Early in April, President Barack Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, a new law aimed at easing access to capital for young companies. The JOBS Act encourages small businesses and startups to raise funds through online 'crowdfunding', an approach to investment that captures some of the same networking techniques and energies that Twitter and Facebook bring to social communication. Companies are also given five-year exemptions from meeting stringent securities law requirements. “This legislation will make the pathway to capital formation more attainable for small biotechnology companies, encouraging American innovation by removing bureaucratic hurdles,” says Jim Greenwood, president and CEO of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) in Washington, DC. It also will help them better “focus their limited funds on research rather than on compliance [and] will speed the development of new cures and treatments.” The Washington, DC–based National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) also welcomes the JOBS legislation. It “will help revitalize an IPO [initial public offering] market that has suffered in recent years under the weight of market volatility and one-size-fits-all regulation,” says NVCA chair Paul Maeder, a general partner at Highland Capital Partners, based in the Boston office of the international VC enterprise. “The passage of this legislation sends a strong and welcome signal to our most promising companies that the US capital markets system is open for business.”