With new investing rules, you can be part of the crowd that’s funding startups

The subject of the e-mail was “Hoping to help,” and it was one of those messages in which the sender is working a bit too quickly to include your name — or anything specific about your situation, really.

“We help startups like yours generate capital to expand their business,” it said. “It’d be cool to talk about if there’s an opportunity for us to work together.”

The e-mail went out to local entrepreneurs, sent by a summer intern at a Boston startup called NetCapital. It got forwarded to me because, well, it sounded a bit sketchy. I had not previously heard of NetCapital, which purports to give average people the opportunity to invest in up-and-coming startups before they hit the public markets.