The Maker Revolution

CHAPTER 3Capital, Manufacturing, and Markets

As if access to tools and knowledge wasn't enough of a radical change to drive the Maker Revolution forward (a manufacturing revolution), two other transformative trends are also turbocharging the revolution: access to money (capital) and access to markets.

Let's talk about money first.

Back when I was cofounding my first company, I planned to place an ad in the Los Angeles Times to help raise money to fund the project. My lawyer said it would put me in jail.

Why would taking out an advertisement about a cool startup be against the law? Because there were regulations against advertising for funding, said my lawyer. Then how I was supposed to raise the money? Family and friends, he said. Ha, I growled. My family and friends didn't have that kind of money. (Eventually I able to raise what was needed by leveraging friends of friends.)

This has been the law of the land since the 1930s, following the crash of the stock market. During the Roaring Twenties, at the peak of the stock market craze, investors were responding to stock offerings made in newspapers. To say that it was difficult to know what one was investing in is a substantial understatement. There was little to no transparency; there were few insider trading laws. And doing research on companies, executives, and directors back then was next to impossible.

These days, thanks to investor protection legislation and insider trading laws, not to mention the Internet, Google, LinkedIn, ...