Meet the People Behind Regulated Investment Crowdfunding

At the Live SuperCrowdHour Webinar You can Meet the Leadership of the Crowdfunding Professional Association

You are invited to watch the webinar at your convenience in the video player above. We are offering a $100 reward, however, to those who attend ten of our monthly SuperCrowdHour webinars. To be counted, you must register and attend via Zoom. (Zoom takes attendance for us.)

At this month’s SuperCrowdHour webinar, we’re hosting the leadership of the Crowdfunding Professional Association, including Brian Christie, president; Jenny Kassan, Vice President; Brian Belley, Secretary; and Scott McIntyre, Chair.

The Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA) and its members have been leading the investment crowdfunding movement since before the passage of The JOBS Act of 2012. Since its implementation in 2016, over $2 billion has been raised via Regulation Crowdfunding. Hundreds of millions more have been raised via Regulation A, which also allows ordinary investors to participate.

Regulated investment crowdfunding enables the issuers to raise capital to hire people, creating jobs; at the same time, it opens ordinary investors to an asset class (direct private company investments) from which they had long been barred.

Brian Christie, President

Brian Christie is Chief Executive Officer of Brainsy, Inc. – an innovative SaaS company offering the world’s first white-label social media engagement platform that can reward participants in the form of any fiat currency, blockchain-based cryptocurrency, or complementary currency. Brian’s vision for Brainsy is that it will spawn 100,000 social media micro-networks – each using its own incentive system and currency (optional) to reward its community of contributors.

Prior to Brainsy, Brian advised or invested in various start-ups and served in a board or executive role at companies such as LTVtrade, Promontory Interfinancial Network, and quantumStream. Specialties include fintech, digital marketing, strategic alliance formation, impact investing, international business development, and cross-border transactions.

He’s a fan of any movement, innovation, technology, law, or regulation that creates opportunities, serves the public interest, and levels the economic playing field. Brian received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Miami University and an MBA from Georgetown University.

Jenny Kassan, Vice President

Jenny Kassan has over 25 years of experience as an attorney and advisor for mission-driven enterprises. She has helped her clients raise millions of dollars from values-aligned investors and raised over $2 million dollars for her own businesses. 

She is the author of Raise Capital on Your Own Terms: How to Fund Your Business without Selling Your Soul (Berrett-Koehler, October 2017).

Jenny earned her J.D. from Yale Law School and a master's degree in City and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley.

Brian Belley, Secretary

Brian Belley is the former Founder of Crowdwise, a provider of educational resources and startup investor tools, acquired by KingsCrowd in 2021. He now serves as the Vice President of Product at KingsCrowd and continues to be an active angel investor in over 200 startups.

Brian holds a dual M.S. degree in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Southern California. After working as an engineering lead and manager at a Fortune 500 company for 10 years, Brian left the defense and aerospace industry to embark as an entrepreneur and founded Crowdwise in 2019.

He serves on the Board of Directors for the Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA) and also on the Board of Directors for ingenuityNE (NE FIRST), whose mission is to support and inspire the next generation of innovators in STEM fields. Brian is an advisor to various startups spanning numerous industries.

KingsCrowd helps investors navigate the startup investing market and make informed, data-driven investment decisions. KingsCrowd's proprietary startup rating algorithm analyzes more than 300 data points on every startup to provide trusted insights, analytics, and ratings. By providing institutional-grade data and analysis that all stakeholders can trust, KingsCrowd enables anyone to "invest like a venture capitalist."

KingsCrowd ensures that investors never miss out on promising private market investments while eliminating hours of work spent searching for and vetting deals.

Scott McIntyre, Chair

Scott McIntyre is a lifelong entrepreneur and global thought leader in Alternative Finance and Economic Development, and since the early 90s, has pioneered innovations in EdTech, FinTech, and AgTech. Scott’s non-profit work at WEconomy.US focuses on driving prosperity for communities in crisis.

Serving as Chief Development Officer at Renaissance Park Corporation, Scott’s goal is to elevate the quality of life by helping advance regenerative agricultural practices capable of driving product development, business incubation, and capital formation for area residents.

Academically, while serving as a Director at the University of Toledo, Scott envisioned and built the school’s first Office of Student Entrepreneurship. He was a co-founder of eCollege, the first and longest-running online education platform in the world. Scott also ran a tech incubator for the State of Ohio.

As a volunteer, Scott frequently advises governments and global business leaders, most recently being selected by the U.S. State Department to address finance Ministers of the European Union in Vienna. Scott serves in leadership at two notable non-profits, the Sustainable Communities Foundation, a 501c4 in partnership with WEconomy.US, and the 501c6 Crowdfunding Professional Association, now in his 7th term as Chairman.