[shubb]

That's interesting.

A crowd equity site doesn't exist in the UK, so I presume it is a regulatory problem, but crowd loans to businesses sites do.

I wonder if a specialist 'loans to businesses' site could loan to businesses that have not started yet, with interest proportional to profit, and a fixed 'interest only' term before repayment. Trading these loans would be a problem, and they would not give control, but for a small holder they would function a lot like shares. Sounds pretty viable.

I realize there are some incentives issues here, e.g. why would the board increase profit rather than increase management pay and break even. Conventionally this is because the shareholders would fire them, and because they are more shareholders than employees. But I believe an appropriate incentive system could be done via loans using contracts.