Anthony Kammer
I came across an interesting post in the Blog of the Legal Times yesterday about two advertising executives who attempted to raise $300 million from online investorks in order to purchase Pabst Blue Ribbon. Rather than approaching large investors, they came up with a rather brilliant method for crowdsourcing the buyout. The two men, Michael Migliozzi II and Brian William Flatow, actually managed to raise $200 million before the SEC stepped in to block the purchase.
Since late 2009, the two friends operated buyabeercompany.com (now defunct) and created a facebook page and a twitter account that helped them coordinate investors. The idea was to attract investors who would pledge money, as little as $5 or as much as $250,000, and they would only be asked to pay this money if they reached the threshold $300 million. Like Kickstarter and PledgeMusic, there was no money out of pocket until the project’s target had been reached.