The Grow VC Group participated as an expert in the Transatlantic Economic Council meeting at the White House Conference Center on December 3 and 4. An focal area of discussion was Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME) and their access to funding. Grow VC Group’s Chairman Jouko Ahvenainen gave a presentation and participated in the SME finance panel that also included, for example, Randy Mitchell from the US Department of Trade, David W Blass from the Securities and Exchange Commission, Per-Ove Engelbrecht from the European Commission and Sara Hanks from CrowdCheck Inc.
Transatlantic Economic Council is a common organization of the US Government and the EU Commission. Participants included Ambassador Miriam Sapiro, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative and Daniel Calleja Crespo, Director General, Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry, European Commission, and the EU SMB Envoy. This time the event covered topics like Intellectual Property Rights, Standards and SME Finance. In all these areas, it is fundamental to develop cooperation and common practices to remove barriers from the business environment and enable further growth. Especially common practices, lower barriers and less bureaucracy are important for SMB’s that have less resources than larger corporations. The EU and USA also signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop deeper cooperation.
Jouko Ahvenainen, Grow VC Group chairman, emphasized the importance of open markets in different phases of funding, models to get crowdfunding to work with other investment models, and clear rules and guidelines to get the to market work properly (view his presentation). Grow VC is also open to work with governments and regulators to develop and establish clear guidelines for crowd funding. It doesn’t always mean more regulation, but guidelines to interpret the current regulation and also pre-approvals for models companies want to utilize. It is important for all parties in the market, that the rules of engagement are clear and all parties have good practices to run their business and deal with problems before they happen. Panelists believed that 2013 will be the year of the equity crowd funding implementation.
