Forty years ago, Bryan Ferry throatily boasted "I'm In With In Crowd".  Now, I'm sure Bryan had more lascivous pursuits on his mind than raising finance for a new business start-up, but either way, the "in crowd" has been for decades the only realistic route to obtaining finance.  

Unfortunately, most 'Angel' investors and private equity types went to a different sort of party to the average entrepreneur.  Short of self-humiliation in The Apprentice, or deep-freeze incubation of your brilliant idea for a rare chance to appear on Dragon's Den, the options may have seemed painfully narrow.  Despite being roundly castigated and shamed by governments, regulators, the media and their own customers, the major Banks have appeared immutably slow and inflexible [does everything have to be secured against your home?] Maybe there is a more balanced debate needed about the real costs and risks of credit, but funding for small and start-up enterprises is not a story Bank's have told well.  In recent years, fresh-faced "challenger" banks may well have appeared, but their financing and securitisation model is pretty much the same - just branded differently, with the option of longer branch opening hours.  

Amidst this numbing inertia, entrepreneurs have had to look elsewhere and the business of Crowdfunding has exploded into life.  Unlike the 'dull thud' of old-fashioned banking, Crowdfunding's growth has also been accompanied by wonderful headline-grabbing stories. In 2013, USD10 million was raised for something called the Pebble watch (even though Apple was well-known to have 200 engineers already refining an 'iWatch' of its own). In securing the rights to what may well be the worst name ever for a device ever, rock dinosaur Neil Young has easily raised over USD6 million for a music player called the "Pono".  Meanwhile, almost 100,000 subscribers flooded Kickstarter with enough cash for the feature film 'Veronica Mars' to actually get made, be derided and go straight to video.  

The Crowdfunding fundraising business is now worth over USD5.1 billion world-wide. In global corporate finance terms this is slightly less than 'diddly-squat' [being less than 10% of the total UK Market Cap of Lloyds TSB].  The opportunity then is enormous.  E-normous!  And here's why...

Crowdfunding platforms didn't all go to the same school.  They don't huddle down and compare betting slips in private member's clubs.  They are accessible, urbane, unpretentious, impartial and - now here's the genius - 'democratic' in the best sense possible. One of the newest-shiniest we have seen just launched at the end of August in London. Crowd2Fund was founded by Chris Hancock, who may or may not have gone to the right parties to get started, but indisputably has moved mountains to build and launch something very cool. In an era when caution or replication is the default mode, hats off to Chris and his team in creating something that broadens and deepens the crowd-funding model as a full-service platform that allows potential investors not just to browse and cherry-pick, but to create and build a portfolio of diversified investments.  Here at Wave Your Arms, we have no vested interest of our own other than to wish Chris and his team all the best and, we hope in time, to watch them fly.  Now obviously, when they do, we hope to get invited to the party.  

But as Ferry sang in 1974, "If it's square, we ain't there."