A surprisingly common answer to (a) is to just kind of casually ignore those rules for a while. Nobody recommends this, but Warren Buffett, Michael Milken, and James Cramer all admitted to doing it -- and it definitely worked out for them in the end. The spirit of the accredited investor law is to protect the ignorant from the malicious; in the case of smart people willing to risk small sums on other smart people, it doesn't quite apply.