I remember an interesting discussion I and some INFSO colleagues had, time ago, with a couple of EBAN (the European Trade Association for Business Angels, Seed Funds and other Early Stages Market Players - http://www.eban.org/) representatives on these aspects. The main topic was how new applications, technologies or services developed within FP7 could go to the market and foster the birth of new startups with growth potential beyond national borders through venture capital support. I think they may bring interesting ideas and comments to this discussion.

To the questions "are there similar initiatives in European countries?" there is one that I consider really interesting: www.goteo.org (in Spanish, English), "Goteo is a social network for crowdfunding and distributed collaboration (services, infrastructures, microtasks and other resources) for encouraging the independent development of creative and innovative initiatives that contribute to the common good, free knowledge, and open code" (source: http://www.goteo.org/about?lang=en).
This is a fantastic example of social innovation + crowdfunding. Fantastic tool for social innovators and very interesting projects.
It would be interesting to gather best practices of this kind all over Europe to understand what their main challenges are, the impact that they are generating and how they can be better supported from a European Policy perspective.

Up to now the US had regulatory barriers to crowdfunding that do not necessarily exist in EU states. In the UK many debt and equity and even debt factoring crowdsourcing companies have appeared with no need for regulation. There is a UK industry body but when I spoke with them about going pan-European they baulked at perceived local interest issues. This fear of broadening national interest groups to a European level needs to be addressed. Examples of companies include Zopa, FundingCircle, Seedrs, and Ratesetter.

There are various initatives in Europe around crowdsourcing with different models, even one where you crowdsource a venture fund that then behaves as a regular VC. Crowdsourcing is an important tool but will not be the solution. It has important issues of adverse selection.

Great point, Toni. Which are the issues of adverse selection you mentioned? what would you suggest in EU level to support start-ups to raise money then? ..Any inspiring example from elsewhere to replicate?

The JOBS act is superb in my view for the US. One of the key things it hopefully achieves is bring back the ability to IPO for mid market companies. Great article in the economist last week on this topic and the Act overall - worth reading if you subscribe.

This is an extremely interesting topic, and in my opinion one of the key ones that need to be discussed among stakeholders.
While crowdfunding projects like Goteo are operating right now, it is /very/ unclear whether this model fits the Spanish and Europeans regulations so far at this moment.
A specific normative regarding crowdfunding should be developed and implemented along the EU, in order to allow healthy competition among crowdfund managers (like Goteo) and make sure this new money source flows to start-ups or projects demanding it.

Also, we need to state clearly the conditions that would regulate the situations where things go wrong, which is something that remais unclear among these platforms and would provide much more confidence to all the parties involved.

Regarding VCs, what do you think about this article? http://www.kernelmag.com/comment/opinion/2151/a-necessary-contraction/

Interesting discussion here.

The article on EU VC is particularly interesting.

I suppose there is no one silver bullet in this domain.

There is a spectrum of interventions required in the following three areas:
Bureaucracy simplification for startups
Supports for Firm from marketing to R&D
An attractive funding environment for founders and investors.

(all underpinned by a strong education system obviously)

We need to identify best practice recognising that some EU states have got many pieces right, but we need blend these into overall significant momentum now for progress.

For VC market specifically, low capital taxes for are important. EU should allow differentiated tax regimes for difference policy interventions. It should regulate on the basis of over all net taxation, not headline gross taxation which is often far less than the rate enforced once the various exemptions and credits are claimed.

p.s. there is a healthy crowdfunding scene in Ireland (well, angel funding really). There are now many examples of startups who have engaged in all fundraising through linkedin for example.

This is a proposal that solves the underlining problem and it is designed to operate in Pan European level. Please read with open mind... http://daa.ec.europa.eu/content/can-democracy-power-web-be-upgraded-and-...