Enter Mikey Weinstein, The Cyberace Socialist Capitalist
Eric Ellis Los Angeles

02/04/1997

Mikey Weinstein has credentials that would earn him a top slot on the Paula Jones legal team.
He was a lawyer in the Reagan White House, he was Ross Perot's legal counsel during Perot's long-running fight with General Motors and then became the principal in a firm, Find Dad Inc, that tracked down errant husbands and fathers for distressed wives and children and got him a spot on the Oprah Winfrey Show. .
His present company can be reached by a freephone number 1-888-VC-GOAWAY. The "V" stands for "venture" and the "C" for "capitalists", the number summing up Weinstein's attitude to how companies can go public in the brave new world of Internet commerce.
Albuquerque-based Weinstein and partner Jack Ben Ezra have developed computer software that enables entrepreneurs to by-pass lawyers, merchant bankers and stockbrokers and do a fully compliant public listing by offering stock on-line.

For $US1,200 and in just 11 hours, Weinstein's Capscape can replace what the US Government's Office of Management and Budget estimates can take 900 hours, as well as save six and seven-figure professional fees.

"We are socialist capitalists. We want to bring business to the people," Weinstein told the Financial Review yesterday. With a partner in California, Weinstein is pioneering a virtual stock exchange development that goes beyond the trend of dealing stocks on-line.

It comes as President Clinton again focused attention on information technology by promoting the Internet in his inauguration address.

The next launch is expected to be the biggest on-line public offering so far with Capscape - the $US5 million float of Michigan-based Poof Products, which makes foam sports balls such as the "Nerf" line.

A New York brewer, Spring St Brewery, run by a former Wall Street trader, was the first to do so last year in a $US1.6 million Internet offering that complied with Securities and Exchange Commission rules. The brewery owner is now developing another on-line stock exchange.

Weinstein estimates that another 30 firms are planning on-line floats and claims to have "thousands" lining up for his new software products that will further streamline the process, as well as teach "Joe Average" how to analyse investments and police the offerings that do get to the Internet.

Capscape also takes the paper element out of a new prospectus. Rather than distribute thousands of documents via issuing brokers and bankers, the prospectus can simply be downloaded from the web site of the company seeking public ownership. If it catches on, and many Wall Street firms are developing on-line technology, that would be a further blow for the non-profit centres of a broking house, the highly paid, often mystical research department.

"Wall Street can be a big confidence trick and it can be very daunting and arrogant," says Weinstein. "We are supporters of populist capitalism."

He says firms like his are testing legal boundaries in sensitive areas, such as shareholder rights, and this in a legal environment where often the production of a fax copy of a document is not considered legally acceptable. But he says: "Our products more than comply with SEC regulations. We have made it very simple."