Helping Angels Lead Our Startups Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, as a small-business owner and coming from a family of very entrepreneurial people, I know the importance of fostering an environment that promotes economic opportunity and especially allows small businesses to grow and create jobs.

West Michigan, which I represent, is a hub of entrepreneurial activity. Organizations like the Grand Rapids Inventors Network and a very innovative place called Start Garden are the center of that.

Start Garden does two demo days a year with very sophisticated investors. In fact, over the last 3 years of Start Garden's existence, they have helped and launched 200 various companies and have given them that investment.

One of those is Boxed Water is Better. Just this past week, my office received its first shipment from Holland, Michigan, of Boxed Water is Better.

Founded in 2009, the team at Boxed Water combined west Michigan ingenuity with capital from investors through Start Garden, who now employ 60 people and have facilities in both Michigan and Utah. They sell their product in over 8,000 stores nationwide and are now starting to sell around the globe.

Small businesses across the globe and across the country like Boxed Water are looking for real solutions from Congress to help them innovate and thrive.

The JOBS Act, a solution designed to jump-start capital formation for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and startups, was signed into law in 2012. Instead of helping small businesses access capital through the JOBS Act, as Congress had intended, the Securities and Exchange Commission has choked off avenues of that capital formation.

In order to participate in a demo day, the SEC requires startups to register a securities offering and verify the sophistication level of potential funders, something most of them do not have the physical or financial means to do, according to Start Garden.

I thank the gentleman from Ohio for introducing the HALOS Act, an important bill that connects fledgling companies to angel investors who may provide them with the capital that they need to turn their startup into a growing, thriving business.

By exempting demo days featuring many small businesses like Boxed Water and others, these participants are not considered as general solicitors under the Securities Act.

We need more entrepreneurs to expand, hire, and invest, and the HALOS Act is an innovative way of doing that.

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