FSMA2000 regulations, designed to protect the consumer in their financial dealings, inadvertently roped in early-stage businesses who wanted to pass their business plans around prospective investors.  Even if they were looking for only £50,000 the Act imposed untenable fees and liabilities on them.  FSMA2000 (Financial Promotion Orders 2001) was amended in 2005, after much lobbying by myself and a few others, to assist in loosening up the process, but there is still great fear around about what an early-stage business can or cannot do about raising capital. 

Introduce a complete exclusion for business people/entrepreneurs who simply want to invest and collaborate between/amongst each other. 

Entrepreneurs have always understood risk moreso than any legislator, regulator or financial institution.  Up until the mid-1980’s capital-raising between entrepreneurs was a straightforward process where a business plan would be worked up with the accountant or other professional advisor. 

This business plan would then be passed informally around business contacts and the advisor’s clients, invariably other entrepreneurs, who would in turn be pass it along and discuss, even in passing (now illegal), with other contacts.  Eventually, a dog-eared copy would be opened by someone who, through a myriad of circumstances unique to the entrepreneurial culture, had spare cash, resources and/or time with which he could consider a direct early-stage investment.

It was haphazard and it was informal but, to a large degree, it worked, simply because information was allowed to circulate unrestricted.  We have the mechanism to revive this culture for today's world and make it work at www.growthwire.com (we didn't have the web back then!) but it will not happen until government and bureaucracy get off the backs of our wealth creators.