Move over mum and dad shareholders, and make way for mum and dad venture capitalists.
New laws being considered by Parliament would make it easier for ordinary people to buy a tiny stake of an infant company, whether they want it to become the next Google or just help a local business grow. For the companies, the changes would mean business owners can get access to the public's money without having to fulfil onerous reporting requirements. It's called crowdsourced equity funding.
Most people are familiar with donation-based crowdfunding, where artists ask for money to record a new album or inventors ask people to purchase a product in advance. This gives them money to buy whatever materials are needed to set up production, such as the successful Flow beehive - with a tap for mess-less, sting-less honey extraction. But funders in this project were getting beehives in return, not a share in the company. 
The government's crowdsourced funding laws won't affect this donation crowdfunding - you will still be able to use Pozible to raise money for your parents to go on holiday or develop your clothes-washing backpack. Instead, the laws could turn Australia into a real-life continuous episode of Shark Tank - a television show where small-business owners and inventors ask millionaires for money in exchange for a stake in the company.
The idea is to open funding options for entrepreneurs and give investors the chance to get in on the ground floor of a company like Atlassian, the Sydney software company that started with a $10,000 credit card and listed recently on the New York stock exchange with a $3.5 billion valuation.
(The new laws were introduced to Parliament before the government's innovation policy announcement in   December. Labor is critical of aspects of the legislation and referred the laws to a parliamentary inquiry, which should report by   February 2016.)
Shark Tank-like investing already exists through the Australian Small Scale Offerings Board, which has raised $145 million over seven years. But under existing laws it has a minimum investment size of about $20,000 and can allocate only 20 retail investors to each company.
Under the new rules, investors can put a maximum of $10,000 into a single company, to limit potential losses, but the number of shareholders is unlimited. Businesses have to be public unlisted companies, but will have lower reporting requirements. A single company can crowdsource a maximum of $5 million in a 12-month period, which means at least 500 shareholders in one small business if it goes for the full amount.
Chief executive of ASSOB Will Leitch said it was likely investors could get on board for as little as $2500. Theoretically there was no minimum investment amount, but paperwork costs would create a minimum number of shareholders, he said.
"We are never going to be able to get $100 for equity because the cost to do administration is between $30 and $40, depending on how many shareholders are coming in."
To qualify for crowdsourced funding, companies must have revenue of less than $5 million and less than $5 million in assets. They get a five-year holiday on reporting requirements. Any company over this threshold can still raise money from the public but has higher regulatory hurdles. However, most of Australia's small businesses fit within this category.
The chief executive of digital publishing start-up Tablo, Ash Davies, said he could have used crowdfunding in 2014. Recently he sold less than 10 per cent of his company to a group of seven investors for $400,000 and is looking for more funding to hire engineers and sales staff. If the rules had been in place in 2014 he would have raised half the money from professionals and half from "the crowd", he said.
However, he warned about relying too much on crowdfunding because business owners would have to spend all their time dealing with dozens of unsophisticated investors.
"Any early-stage investor is probably going to want to have input. Chief executives will have to set expectations and set a very clear vision," he said.
Chief executive of the Council of Small Business Australia Peter Strong said it would be interesting to see how crowdsourced equity helped regional businesses, because the local population might want to invest in nearby employer's growth.
He has concerns for investors and business owners: "There will be shysters . . . because where there is money there are people trying to trick them into giving it away," he said.
The government is proposing a gatekeeper-type role, where a broker is responsible for checking the company's viability and history.
Imagine buying into the first Hills Hoist or Lindsay Fox truck?
Beatbox Kitchen founder Raph Rashid said he started with $10,000 of his own money, but had to source a further $30,000 from friends to buy his first food truck, a kind of informal crowdsourcing. Since opening in 2009, Beatbox Kitchen has expanded to have four food trucks, a doughnut shop and a fried chicken shop. His friends all got a stake in the company and still help out, but Rashid wonders how difficult it would be to handle multiple unknown shareholders.
"The last thing you would want is a minority shareholder not having an idea of what is expected of them, or how they can have an impact on the business. Potentially you get 100 people coming for free coffees, [or saying] 'Hey, I put $100 in, why don't I get a free burger?"'