Mr. Sherwood Neiss, a principal of Crowdfund Capital Advisors, has a strong track record of building and leading successful companies as a chief financial officer. FLAVORx, Inc., a company Mr. Neiss co-founded, won Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award, as well as the Inc. 500 award three years in a row for building one of the 500 fastest growing private companies in the United States. This company was the June 2003 features story in Inc. Magazine. Mr. Neiss is a serial entrepreneur and investor, and has had a long history of successful investments, raising over $25 million in capital and successfully exited a company he co-founded. In a January 2014 article, VentureBeat listed Mr. Neiss as one of the most influential thought leader in crowdfunding.
Mr. Neiss is in the forefront of the crowdfunding industry. As the co-founder of Crowdfund Capital Advisors (“CCA”), a consulting firm serving certain governments and multi-lateral organizations including the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, the governments of Malaysia, Israel, the UAE and Croatia, professional investors, crowdfunding professionals and the entrepreneurial community, Mr. Neiss has a thorough understanding of the industry. He currently serves as the co-founder for the Innovation in Entrepreneurial and Social Finance program through the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. As a serial entrepreneur and investor during the 2008 financial crisis, Mr. Neiss saw a need for a change in outdated securities laws. Mr. Neiss co-authored the “Crowdfunding Exemption Framework” which became the basis of Title III of the JOBS Act to legalize the “equity-based” and “lending-based” crowdfunding. He and his co-authors worked closely with the White House, U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to pass crowdfunding legislation. He was honored to attend the White House ceremony when President Obama signed the JOBS Act into law in the Rose Garden on April 5, 2012.
CCA has worked in over 20 countries on six continents with investors, entrepreneurs, multi-lateral organizations and the governments of Malaysia, Israel, the UAE and Croatia regarding infrastructure, regulatory and capacity building projects to reduce early-stage finance challenges and effectively utilize crowdfunding to create successful ventures, innovation and jobs. Forbes.com also ranked Mr. Neiss as one of the ten most influential people in crowdfunding. Mr. Neiss co-authored the World Bank’s research report “Crowdfunding’s Potential for the Developing World” and is also the co-author of “Crowdfund Investing for Dummies” published by Wiley & Son’s and contributed a chapter for “Crowdfunding – A Guide to Raising Capital on the Internet” published by Bloomberg.
Mr. Neiss serves on the advisory boards of several crowdfunding companies. He is a co-founder and former-board member of the Crowdfunding Professional Association, which is a U.S. trade organization for crowdfunding. He is also a co-founder of the Crowdfunding Intermediary Regulatory Advocates, the advocacy group for the crowdfunding industry currently working with the SEC and FINRA, to establish and maintain crowdfunding rules and industry best practices. In 2012, Mr. Neiss was selected as a recipient of the Crowdfunding Visionary Award and received special recognition at the 2012 Fortune Magazine Leadership Conference.
