy business-owners keen to compete for government contracts. It also seems to be a common clearinghouse for grant proposal solicitations from the many agencies which offer grants, if I understand its mission correctly. Few libraries carry the physical newspaper which the CBD-Net site provides electronically.

http://www.uspto.gov

The United States Patent Office publishes the vital information about new inventions, many of which are available for licensing, in the Official Patent Gazette. This information is also mirrored at several sites maintained by companies like IBM. If nothing else, this is a list of highly creative and well meaning people including their areas of expertise. It may be worth your while to contact some of these inventors to offer to help them raise money, and do some "giving forward" that teaches you the process.

Regulatory Organizations

http://www.nasd.org

The National Association of Securities Dealers is arguably one of the most powerful organizations in the country, charged with the voluntary supervision and regulation of individual stockbrokers, and representing the interests of broker-dealers before the government. It is also the non-profit organization which the NASDAQ emerged from. In 1996 it divested itself of its self-regulatory responsibilities by the creation of the NASDR. I am not familiar with the details.

http://www.nasdr.com

It is my understanding that one who becomes an NASD member, which is the majority of financial advisors selling stock-based annuities, is supervised and regulated by the three-year-old NASDR. The R stands for Regulation. If one visits their web site, one finds it is fairly open and accessible. For instance, one can e-mail the NASDR to ask how it keeps track of NASD broker-dealers violating the rule prohibiting charging for making a market in a stock on the OTCBB.

http://www.naasa.org

The North American Association of Securities Advisors is older than the NASD, and has made some efforts to promote and support the U-7/ULOR/SCOR form. Theirs is the link for downloading the U-7. I am not sure whether their membership is composed primarily of securities attorneys or government securities regulators who have no vested interest in securities registration.

http://www.otcbb.com

One could also list this below, because the Over the Counter Bulletin Board is less a service than a product specific to the NASDAQ. A "competing" service would be the "National Quotations Bureau's Electronic Pink Sheets," which was almost owned by the NASDAQ. (The OTCBB is comprised entirely of stocks that are not NASDAQ, so it is otherwise known as the non-NASDAQ OTCBB or NNOTC.) The advantage of a quotation system other than NASDAQ's OTCBB would be in the event a stockbroker was viewing stocks on a system that didn't show OTCBB stocks, or wanted to obtain a price for a stock (such as a thinly trading limited partnership or deliberately affordable "penny" stock) that was not publicly reporting, which is a current requirement of the NASDAQ non-NASDAQ OTCBB. Such a broker could sell what they wanted from their laptop, with the permission of their broker-dealer.

Private Funding Organizations

http://www.fdncenter.org/grantmaker/gws_priv/indiv/milken.html

This wonderful link is to the "Foundation Center" of the Milken Foundation. Although at this time there are many foundations which do not have web sites to link to, this is still a premiere resource for those with philanthropic projects. If you feel your project is either configurable as a tax shelterable enterprise or contest entry or otherwise worth doing charitably, it is definitely worth a visit. Although technically "private," these are primarily tax-deductible charitable organizations. In California, there is a $30 registration fee for non-profit corporations.

http://www.garage.com

According to a Price Waterhouse reply in the "Questions and Answers" "Forum" at Garage.com, if one has a great idea for a million dollar business, one should write it up in a two page executive summary format and show it around to some friends, and if they think it has merit, send it along to Garage.com, or Price Waterhouse. Their Garage.com Securities subsidiary makes Garage.com comparable to other broker-dealers -- who have multimillion dollar budgets. This is a very legitimate group. I had never heard of them when I began this site, and have been thinking of other names for my humble effort to avoid the appearance of plagiarism.

http://www.caltech.edu/~entforum

I have never attended the MIT/Caltech investment entrerprise forums. In the west, they offer programs with speakers and panels on topics announced months in advance, and a chance to meet with attendees before the event. One imagines this is a chance to trade business cards and web site information with players in the fields of securities law, thus financing, manufacturing and venture capital. And maybe do a little, "Hi, I'm with Holographic Antenna, what's your name?" Go to give.

http://www.ace-net.com

The Small Business Administration recommends "Ace-Net," so I am inclined to give it more than a little attention here.

http://www.witcapital.com

Wit Capital was one of the first companies I noticed to aggressively promote new issues on a humble scale, and with great success. They also had an Internet presence very early on. I have just begun to investigate their site. They claim to be "issuer driven and Internetcentric." If I remember correctly, they became an NASD broker-dealer reluctantly. Their masthead slogan is "The Market is Now Open"

http://www.directipo.com

Direct IPO's web site discusses some of the law pertaining to promoting and registering new issues in an enlightening uplifting way. From what I gather visiting this site, it is also one of the earliest of the stock-promoting web pages.

http://netshares.bizhosting.com

This is a referral page for free shares of stock, which one infers allows the referrer a small referral fee, which I don't begrudge. When I began this site, I was unaware that "free" stock shares existed, let alone that they were becoming big business. The closest thing I could recall was an anecdote by Noah Dietrich that Howard Hughes had once been given free shares as an enticement to invest in certain oil wells.

And don't forget to use those search engines!!!

How many different terms lead to financial support? "Investor List" "Accredited Investor" "Who's who investor" "Investment Banks Startup""mailing investor""technology investor""SBIR" "NASD market maker" "Main street investor" "technology angel" "CPA" ...

http://www.dogpile.com