There’s a persistent narrative in venture capital: crowdfunding is where companies go when they can’t raise “real” money. The crowd is dumb money. The valuations are inflated. The companies fail.

I spent the last several months testing that assumption with data. What I found challenges everything the institutional investment world thinks it knows about Regulation Crowdfunding.

The Market

Investment crowdfunding has quietly become a $3.2 billion market. Since 2016, over 10,300 offerings have been filed with the SEC, with more than 7,180 successfully funded. Unlike traditional venture deals negotiated behind closed doors, every RegCF offering includes financial disclosures—many reviewed or audited by third parties—valuation data, and ongoing progress reports. All public record.

At CCLEAR, we’ve aggregated this data into what may be the most comprehensive database of early-stage private company performance ever assembled.

The Dataset

For this analysis, we applied rigorous filters: equity offerings only, funded offerings only (those that hit their minimum target), and we excluded withdrawn offerings and project-based raises (individual real estate deals, solar installations, etc.). We also separated parallel offerings to isolate RegCF investment amounts from 506(c) components.

The result: 4,358 unique companies with standardized, comparable data. Approximately 60% of these companies had financials reviewed or audited by a third party.

And the numbers tell a story that surprised even me.

85% Survival Rate

Of the 4,358 companies that successfully completed RegCF offerings, 3,708—or 85.1%—are still operating today. Only 649 (14.9%) have shut down.

Compare this to the oft-cited statistic that 90% of startups fail. Even accounting for methodological differences, the crowdfunding cohort is dramatically outperforming expectations.

Why? One theory: companies that successfully mobilize hundreds or thousands of individual investors have already proven something. They’ve demonstrated the ability to build community, communicate a vision, and convert interest into capital. These are the same muscles required to build a lasting business.

The Multi-Round Signal

Here’s where it gets interesting. Of those 4,358 companies, 699 came back for a second (or third, or fourth) round of crowdfunding. These repeat issuers provide a unique window into company trajectory—something almost impossible to track in traditional venture.

Among these 699 multi-round companies:

• 82% achieved up-rounds (higher valuation than their previous raise)
• 69% showed revenue growth between rounds
• 60% demonstrated both valuation AND revenue growth
• 90.3% are still in business (compared to 85% overall)

The median valuation increase between rounds was 90%.

This isn’t froth. When you can track both valuation growth and revenue growth across successive rounds, you’re seeing real business progress—not just hype cycles.

The Democratization Is Working

One finding deserves particular attention. Among multi-round companies, those with women or minority founders achieved up-rounds 83.2% of the time. Non-W/M founders achieved up-rounds 81.1% of the time.

Statistically identical.

In a venture ecosystem where funding disparities by gender and race remain stark, crowdfunding appears to be functioning as intended: letting the market decide based on merit, not pattern matching.

The “Graduation” Pattern

Perhaps the most significant finding is what happens after crowdfunding. We researched the top-performing RegCF companies to see if they “graduated” to institutional capital. The pattern was unmistakable:

Boxabl raised from over 50,000 crowdfunding investors and announced a $3.5 billion SPAC merger with FG Merger II Corp. (NASDAQ: FGMC) in August 2025, with the combined company expected to trade on Nasdaq under ticker “BXBL.”

EnergyX crowdfunded from thousands of investors, then closed a $50 million Series B led by GM Ventures in April 2023—a strategic investment from one of the world’s largest automakers.

Levels Health raised $5 million from crowdfunding investors (maxed out in under six hours), after securing a $12 million seed round from Andreessen Horowitz in 2020, followed by a $38 million Series A in 2023.

LiquidPiston raised over $25 million through crowdfunding, then secured a $35 million U.S. Air Force contract in October 2023 for hybrid power system development, plus additional Army contracts totaling over $17 million.

These aren’t outliers. They’re signals.

The Opportunity Nobody’s Tracking

Here’s the gap: this data exists. We’ve spent years aggregating it. But institutional investors are still flying blind on the fastest-growing segment of private markets.

Every quarter, hundreds of private companies file standardized disclosures with the SEC—revenue figures, valuation data, use of proceeds, business updates. It’s the most transparent window into early-stage company performance ever created. And it’s largely being ignored.

Consider the parallel to other asset classes. Capital IQ became the standard for public and private company financials. Preqin became the standard for alternative assets. iPREO became the standard for capital markets workflow.

Each recognized that fragmented, hard-to-access data could be aggregated, structured, and transformed into institutional-grade intelligence.

Investment crowdfunding now has thousands of companies, millions of data points, and a regulatory framework that mandates disclosure from the earliest stages of company formation. Congress and the SEC has handed the investment world a gift.

The infrastructure to make sense of it is only beginning to emerge.

What Comes Next

We’re continuing to build out this dataset—cross-referencing crowdfunding companies against Crunchbase, PitchBook, and SEC filings to track which ones raised institutional follow-on capital. Early results suggest the “graduation rate” from crowdfunding to VC is higher than anyone expected.

If you’re interested in the data, the methodology, or what this means for early-stage investing, I’d welcome the conversation.

Sherwood Neiss is the founder of CCLEAR, a venture partner at D3VC, and the author of INVESTOMERS. He co-created the regulatory framework for investment crowdfunding that became law as part of the JOBS Act.