자금조달 수단으로서 Crowdfunding에 관한 법적 연구

This article is about the Crowdfunding as Means of obtaining capital. Crowdfunding describes the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Crowdfunding is undertaken to raise money for a new project proposed by someone, by collecting small to medium-size investments from several other people. Recently, US President Barack Obama sign the Jumpstart our Business Startups (JOBS) Act in 05 April 2012. The JOBS Act is a legislative package designed to jumpstart American economy and restore opportunities for America’s primary job creators: our small businesses, startups and entrepreneurs. One of the JOBS Act is CROWDFUND Act that remove SEC restrictions prevent Crowdfunding, so small businesses, startups and entrepreneurs can raise capital from a large pool of small investors. This Act allows Issuers to pool up $1million from investors without registering with the SEC. Individual contribution are limited to $10,000 or 10% of the investor's annual income, whichever is less. The CROWDFUND Act shows Korea that Crowdfunding is new way of obtaining capital for the Small and Medium Business. But Crowdfunding has a problem of investor protection, because it is exempted from filing registration statement to Financial Services Commission. In order to introduce the Crowdfunding, some measures for investor protection are required. Investment and issue amount limit, Investor Education, outsourcing cash-management functions to a qualified third party custodian, making available on the intermediary’s and issuer's website a method of communication that permits the issuer and investors to communicate with one another, etc. would be examples of investor protections.