A few weeks ago, SNAP – the parent company of Snapchat, went IPO. It’s the first tech IPO in a long time and it nearly doubled in price, then settled back down to slightly over its offering price, netting the founders about $5B each (as of this writing)
Over the last few days, I’ve spent a lot of time “talking down” people who seem freaked out, standing on a virtual “ledge” ready to jump off because the Donald was just elected the 45th President of the United States. While his stance on innovation is still up in the air, as I mentioned in a previous post, this is a perfect example of what some may call a Black Swan event, a totally unexpected major outcome.
If you’ve read the news over the last few weeks, you’ve probably seen the article on Walmart buying Jet.com for $3B. While it remains to be seen if the “marriage” will work, we are starting to see a shift in the way middle and major corporates see ups, maybe not as rivals, but as partners.
You don’t need much more evidence than the last year’s numbers from Kickstarter to understand that crowdification is in full swing:
You can see: the crowd is fully engaged. We no longer want to sit back and be told what we get – we want to actively participate in the product creation process. We want to build too.
This is something that I’ve been wondering for a long time – why do we still, in this day and age – have this insane rule dating from the Great Depression regarding having to be, basically, rich, in order to invest in a company? There are so many exciting startups that are out there that your everyday joe would love to be a part of, but due to some arcane rules from another time, people are simply blocked from investing in businesses they might like to see succeed one day. A huge, whole swath of the population makes less than $250k a year, has less than $1M in assets, but would love to invest a few bucks in something they love.