{"data":{"type":"company_profile","id":149802,"entity_id":"wefunder:company:149802","attributes":{"canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd","generated_at":"2026-06-11T04:13:16Z","updated_at":"2026-06-10T05:01:20Z","entity_ids":{"company":"wefunder:company:149802","slug":"wefunder:company_slug:kingscrowd"},"profile_visibility":{"owner_published":true,"public_search_results":true,"site_search_listed":true,"privacy_mode":"promote","invite_only":false},"provenance":{"source":"wefunder_public_company_profile","as_of":"2026-06-11T04:13:16Z","claims":{"total_amount_raised":{"source":"FrontCompanySummary#amount_raised","last_verified_at":"2026-06-10T05:01:20Z","as_of":"2026-06-11T04:13:16Z","confidence":"high"},"total_investors":{"source":"FrontCompanySummary#number_of_investors","last_verified_at":"2026-06-10T05:01:20Z","as_of":"2026-06-11T04:13:16Z","confidence":"high"},"active_raise_states":{"source":"Fundraise.visible(nil, nil)","last_verified_at":"2025-02-06T01:17:55Z","as_of":"2026-06-11T04:13:16Z","confidence":"high"},"latest_fundraise_state":{"source":"Fundraise.visible(nil, nil).order(funding_started_at)","last_verified_at":"2025-02-06T01:17:55Z","as_of":"2026-06-11T04:13:16Z","confidence":"medium"}}},"company":{"id":149802,"entity_id":"wefunder:company:149802","slug":"kingscrowd","name":"Kingscrowd","tagline":"Bloomberg For Alt Investing","story":"The Market OpportunityOver the past decade, the world of alt investing (e.g., startups, real estate, credit, collectibles, art) has been completely revolutionized by technology, regulatory changes, and amazing companies like Wefunder, Yieldstreet, Fundrise, Rally Rd., and many others.The $13 Trillion in alt assets (Source: Prequin) that historically have remained offline and often only available to institutions and ultra-high-net-worth is beginning to become available to the masses in a digitally native setting. We sit at the apex of this market, serving all end constituents with data-driven solutions.This is one of the largest new financial markets that will ever be created from the ground up during our lifetime. We envision a future where investing transcends traditional public markets. Individuals will seamlessly diversify their portfolios with startups, real estate, high-end art, and more. Investors in the next decade may think nothing of trading into and out of everything from startups to hotels, to vineyards and farms, to Picassos and Ferraris.\u0026nbsp;The traditional 60/40 stock/bond portfolio of the past is quite simply that - a thing of the past! In the future, we envision a world where individuals may have tailored portfolios that look more like 50/20/15/5/5/5 across stocks, bonds, real estate/debt/land, startups, digital assets (e.g. crypto and NFTs), and unique assets (e.g. art, wine, collectibles, music royalties).\u0026nbsp;The KingsCrowd VisionAt KingsCrowd, we started leaning into this bold new vision of investing over 5 years ago. We started by building the premier data company serving the alt investing sector, with nearly 100% coverage of Reg CF and Reg A+ markets and over 8,000+ tracked raises to date.\u0026nbsp;Our ultimate goal is to own the world's private market data as all global asset classes become digitally native over the next 10-15 years. We are building for the long-term with the vision of being the Bloomberg of everything outside of public equities - such as private companies on Wefunder, debt on Percent, real estate on Fundrise, and other alts on Yieldstreet. KingsCrowd is the one-stop solution for investors, industry insiders, and operators to thrive in the evolving alternative investment landscape.In our worldview, in 10 years, Wall Street professionals will seamlessly use KingsCrowd to get the data they need to trade into and out of private alts and for individual investors to access KingsCrowd ratings directly in their brokerage account to make informed alternative investment decisions.\u0026nbsp;Despite recent tech market turbulence, over the past two years we have worked diligently to fully realize phase one of our bold long-term vision that we see playing out in four key phases.In Phase 1, we built all the components of what we look at as our long-term moat, which is centered on our data flywheel.Our data flywheel fuels growth and separates us from our competition, unlocking new monetization opportunities. More data points on companies and alternative assets directly translate into greater value for our investors.As investors interact more with our tracked data - by adding more companies to their portfolio, sending us more feedback on companies they've invested in, and providing more investor sentiment around where they are bullish and bearish - this enriches the breadth, depth, and accuracy of our dataset.As our data from companies and users continues to grow, we also become more important to industry players - like founders raising capital and the funding platforms themselves - which leads them to share more data with us. All of this creates a powerful network effect: greater data attracts more industry stakeholders while simultaneously improving our data quality and monetization potential.Building for an AI FutureAs AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) continue to evolve and proliferate, we believe we’re entering a pivotal moment in history for data companies.\u0026nbsp;The race between giants like OpenAI and Google and the burgeoning world of open-source LLMs signals a future where we believe these technologies will become commoditized.Rather than the underlying AI technologies themselves, what will truly set future AI applications apart are the datasets behind them. And we believe KingsCrowd is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this opportunity.We've designed our data infrastructure with scalability and AI applications in mind, enriched by an extra layer of insight from our expert team of analysts. This data depth and expertise blend ensure our dataset is unparalleled and extremely hard to replicate.Our unique dataset gives financial institutions, hedge funds, and sophisticated investors a competitive edge and powers our AI-driven tools and processes. These tools enhance investment screening and recommendations for investors, founders, and platforms alike, making KingsCrowd well-positioned in a future where AI is ubiquitous.The ProductThis data flywheel has enabled us to create a product suite that serves the following customers.\u0026nbsp;Retail investors: We provide retail investors with a robust suite of tools that better enable search, diligence, and management of their startup investments.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;Search: With our powerful deal search tools, we make searching the 50+ platforms and hundreds of deals available at any one time just a few clicks away. With our advanced search filters, you can find and identify investment opportunities that fit your investment thesis in seconds. You can also follow companies you are interested in, save your searches, and create CSV downloads for those who want to perform even deeper market analysis. Diligence: We provide quant ratings on every active Reg CF and Reg A+ equity opportunity available to investors. Our detailed rating breakdowns are powered by 300+ data points on each company. The algorithm has been developed over 5+ years by former VCs and data scientists, with early data showing promise!Manage - Our portfolio management tools allow you to track all your investments across Wefunder and other platforms in one place. You get in-depth analytics on your portfolio companies and updates when your companies list new funding rounds or have an exit/failure event. Our valuation tracker tools can also help you track investment returns over time. Our portfolio tool is the most robust tracking tool in the industry. One-Click Diversification - We built an ETF-like fund product with KingsCrowd Capital, a data-driven fund exclusively investing in deals on platforms like Wefunder. One investment exposes investors to 100 of the top-tier companies utilizing our proprietary rating algorithm. In time, we see an opportunity to expand to create a suite of themed funds (e.g. female founder funds, impact investing, etc.) and alt-asset funds (e.g. real estate funds).\u0026nbsp;Our first fund has over $1.6M AUM and sold to 57 LPs in just a few days. We have made 25 investments out of the fund in 2023 and plan to continue to make 25 investments out of our first fund through 2026. Education - We also have two of our industry's leading podcasts and newsletters! We host the only quarterly demo day series that brings together the best founders raising across all platforms to live pitch our amazing investor base with hundreds of attendees and industry-leading sponsors.\u0026nbsp;Platforms: As the industry's definitive data source, we help many of the top funding platforms navigate the online private markets. Our dashboards provide real-time insights into competitor performance, issuer funding trends, and broader market dynamics.\u0026nbsp;Our data and insights are so respected that top platforms regularly cite them, solidifying our position as the market's trusted authority.\u0026nbsp;Founders: We understand the unique challenges and complexities founders face when raising capital online. At KingsCrowd, we have made two strategic moves to serve founders with data-driven solutions. First, we have leveraged our database to create a founder valuation and market comps tool. This tool allows founders to learn about where to list, how much they can expect to raise, and what appropriate deal terms of similar companies have been. We also facilitate platform introductions if there is a founder-platform match made through our program. Additionally, we acquired a majority stake in LawCloud (Co-Founded by Doug Ellenoff, a leader of the JOBS Act) and rebranded it as raisepapers.The raisepapers brand is focused on creating more data-driven solutions for founders, starting with our core offering: the easiest-to-use, lowest-cost solution for filing all needed SEC forms to raise capital online. Leveraging KingsCrowd's extensive data on these filings, we are uniquely positioned to help founders effectively and efficiently file all necessary forms to raise capital online in a more cost-effective, streamlined manner than traditional lawyers. This strategic approach allows us to get even closer to the data and to create long-term solutions around investor relations. We aim to drive greater transparency and data-sharing with the growing investor community, creating a powerful feedback loop within these emerging markets.Institutions: We have numerous institutions interested in or already buying our data. One of our first institutional client channels are universities. Universities buy our financial data to power research about these emerging online private markets. We have served PhDs and Professors at universities including Duke University, Notre Dame University, Auburn University, The University of Michigan, Indiana University, Howard University, University of Arkansas, and more.\u0026nbsp;In looking at Bloomberg's business, it appears they do tens of millions of dollars in sales to universities yearly. We think we have a similar long-term opportunity. We have also had other institutions, such as a hedge fund, invest in KingsCrowd with the hope of tracking liquidity and other types of data as secondary markets evolve. The Business ModelWe're emulating Bloomberg's highly successful monetization strategy.\u0026nbsp;The beauty of our data-driven model lies in its scalability: we can tailor insights from the same core dataset to serve diverse client segments – institutions, asset managers, and Wall Street players – as the online private market expands.In the future, we anticipate a surge in demand from institutions seeking to offer alternative investments to their clients. For instance, Public.com acquired Otis in 2022 to offer the ability to invest in alts like movie rights. As more brokerage firms and asset managers look to offer alts, we can sell our ratings and fund products to firms, like Public.com, that want to provide alt research tools and fund products to their clients.\u0026nbsp;We also see growing interest from hedge funds and asset managers looking to diversify out of public equities and into alternative assets. Our unique data and insights will be a premium commodity for those seeking an edge in this emerging market landscape. At this point, we look to provide data-powered solutions to these types of clients at a much higher premium than our current retail-focused offerings.\u0026nbsp;The CompetitionIn the online private investing data providers field, we stand out with our unique and differentiated approach. Our long-term vision prioritizes solving real pain points for all stakeholders in the market, from investors and founders to platforms and institutions. We achieve this through a highly scalable and mature business model, built on a robust data flywheel that fuels continuous improvement and innovation.\u0026nbsp;While competitors may offer fragmented pieces of our offering, they lack the cohesive business strategy, brand credibility, and the proven track record of KingsCrowd. KingsCrowd goes far beyond, providing deep insights, user-driven feedback, and a comprehensive view of the private markets landscape.The Secret Sauce - Our Proprietary DataOur data flywheel delivers unmatched value because it's built on an exceptional foundation. So how do we create our data, and where does it come from?\u0026nbsp;We generate over 300 data points for every company we track. Our data is compiled from a multitude of sources including: SEC form filings, funding platform APIs, historical performance that leverages our database, third-party databases (e.g. for market sizes), our own analyst insights (e.g. founder experience), and invaluable user-generated data, such as our proprietary crowdsourced bullish/bearish ratings. TractionData-driven businesses typically face two initial hurdles that we have had to overcome.The first obstacle was gathering enough data to make anyone interested in what you are doing. For instance, when I started KingsCrowd in 2018, there were only a handful of yearly deals, and we had little data history.\u0026nbsp;The second obstacle was building initial brand trust and credibility. When I started this business, incessant naysayers asked me why they should trust KingsCrowd. We were nobody, and people treated us that way.\u0026nbsp;After investing millions in building our data and ratings platform and taking the time to nurture our brand across the industry with investors, platforms, and founders alike, we have emerged as the most trusted, well-regarded data brand in our industry. That, along with our 5+ years of highly accurate historical data on a fast-growing market, has made our core dataset a highly valuable commercial asset.\u0026nbsp;Over the last year, we have focused on commercializing our business across all key segments we see in the near term. We have shown an ability to grow revenues very well despite a challenging market environment. Last year, we grew by 60%+ while reducing overhead by 85% (unaudited, cash-based accounting) on our path to achieving break-even by late 2024/early 2025.\u0026nbsp;Note: Above are future projections of revenue growth, though these are not guaranteed.We have built traction around data, brand, users, and now revenues, cementing our product market fit and sustainable growth trajectory. The 2024 Strategic Plan And Uses of CapitalIn 2024, we have three focus areas for KingsCrowd:Top line growth: In 2023, we generated 50% of our revenues from business lines that didn’t exist the year before, including data sales, founders tools, and sponsorship/events. We found a clear product-market fit with these segments. Now is the time to lean into these and double and triple down where we see growth opportunities.\u0026nbsp;Product Excellence: Our focus is on improving retail investor customer retention by delighting customers with a best-in-class experience. More importantly, customer feedback has clarified that we need to help investors beyond just making investment decisions. This includes adding new ways of tracking your investment performance over time and providing resources like a tax tool for tracking gains and losses in a simplified way.AI automation and efficiencies: In 2023, we launched AI-enhanced analyst reports powered by our proprietary database, which has enabled us to provide more market coverage with fewer resources. Moving forward, we plan to continue to find internal efficiencies utilizing AI-powered tools and internal items we are building to make our data processes scalable and cost-effective. This focuses on enhancing data quality and helping us keep costs low as we drive profitability.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;With these focus areas in mind, we are raising capital for four key purposes:\u0026nbsp;Onboarding VP of Business Development: In January, we welcomed Mike Vandenbos to the team as VP of Business Development. Mike will focus on growing our sponsor partnerships, data sales, and build out our educational resources for founders and accelerators. KingsCrowd will continue to build community and startup ecosystems by growing our virtual and live event program, which right now includes our quarterly demo days. We will also provide a marketing/sales budget to support our Business Development efforts.\u0026nbsp;Tech budget: Invest in more tech staff/consultants to support tech investment efforts to improve the product, create new product capabilities, and create more AI-powered solutions to enable better scaling of internal processes.Bolster balance sheet: In our efforts to achieve profitability, we not only want to hit profitability, but we want to have a strong balance sheet to ensure the business's long-term health.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;Leave room for acquisitions: We think opportunities are beginning to present that will provide room for future acquisitions that may accelerate our ability to enter new asset classes or geographies. Having a strong balance sheet can assist in closing these potential deals.We believe focusing on the above areas will allow us to spend the next two years leaning into Phase 2 of our journey. By leaning into profitable growth will allow us to decide when and how we raise future funding at a desirable time and maximize future shareholder appreciation.\u0026nbsp;","location":"Chapel Hill, NC","website":"https://kingscrowd.com/companies/","total_amount_raised":308721,"total_investors":219,"is_funded":false,"is_active":false,"quality_score":4,"related_urls":["https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd","https://kingscrowd.com/companies/"]},"media":{"share_image_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/header_media_photo/149802/xxl_blob.jpg","logo_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/logo/149802/large_blob.png","header_media_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/header_media_photo/149802/standard_blob.jpg","cover_photo_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/uploads/company/header_media_photo/149802/standard_blob.jpg"},"links":{"company_url":"https://kingscrowd.com/companies/","linkedin_url":"https://linkedin.com/company/kingscrowd","twitter_url":"https://x.com/kingscrowdinc","facebook_url":"https://facebook.com/kingscrowdtech","youtube_url":"https://youtube.com/@KingsCrowd"},"highlights":[],"quick_facts":[{"index":1,"claim_id":"claim-fact-1","value":"$735,000+ in 2023 revenues, +60% YoY revenue growth (cash-basis, non-audited)"},{"index":2,"claim_id":"claim-fact-2","value":"Created KingsCrowd Capital - A $1.7M ‘ETF-like’ data-driven fund powered by our algo"},{"index":3,"claim_id":"claim-fact-3","value":"Pursuing path to profitability late 2024/early 2025 (forecast, not guaranteed)"},{"index":4,"claim_id":"claim-fact-4","value":"50% of revenues now generated by B2B sales"},{"index":5,"claim_id":"claim-fact-5","value":"Building a data flywheel to serve all stakeholders in the growing digital private markets"},{"index":6,"claim_id":"claim-fact-6","value":"Launched raisepapers brand to serve founders with form filing and data solutions"},{"index":7,"claim_id":"claim-fact-7","value":"Nearly 100% equity/debt coverage of RegCF/RegA+ markets over 5+ years"}],"team":[{"id":4150958,"entity_id":"wefunder:company_role:4150958","user_entity_id":"wefunder:user:49654","role":"founder","name":"Chris Lustrino","title":"Founder \u0026 CEO","bio":"Founder \u0026amp; CEO of KingsCrowd since 2018 with a background in private equity and venture backed startups with millions in sales since founding. 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Prior to joining MVP, she led the teams at Carta, Nasdaq Private Markets and is currently a GP at Manhattan Venture Partners.","avatar_url":"https://wefunder.com/rails/active_storage/blobs/redirect/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsiZGF0YSI6OTIwMjQsInB1ciI6ImJsb2JfaWQifX0=--8e82a14f89dc47ac8922db96d7aa6322725ee5a4/filename","profile_url":"https://wefunder.com/andrea.walne.1","endorsement_name":"","is_lead_investor":false,"related_urls":["https://wefunder.com/andrea.walne.1"]},{"id":8196,"entity_id":"wefunder:company_investor_profile:8196","investor_profile_id":3725143,"investor_profile_entity_id":"wefunder:investor_profile:3725143","subject_entity_id":"wefunder:user:4236125","name":"Larry Eiben","role_title":"","avatar_url":"https://uploads.wefunder.com/2021/user_default_icon_circle.png","profile_url":"https://wefunder.com/larry.eiben","endorsement_quote":"In my opinion, KINGSCROWD is a vital component to the growth of the venture capital industry and, more broadly, alternative investing. Providing actionable data on potential investments that are available online will empower investors and yield better results. Online fundraising is a rapidly growing channel that will replace traditional methods and KINGSCROWD is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this trend. Moreover, as secondary markets develop, decision-support tools will be of paramount importance. I find that the founder, Chris Lustrino, has unparalleled knowledge of the online alternatives infrastructure and has built an impressive team to take KINGSCROWD to the next level. I'm excited to be part of the journey.","endorsement_name":"","investment_total":140000,"investment_info":"Invested $55,000 this round \u0026 $85,000 previously","is_lead_investor":true,"related_urls":["https://wefunder.com/larry.eiben"]}],"investor_memos":[],"tab_counts":{"posts":20,"ask_questions":30,"featured_investors":8,"faq_entries":5},"active_fundraises":[{"id":105992,"entity_id":"wefunder:fundraise:105992","state":"successful","offering_type":"4(a)(6)","funding_type":"note","structure":"ttw","security_type":"","currency":"USD","testing_the_waters":true,"min_purchase":250,"max_purchase":9,"funding_target":750000.0,"minimum_target":"50000.0","maximum_target":"750000.0"},{"id":105991,"entity_id":"wefunder:fundraise:105991","state":"successful","offering_type":"4(a)(6)","funding_type":"note","structure":"custom","security_type":"custom","currency":"USD","testing_the_waters":false,"min_purchase":250,"max_purchase":9,"funding_target":750000.0,"minimum_target":"50000.0","maximum_target":"750000.0","funding_started_at":"2024-03-05T01:55:41Z","funding_closed_at":"2024-04-30T04:04:23Z","auto_close_at":"2024-04-30T03:59:59Z"}],"latest_fundraise":{"id":105992,"entity_id":"wefunder:fundraise:105992","state":"successful","offering_type":"4(a)(6)","structure":"ttw","testing_the_waters":true,"can_invest_now":false,"funding_started_at":null,"funding_closed_at":null,"terms":{"eb":null,"nb":null,"txt":null}},"recent_posts":[{"id":173138,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:173138","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"30 Minutes To Close","preview":"Well, there isn't too much left to say. Thank you for an incredible raise. I promise, no more updates from me tonight. This is your last 30 minutes to get into the round on the current terms. We'd love to have you join the journey by investing tonight!Thank you to the 230 of you that have already invested and to all of those who have helped us add over $30,000 just today. I'm humbled and thankful. We just might hit the $350k mark by the bottom of the hour. Best,Chris","published_at":"2024-04-30T03:30:53Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/173138","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/173138"},{"id":173137,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:173137","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"Last Call: 1 Hour To Close","preview":"Dear Investor,Just 1 HOUR TO GO!\u0026nbsp;In the last week, we have raised over\u0026nbsp;$120,000 from 100+ investors on Wefunder\u0026nbsp;as we work to close out our round with a major showing from our community.\u0026nbsp;This in addition to a $60,000 offline investment at the same terms from a boutique investment firm out of Chicago we received today increases this past week's raise total to over $175,000!\u0026nbsp;Incredible.\u0026nbsp;Well, this is your last chance to help us add to these totals and get in at the...","published_at":"2024-04-30T02:55:08Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/173137","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/173137"},{"id":173132,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:173132","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"Our Community Round In Review","preview":"Dear Investor,We have had an amazing community round that is closing in just 2 hours. And I wanted to take a quick look back at some of the highlights from our campaign itself.I really committed myself and our team to creating as open a line of communications as possible during this raise to help set the mark of how we think community rounds should be run.During the raise we hosted 3 pre-recorded webinars with industry players including The CRWD, The Next Big Thing HQ and VC Pete. We also hos...","published_at":"2024-04-30T01:54:54Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/173132","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/173132"},{"id":173125,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:173125","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"KingsCrowd Closes $60K Institutional Investment","preview":"Dear Investor,I am excited to announce, that we just closed on a $60,000 investment offline from a boutique investment firm out of Chicago on the same terms as this round around\u0026nbsp;5:30 ET! In fact, this firm had already invested $65,000 in the round and decided to reinvest based on our current performance and the outstanding results of this Wefunder round.\u0026nbsp;This brings our total raised to over $1.55M.\u0026nbsp;The Wefunder round helped affirm for them the demand and interest in our service...","published_at":"2024-04-29T23:18:47Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/173125","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/173125"},{"id":173098,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:173098","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"Less Than 12 Hours To Go!","preview":"Dear Investor,We have less than 12 hours until our community round will close on Wefunder. We keep adding dollars and new investors to our round, which will only further help us to achieve our business goals in the coming months and years!\u0026nbsp;Some of our highlights that took place just during this round alone include:A record-setting revenue growth quarterNew product launches including our portfolio updates and tax centerA major new family office investor\u0026nbsp;Two new data API partnershipsS...","published_at":"2024-04-29T18:32:56Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/173098","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/173098"},{"id":173062,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:173062","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"Last Day! Upgrade your perks","preview":"Dear investor,What a fantastic experience it has been raising on Wefunder for the past couple of months. Your outpouring of support and thoughtful questions has helped us to have a really successful raise.With 195 investors and almost $270,000 raised on Wefunder alone, it's safe to say that our customers and community have come through in a major way.But the round closes this evening and we aren't finished! If you haven't already invested please join us today by clicking invest. My day end go...","published_at":"2024-04-29T13:39:59Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/173062","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/173062"},{"id":173041,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:173041","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"KingsCrowd Capital Adds $175K+ in AUM","preview":"Dear Investor,We are coming down the home stretch with less than 36 hours to go before we close the round. Thank you to everyone who helped us surpass $250K in the last 24 hours. What an incredible showing to help us achieve this milestone and get featured by Wefunder.I also wanted to share one additional update with all of you before we close the round.\u0026nbsp;Over the last quarter, KingsCrowd Capital has added over $175K in AUM (assets under management), a bit more than 10% growth as investor...","published_at":"2024-04-28T18:31:03Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/173041","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/173041"},{"id":173013,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:173013","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"An Ask From KingsCrowd","preview":"Dear investor,We are just $25k away from hitting $250k raised on Wefunder and we've surpassed $1.4M total raised in the round! If we hit $250k in the next 24 hours we will get a featured email to the Wefunder community that could drive significant new investment dollars before we close Monday.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;So with that in mind, I have an ask. If you have been following our story or have already invested and like what you have seen and heard, I urge you to invest today or up your investment so w...","published_at":"2024-04-27T17:18:05Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/173013","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/173013"},{"id":172965,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:172965","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"Closing Alert: Invest Before Our Monday Deadline","preview":"Dear Investor,I am delighted to say that we are finishing our round strong on Wefunder and will be closing on Monday! If you haven't already be sure to\u0026nbsp;invest here. Or feel free to share if you have any friends/coinvestors that may want to invest as well.Some of our most recent highlights include:Nearly\u0026nbsp;40% YoY sales growth in Q1Over $45,000 in\u0026nbsp;Form C-AR sales across 70+ clients via raisepapers$155,000 investment from a\u0026nbsp;notable family officeLaunch of our new\u0026nbsp;Deal Cons...","published_at":"2024-04-26T17:49:43Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/172965","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/172965"},{"id":172918,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:172918","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"Form C-AR Sales Surpass $45,000","preview":"Dear Investor,With just a few more days before we close our round, I am excited to share\u0026nbsp;with you our really strong Form C-AR (Form C- Annual Report) sales via raisepapers!As a reminder, founders are required to file an annual report after conducting a RegCF offering in a given year by the end of April the following year.In this report, the investor gets access to key business updates as well as updated financials for the most recent year. In an effort to help drive better compliance and...","published_at":"2024-04-25T17:39:17Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/172918","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/172918"},{"id":172865,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:172865","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"New Deal Considerations Checklist Feature + Final Week Countdown","preview":"Investors,We're excited to announce a powerful new feature that we’ve just released on KingsCrowd: our Deal Considerations checklist. This checklist highlights key challenges and potential risks for each offering, helping you make more efficient and informed investment decisions!These key challenge and risk areas highlight potential red and yellow flags that investors should be aware of before investing in any offering.This checklist streamlines your investment decisions by:Highlighting Key D...","published_at":"2024-04-24T16:52:50Z","author_name":"Brian Belley","url":"/feed/172865","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/172865"},{"id":172827,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:172827","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"Live In 1 Hour - Investor Webinar","preview":"Dear Investor,I wanted to send one last reminder that we will be going live at 1ET today to discuss all things KingsCrowd and answer any last minute questions you may have about our raise before we close next Monday. Be sure to join us by SIGNING UP HERE!! See you in 1 hour!Best,Chris","published_at":"2024-04-23T15:57:37Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/172827","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/172827"},{"id":172614,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:172614","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"KingsCrowd Closes On $155,000 Investment","preview":"Dear Investor,I am excited to share that we just closed on a $155,0000 investment from a family office offline. Additionally, this family office will be investing $100,000 into the KingsCrowd Capital fund!\u0026nbsp;This investment was made at the exact same terms you are investing on Wefunder bringing the total raised since launching on Wefunder to $330,000+.\u0026nbsp;This is also another mark of our continued ability to attract investments from both individuals and institutions. As we enter the last...","published_at":"2024-04-18T18:37:44Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/172614","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/172614"},{"id":172536,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:172536","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"A Deep Dive With Chris Graebe","preview":"Dear Investor,As part of our current Wefunder round, I have committed myself to providing as many touch points to interested and current investors as I can to help you conduct your own thorough due diligence on KingsCrowd.You may have already checked out my deep dive conversation on The Next Big Thing or attended one of our investor webinars including this one with several of our team members, but today I am really excited to share my latest deep dive interview.\u0026nbsp;In this deep dive, I sit ...","published_at":"2024-04-16T18:51:14Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/172536","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/172536"},{"id":172429,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:172429","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"39.7% YoY Q1 Sales Growth!","preview":"Dear Investor,I am delighted to announce that in Q1 KingsCrowd had a record quarter with $150,831 in booked sales, a 39.7% YoY CAGR from last year's Q1.\u0026nbsp;Below are some of the key highlights from the quarter:\u0026nbsp;One thing to note, our subscription renewals are largely back loaded in Q3 and Q4 and Q1 is always our lightest revenue quarter so annualizing these numbers will not get you to the trajectory we are on. The important number here is our YoY growth figure.\u0026nbsp;In short, Q1 surpas...","published_at":"2024-04-11T19:43:18Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/172429","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/172429"},{"id":172165,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:172165","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"Announcing New Portfolio Tracking Features and Tax Center!","preview":"One of the big advantages of building the industry’s most robust datasets is the ability to quickly build valuable investor and founder tools on top of that powerful dataset.\u0026nbsp;Today, we’re proudly announcing two new features available to all KingsCrowd users, Free or Paid, in their portfolio. These new features are:The ability to add custom, off-platform investments (e.g. Reg D, other alt investments)Your portfolio “Tax Center” - to help investors review and organize their portfolio exits...","published_at":"2024-04-04T13:33:13Z","author_name":"Brian Belley","url":"/feed/172165","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/172165"},{"id":172085,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:172085","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"Watch It Back: Investor Webinar","preview":"Dear Investor,In case you missed our live investor webinar last week where we had on myself as well as our VP of Product, VP of Business Development, Senior Associate and COO of raisepapers, you can now watch it back here:This will give you an in-depth look at all things KingsCrowd from our product, growth, and algorithm plans to our market perspectives, and answer many of your fellow investor's questions.We are just 12 investors away from hitting 100! Let's keep the momentum going. We can't ...","published_at":"2024-04-01T23:23:09Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/172085","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/172085"},{"id":171973,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:171973","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"Freeform Portfolio Launch \u0026amp; Webinar Reminder","preview":"Dear Investor,I am excited to announce the launch of a new feature that we are releasing in beta today!\u0026nbsp;Many of you who utilize our free portfolio management tool, which you can\u0026nbsp;learn more about here, have asked for the ability to track all of your offline investments as well. Our product team listened and has developed the ability to do just that.Reminder, you can create your own portfolio here for free:\u0026nbsp;https://kingscrowd.com/register/free/The goal with enabling investors to ...","published_at":"2024-03-27T15:56:49Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/171973","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/171973"},{"id":171893,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:171893","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"Invite Only: Investor Webinar","preview":"Dear Investor,I am excited to welcome you this Thursday March 28th at 12 ET to discuss all things KingsCrowd. We will be diving in on all facets of our business from our growth plans, product roadmap, ratings/data updates, raisepapers and more.Most importantly, you will have the opportunity to hear from many of our team members including the following: VP of Product - Brian BelleyVP of Business Development - Mike VandenbosSenior Associate - Olivia StroblCOO (raisepapers) - Peyton TheodoreThis...","published_at":"2024-03-25T14:31:13Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/171893","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/171893"},{"id":171747,"entity_id":"wefunder:feed_item:171747","type":"FeedItem::Update","visibility":"public","title":"Check Out My Interview On The Next Big Thing HQ","preview":"Hey everyone,Thanks for being an investor or follower of KingsCrowd. Passing $100K this weekend was an outstanding\u0026nbsp;first milestone that I am very proud of.\u0026nbsp;Especially because it was driven by our own customers. There was no one major check or person driving up the round. It was over 70 individuals, almost all of whom are users of KingsCrowd! An investment in us is incredible validation that we are providing a true value add service to our customers.\u0026nbsp;In the weeks to come, I look...","published_at":"2024-03-19T18:53:56Z","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","url":"/feed/171747","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/feed/171747"}],"q_and_a":[{"id":278386,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278386","question":"I'm just happy to know there is an owner/founder out there with big enough balls to state the facts as they are, no excuses, no bullshit and I sincerely appreciate the effort to give prior investors the opportunity to take advantage of it. Thank you. A time back I tried the service on a trial basis, somewhat skeptical, but remember my comment at the end, you Earned the subscription and a the raise. Again through you actions you've earned another raise, in my opinion equal to my two prior investments. I appreciate your hard work, I'm on that site every day.","author_name":"Roger Evans","votes":12,"created_at":"2024-03-10T20:17:15Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-278386","answers":[{"id":278520,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278520","answer":"Roger, that's amazing feedback. Thanks for the support and being a valued customer. Glad you find our site helpful in your every day investor workflow. That's all we could ask for. Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":5,"created_at":"2024-03-12T17:37:59Z"}]},{"id":278120,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278120","question":"In 2022, I wrote a story and commented on their page about Kingscrowd CEO Chris Lustrino, cashing out $1 million in their Reg A raise. I said that Kingscrowd was burning millions with not a ton of growth. Despite this, insiders cashed out $2 million. Now, investors are sitting on massive dilution here, and Kingscrowd is low on cash. Insiders will make millions while investors get hosed. This was sadly predictable.","author_name":"Caleb Naysmith","votes":11,"created_at":"2024-03-06T19:53:28Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-278120","answers":[]},{"id":278612,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278612","question":"Interesting. Rather than seeing this down round as an opportunity to increase their position, some are upset. On Republic I didn't invest, because it was too high, but I did invest when it was cheap on Netcapital. Now that I see value again, I will invest. 👍","author_name":"Titus Polichnia","votes":7,"created_at":"2024-03-13T23:55:29Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-278612","answers":[]},{"id":278127,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278127","question":"What happened to the share price?","author_name":"Jeremy Kemp","votes":5,"created_at":"2024-03-06T20:38:40Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-278127","answers":[{"id":278198,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278198","answer":"Hey Jeremy, thanks for the question. I believe you are asking why we are currently raising a round of funding at a downward valuation to when we raised funding in the spring of 2022 at a $45M valuation. When we began our last raise in August of 2021, market comps suggested valuations in the range of 100X multiples to past 12 months' revenues. And that level was supported in that we raised almost $4.2M at that valuation via RegA. However, last year, when it came time to raise capital and the tech markets took a major hit with everything from SVB going under and VCs dramatically dropping their investing, we were forced to take a hard look at how we would make sure we weathered a pretty horrific storm. So, we went back to the drawing board and looked at the market comps out there and in reality, they had fallen quite dramatically. Some notable examples, not necessarily market comps, but just examples of how the tech industry was hit from a valuation perspective. Stripe went from a $96B (2021) valuation to $50B (2023), a 48% decline. Fitness platform Tonal’s valuation fell 64% from $1.6 billion to $600 million. Agtech company Indigo’s valuation fell from $3.5 billion to $200M, a 94%, decline. And cybersecurity company Cybereason’s valuation fell from $3.2 billion to $400 million, a 90% decline. All of this is to say, to ensure we raised the necessary capital to both weather the tech market downturn and come out stronger on the other side, we had to bring our valuation down to earth with where valuations are today. At the $10M valuation market, we fell in line with current market comps and were able to raise enough capital, largely from current accredited and institutional investors, including our lead in this round. While any down round is incredibly painful and not what investors nor I want, it allowed us to stabilize the business and keep building for the long term. What I think should give investors reason for optimism is that if you look at everything we have done since that last raise including launching KingsCrowd Capital with $1.6M+ in AUM and 26 investments made, several new lines of revenue brought online including sponsorship, data sales, management fees and our raisepapers founder line, and our heavy focus on reducing overhead to build a sustainable business all the while growing to over $700K in revenue, one could see that all the underlying fundamentals have in fact improved significantly. If market comps were still held today, our valuation would certainly be up from the last round meaningfully. But that isn’t the case. As the tech markets rebound over the long term and we continue to grow, we believe there is still a very long trajectory of growth for the business and our investors. One of the main reasons why we are working so diligently to break even is that we want to be in a place where we are no longer reliant on outside capital. When that is the case, you are subject to things like down rounds. We don't want to be in a similar position to where we were last year again and subject to market swings. A couple of additional notes. We have never taken any liquidity preferences, which means all investors hold the same stock as me and our team and no one will be first in line for capital in the event of an exit. The second is by dramatically reducing how much outside capital we need to push forward; we haven’t caused much dilution beyond what we would have experienced if we had sold out the entire $15M round in our last RegA back in 2022. Of course, there is near-term pain, but I do believe we are a stronger company than ever, and we are committed to creating future shareholder value as we grow and the market grows in the many years to come. Lastly, we asked ourselves, do we go out with a community round in a down round when we are having success raising offline from our current accredited investors and institutions? And the answer was a resounding yes. I knew some would be upset at the optics and we’d have to face the music of doing a down round in public, but if we are going to provide an opportunity for our larger investors to dollar cost average their investment by investing in this down round, we think it is only fair to provide that opportunity to our retail investor community as well. You certainly don’t have to take us up on the offer, but we wanted to provide the opportunity. Hope this helps explain the change in the current valuation. Sincerely, Chris Lustrino","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":15,"created_at":"2024-03-07T16:39:56Z"}]},{"id":278381,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278381","question":"Hi Chris, I see that you are predicting a ton of growth for the coming years. I can imagine that there must be much more then \"hope\" to underpin these agressive forecasts. Can you please clarify where the growth should come from and what is already tangible in this? I am also wondering how the cash burn of the previouw years amounting to 4 or 5 M could remediated with a projected revenue of 2M in 2024?","author_name":"Joris Strypens","votes":4,"created_at":"2024-03-10T16:49:39Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-278381","answers":[{"id":278524,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278524","answer":"Hi Joris, Thanks so much for this question. And yes you are absolutely right.\u0026nbsp; The major drivers of growth in the near term are expected to come from the growth of sponsorship sales, data sales, and\u0026nbsp;founder sales as well as some expected growth in assets under management at KingsCrowd Capital in the next year. So what does that look like? To give you a few examples. Our Pitch Review newsletter, which is one of the most followed newsletters in our industry with a strong mass affluent audience\u0026nbsp; make for an ideal audience that potential sponsors want to work with. (Note, we do not allow issuers raising on platforms like Wefunder to sponsor our newsletter). Examples of sponsors we do work with include things like real estate platforms and different investment product companies that find our audience to be ideal. Ultimately, we think this business can more than double in sales this year from last year as we now have a strong hold on the model and have brought in a VP of Sales to help grow our pipeline. We think of this model to be akin to Bloomberg news, which uses their sponsor driven news service to ultimately drive people to their data solutions. We have really started to gain traction here in the last year. We have also launched a new media property in the last year, which are our quarterly demo days where we bring in sponsors to host our demo days for our users for free, which usually includes 600+ signups from active investors. This has become a popular property that commands $10-$20k each quarter! And we have even begun to lean into live regional events with sponsors as well. All of this is driving a nice uptick in our sponsor dollar revenues.\u0026nbsp; Our data sales are starting to grow thanks to the fact that we have been working with PhDs for several years on studies that have been published in the last 12-15 months. Thanks to these published reports, we are now getting a lot of inbound requests from major universities to purchase our data and these universities tend to have deeper pockets. We are also being approached by some of the largest industry players in the space wanting to buy slices of our data as well. As our datasets grow and we begin doing outbound sales to places like universities and industry players, we think we will see a nice boost in sales this year and a far bigger one as time goes on and our compoundingly large database becomes even more valuable.\u0026nbsp; Our founder's sales largely revolve around our raisepapers brand. Last year, we acquired raisepapers (formerly Lawcloud) and really invested in building out our tech infrastructure and brand. We have onboarded several partners and our aim is to be the largest supporter of founders as it relates to form filings when they are looking to list and raise capital online via RegCF, RegA+ and RegD506c. There is a ton of room for growth in this business now that we have our feet under us and are starting to ramp up our sales efforts.\u0026nbsp; We continue to garner interest and new\u0026nbsp;investment commitments to KC Capital's first fund product and even have growing interest in a second fund product.\u0026nbsp; Lastly, you will see in 2025 we start to show some growth coming from B2B2C. This is reflective of opportunities we see on the horizon to actually integrate our data and ratings into other financial services providers. That may or may not happen in 2025 but we are seeing the beginnings of a real path to this playing out in the years to come. Ultimately, these are projections and we are still in a challenged overall tech market but we are seeing some nice macro factors playing out and we have all of these business lines that were in their infancy last year that we now feel more equipped to scale up this year.\u0026nbsp; Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":6,"created_at":"2024-03-12T17:59:19Z"}]},{"id":278173,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278173","question":"$40M valuation, down to $10M? WTF! I've heard of down rounds but this is ridiculous. Besides $2M of it ending up in the pockets of Lustrino and Co. over the years, what happened to investors money from your numerous prior crowdfunding rounds?","author_name":"Shane Liddell","votes":4,"created_at":"2024-03-07T08:15:25Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-278173","answers":[{"id":278199,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278199","answer":"Hey Shane, Thanks for the question. First off, above on Jerry Kempa’s question you will find my answer to your valuation question, which I certainly understand. If you need more clarification, please let me know. As to your question, let me provide some details below. Between August of 2021 and spring of 2022, we raised the bulk of $4.2M at the $45M valuation you mentioned on Republic under RegA+ rules. And you are correct, there were two selling shareholders in that round including myself. The terms of how that was structured was each of the two selling shareholders sold 1/15 of each share sold. Since we sold $4.2M, far below the $15M we aimed to raise, each selling shareholder received less than $300K. That isn’t to paint a rosier picture about it, I just need to share those facts to align with all disclosures made in our Reg A+ documents. During that time, I had an expectation that we would be able to raise the full $15M and with that in mind began to onboard a bigger team to support our growth goals, which included building out coverage of new asset classes, entering new markets (most importantly the institutional channel including RIAs and wealth advisors), which we thought would want to offer alt products to their clients, building out tech to automate our data collection, which at the time was quite manual and lean into consumer growth with marketing dollars. At our peak, we had 23 employees working to pursue my aggressive near-term growth plans across product growth, channel growth and sales growth. That also meant we had onboarded a pretty heavy burn to your point in 2022. When the markets took a hard turn last year and it became clear that the $15M we envisioned raising would not materialize, we were in a position where we needed to make some very hard decisions, which involved a significant reduction, more than halving our team size and reducing overhead by over 80%. I’ll give you a couple of examples. First, it was very clear that the institutional channel where we would sell to RIAs and Wealth Advisors our data to share alt deal flow with their clients was tepid at best and costing us heavily with the VP of Sales I had hired and counsel I had brought in to support this. That was one of the first items we had to do away with. We also slowed our roll on pursuing new asset classes and decided to focus in on just continuing to cover RegCF and RegA+ equity and debt deals instead, reducing the need for more analyst and tech support. We also cut back on marketing spend as it was clear CAC was increasing as the markets took a downturn near the end of 2022/beginning of 2023 and the economics no longer made sense. Thanks to the significant investments we had made on the tech side of things we went from needing 9 analysts to handle the very manual process that was tracking, collecting and analyzing almost 2,000+ deals a year and were able to bring this team down to 3 full time individuals. I am not saying I was thankful to let go of 6 very talented individuals, I am simply saying we enabled a far more, efficient and scalable data collection and analysis model. Amazingly despite having a far smaller team, we are analyzing and collecting data on more companies than ever before, but that is because we have a full tech infrastructure in place that is enabling this. Had we not invested heavily in 2022 in our tech infrastructure, this small team would likely not be sufficient. Lastly, we pulled back on the tech team. Now, here I will say, we have largely benefited from AI tools and the like that allow us to develop far faster with many fewer tech team members. Without it, I don’t know how much we would have been able to reduce our tech staff. We lost some amazing individuals from our tech team but Brian who leads our tech team has been incredible and quite resilient in the face of it all. The last 12 months were the hardest in our company’s history and I am certainly to blame for some of my strategic decisions that didn’t pan out including not raising the full $15M and pursuing new markets that just weren’t mature enough to warrant investment and trying to run before we could walk on some fronts. Nonetheless, I am immensely proud of the team members that helped KingsCrowd to get to where we are today that we had to say goodbye to last year. And I am absolutely proud of the lean but exceptional team we have in place today. Many of the accomplishments are called out above but to reiterate here, we commercialized the business incredibly well with a far smaller team, we got hungry and worked for every revenue dollar and found success. On the product side, this team in the last year and a half has launched and run KC Capital, AI generated analyst reports, exits and failures tracking for the industry, a new set of data tools for universities and institutions like hedge funds, portfolio tracking updates, a new set of powerful deal explorer and search tools, our founder valuation and market comps tool, just to name a few. We have done some remarkable things and are working tirelessly to get to break even so that we aren’t beholden to market swings like we have experienced in the past 15 months. Shane, I always appreciate your candor on our market and for keeping the market honest. And appreciate the times where you have been willing to share our data or analysis on LinkedIn. I certainly thought a lot about the fact that coming out with a down round valuation would have rough optics but since we were having success raising offline from current accredited and institutional investors, I couldn’t in good conscience not offer the same opportunity to our retail investor community. Yes, I will get egg on my face, but the investors who have come in offline over the past several months on the same terms as this round on Wefunder saw this investment opportunity as a dollar cost averaging chance since they had invested at the last round valuation to. They all saw that the underlying company has improved even if the valuation is down right now. I just felt we at least have to make this opportunity available for our clients and own it. Certainly, each investors is entitled to decide not to or decide they have lost confidence in us. That’s okay, but I will still own it and provide the opportunity to everyone. I and our team are in this for the long haul. My team hasn’t even begun to realize our big visions for our company that we believe will play out over the next decade as the market grows and alts become mainstream. In the meantime, we just need to keep executing. Thank you again for your question and hope this at least provides some clarity on the situation just beyond the black and white valuation change. Sincerely, Chris Lustrino","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":14,"created_at":"2024-03-07T16:41:44Z"}]},{"id":278638,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278638","question":"Thanks for the open and detailed response to my comments Chris. I believe it may have won over many investors.","author_name":"Shane Liddell","votes":3,"created_at":"2024-03-14T14:13:18Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-278638","answers":[]},{"id":278135,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278135","question":"Has the valuation gone down from $45M to $10M?","author_name":"Varun Gupta","votes":3,"created_at":"2024-03-06T21:39:04Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-278135","answers":[{"id":278200,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278200","answer":"Hey Varun, Thanks for the question. I have provided a response above on Jerry Kempa's question. Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-03-07T16:42:27Z"}]},{"id":278704,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278704","question":"Hi Chris, I know its too soon to be thinking about potential exits but I keep asking my self this question due to the comparable growth strategy to your public counter part Bloomberg which is private. Is the Kingscrowd team open to an IPO one day? Remaining private? or some other strategy to provide a return to its investors? Thanks P.S Really appreciated your detailed responses to some of the other investors questions. I have a lot of confidence your future growth b2b.","author_name":"Esteban Salas","votes":2,"created_at":"2024-03-15T02:02:15Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-278704","answers":[{"id":278758,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278758","answer":"Hey Esteban, Thanks so much for the question. As any good founder will tell you, we keep all our options on the table as any number of things can occur both internally and externally in the years to come that can affect the path we ultimately choose. Nonetheless, my ideal scenario would be to IPO in the range of 7-9 years from now. Certainly, it could be shorter or longer. And I even think we will soon see (1-3 years) opportunities for folks to sell their shares on platforms like Wefunder, Republic, StartEngine, Netcapital, etc. providing you a window to exit far sooner. Time will tell, but it does seem as though the world is moving in that direction. The reason I'd like to IPO is I actually think our 10-20 year opportunity could ultimately surpass that of public equity data providers like Bloomberg, Morningstar, and S\u0026amp;P. By the way, Morningstar and S\u0026amp;P are two other great proxies of our company that are public. Morningstar is worth $13.2B as of today March 15th, 2024 and S\u0026amp;P is $133B. IPO'ing I think would give us the long term opportunity to build the world's largest data company that I envision as all alts globally become digitally native over the next 10-20 years. However, before we get there, many things can occur or not occur that lead to a different outcome. Acquisition is certainly always on the table. In the past we have actually received passive acquisition interest. While it hasn't gone anywhere it has indicated to me that there will likely be interesting acquisition opportunities that crop up as we grow and more importantly the market grows. My gut tells me when our industry starts transacting tens of billions of dollars yearly, many of the largest financial institutions are going to want to acquire in order to enter this market. The question we will have to assess in the event of any acquisition offer is the long term strategic alignment to continue to grow KingsCrowd's data business even if it was under a different brand name. Additionally, we'd have to look at the offer in relation to time. For instance, hypothetically a $100M offer next year could be attractive because of the quick turn to exit but that same offer in 6 years could be unattractive because the return to time profile isn't nearly as strong. This is all hypothetical but trying to paint a picture of how we need to evaluate exit opportunities. The short answer here is we absolutely want a path to get our investors a return and we have grand ambitions but only time will tell. Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":5,"created_at":"2024-03-15T15:10:27Z"}]},{"id":278730,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278730","question":"Could you share the burn rate for 2023?","author_name":"Daniel Ibanez Becker","votes":1,"created_at":"2024-03-15T11:08:01Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-278730","answers":[{"id":278760,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:278760","answer":"Daniel, Thanks so much for the question. Last year, as I have mentioned, was a pretty challenging year where we made major changes to our business throughout the year to get our business to a much healthier, sustainable place.\u0026nbsp; Below, I have laid out the total cash burn and average monthly burn by quarter. We dropped from nearly $200K monthly burn at the beginning of the year to less than $50K by year end.\u0026nbsp; Q1 - Total Burn: $591,227 - $197,075 monthly burn Q2 - Total Burn: $379,598 - $126,532 monthly burn Q3 - Total Burn: $139,034 - $46,344 monthly\u0026nbsp;burn Q4 - Total Burn: $143,038 - $47,579 monthly\u0026nbsp;burn I should also note some of the burn that occurred\u0026nbsp;near year end was actually paying for items that occurred\u0026nbsp;earlier in the year that we held off on paying until we had a balance sheet to support so we could have averaged a burn closer to $30K at year end if we weren't paying off old professional service charges for things like accounting and legal. We also continued to incur cost\u0026nbsp;related to severance into Q3.\u0026nbsp; Our lowest month was September at $27,920 and we are headed to an average of about $35K in monthly burn this year. We aim to reduce this another $10K in the next 3-5 months with some pre-planned overhead reduction plans. Note, this does not include raisepapers financials, a subsidiary of KingsCrowd Inc. though for most of the year raisepapers actually ran at break even and even profited in a couple of months so its burn is very modest outside of a handful of intentional capital expenditures we made on the R\u0026amp;D front. I don't have as easy access to these numbers as we have yet to integrate accounting systems and it takes time for me to get these numbers from the third party CPA.\u0026nbsp; Hopefully, this helps give you a sense of where we came from and where we are headed.\u0026nbsp; Note: These numbers are pulled straight from our accounting software and are not audited. Additionally, this is on a cash basis, not accrual based accounting, which can affect these numbers when our CPA reports them.\u0026nbsp; Lastly, this does not include stock comp, which is a non-cash expense but shows up on income statements as an expense. I don't count it as burn because we don't outlay any money for stock comp, but for accounting purposes in our future financial statements you will see stock comp as a line item.\u0026nbsp; Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":6,"created_at":"2024-03-15T15:30:25Z"}]},{"id":282653,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:282653","question":"What makes this contract custom if we invest? How will it benefit the investor","author_name":"Juan Jackson","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-04-29T20:38:40Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-282653","answers":[]},{"id":281401,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:281401","question":"It's four years in from https://netcapital.com/companies/kingscrowd You've got investors from that round with questions from 2024 asking for updates. I'm a KC fan, stockholder from that NC round (no $45MM cap regrets) and subscriber. What does your data show as happening in the Reg CF space in general? I asked Nick during a WF raise a couple of years ago what were his thoughts around retail investors not having the patience or understanding needed for startup investing, he wasn't concerned. I see it constantly, retail Reg CF investors want updates and performance metrics from their startups within one year and don't seem to understand that they are several years away from any returns which are highly unlikely. What are your goals as to a max Reg CF investor subscriber base? Have you considered offering a premium service to Reg CF platforms and their listings for a sponsorship of KC, to be disclosed or course? Are you still raising on the Reg D side as well? Thanks","author_name":"John K Roberts III","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-04-14T03:17:46Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-281401","answers":[]},{"id":281215,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:281215","question":"Thanks for the detailed answer Chris. I'm curious why you don't have distribution relationships with platforms like Wefunder, Netcapital, etc. Are we not your primary B2C customer target? It seems like it would be beneficial to Wefunder (or other platforms) to offer your products which would help generate more interest in deals on the platform, as well as to you in growing your user base, revenues, and data more quickly, as well as enhancing your credibility. That's a win-win-win, no?","author_name":"Paul Paetz","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-04-11T21:56:54Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-281215","answers":[{"id":281571,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:281571","answer":"Hi Paul, Thanks for the great question. First off, in the early years of KC I have always felt it deeply important to establish ourselves as independent and have no monetary relationship at all with platforms so there was zero perceived biases in how we work. Now that we have fully established ourselves and that position I am more open to platforms wanting to be in front of our audience and vice versa. Based on how platforms work, I have found that trying to figure out a model that would work to present KCs subscription service to the Wefunder or StartEngine audience for instance has its challenges. First off, a platform has to consider if they want to distract away from their key purpose which is to see companies raise more money by keeping investors on their platform and not going elsewhere to find deals. Second, platforms I think have to consider the implications of investors going to a site where they will see both positive and negative ratings of deals on their platform. For these reasons, while it certainly would appear to be beneficial, establishing a model that will work for all parties while maintaining our clear independence and market position won't necessarily come with an overnight solution. Interestingly enough, I think a couple of areas we are starting to see as potential entry points in the near future include being an add-on to your Wefunder VIP membership or Republic's Charter Membership, etc. This would align well because these memberships tend to be focused on super users and providing more access, more features and more value so having a KC offer placed in this setting could actually make a lot of sense. I also think as the market continues to grow we will see platforms warm to the idea of having KC ratings integrated into offering pages for instance. Why? Because they recognize that investors are hungry for independent due diligence and with the growth in number of deals it could actually help to focus investors and get them to make an investment decision rather than just feeling lost and not making an investment at all. This could be a really interesting long term opportunity. You will see that a lot of platforms quote our data today and you can actually follow the KC Capital investor profile on Wefunder (2nd most followed to a16z). So we are getting exposure from the platforms in a non-monetary relationship right now and helping I think all of us to gain comfort with how to work more closely together in the future to benefit the investor. If and when we will find the right model, I can't say, but it is certainly an interesting long term opportunity for all constituents. Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":1,"created_at":"2024-04-16T18:33:59Z"}]},{"id":280985,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:280985","question":"I was very impressed by your services but I noticed that you don't include EU crowdfunding (where the majority of my portfolio is), why is that? Thanks.","author_name":"Owen Gagnon","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-04-09T23:13:00Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-280985","answers":[{"id":281568,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:281568","answer":"Hey Owen, Adding the UK/EU is on our roadmap but currently our focus is on the US markets. We absolutely plan on adding these geographies in the future to become a global company but we are not there yet. Team bandwith, timing, internal resources, confidence in navigating a new market, etc. all will play a role in when and how we enter the EU but do know it is on the roadmap and consistently considered in our expansion plans for the future. I would not expect any movement here in 2024 and likely not 2025, but 2026 could be the year. Stay tuned. Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-04-16T18:00:45Z"}]},{"id":280789,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:280789","question":"Hi Chris, Thank you for your very detailed response. Very helpful. It sounds like you've reduced your burn by about 80%. What is your current burn rate, what do you anticipate for burn rate over the next 12 months? How does the fund determine position sizes? I've noticed that positioning seems to deviate bet sizes from what I would expect based on your research. It seems that the fund doesn't always invest the most money in the highest rated names. Could you please walk me through how the fund arrives at a position size? Do you have a position sizing framework?","author_name":"Justin Olson","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-04-06T17:21:05Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-280789","answers":[{"id":281567,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:281567","answer":"Hey Justin, My apologies for my slow response. My wife and I just welcomed our second child about 10 days ago and I was a bit out of pocket. Nonetheless, to your question, we've been averaging between $35-$45K in monthly burn over the past 6+ months and our lowest burn month was $27K. Based on how things are going in terms of revenue growth and planned reductions in overhead we expect the burn rate to fall to the mid-20K monthly burn in Q3 and our goal is by year end/Q1 of 2025 to be at or very near break even. We are chipping away and continuing to see progress towards hitting this goal but there is certainly still work to be done. The fund has two investment sizes. $20K and $10K. This is based on if it is an early stage or growth stage deal. The parameters for early and growth can be found on our website. Early stage deals get $10K since they are typically more risky and growth stage deals get $20K. We require a 4.0 or above rating to go under consideration for investment from KingsCrowd Capital. We also require a sub-$100M valuation and at least 25% of the raise max reached (or a major VCs backing). We then conduct a deeper due diligence with these opportunities to determine which ones we will invest in based on a vote completed by the KC analyst team. Sometimes that means they are the highest rated 4.9 and 5.0 and sometimes they are not. There is an element of human analysis that goes into the final determination but we feel confident in the quality of deals above 4.0. Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":2,"created_at":"2024-04-16T17:58:08Z"}]},{"id":280702,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:280702","question":"Let me start by saying I like the idea behind Kingscrowd -- there is definitely a market need for a solution like this, however ..... Crypto companies are more akin to gambling than investing, in my opinion -- highly speculative, with no basis in a sustainable product for a market whose needs can be objectively evaluated or whose growth can be quantified or even estimated, and which can show enormous short-term growth (based on the 'greater fool' theory) but also complete and unpredictable collapse. Worse, with games of chance, I can evaluate the odds of success mathematically, but crypto is pure chance (caprice) and guesswork. You track many crypto companies on your blog and analytics, which leads me to question how many of these are in your fund, and what your exposure is to them. Obviously any startup in any market is high risk, but crypto is something I'd prefer to stay away from, no matter how much benefit there may appear to be when looking at the short term. It doesn't bother me that you have a fund which contains crypto, but it does bother me if it's the only choice. So, a few related questions: - do you plan to introduce other funds with different focus? - is there a way to opt-out of exposure to crypto or any other sector? - does your fund include crypto, and if yes, what is the performance if you exclude crypto? - how exposed are you if the government imposes (possibly severe) market controls and regulations on crypto? - what is the impact on Kingscrowd of a crypto failure like FTX? What if the same happened to Coinbase or bitcoin or etherium?","author_name":"Paul Paetz","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-04-05T14:52:14Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-280702","answers":[{"id":280709,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:280709","answer":"Hey Paul, Just to answer this question quickly, KingsCrowd Capital, to your point is a generalist outperform fund that invests across sectors and is solely looking for the best performing companies. So yes, that does include crypto as well but of the 31 investments we have made to date only 1 has been crypto-related and we aren't currently reviewing any within the crypto sector. Out of the 100 investments we are making out of the fund, I'd imagine no more than 3-4 investments would ultimately end up falling under the crypto theme, so less than 5% exposure in the portfolio. All that is to say that ultimately, the fund is likely to have very minimal exposure to crypto (I'd argue immaterial exposure). We actually think the collapse of FTX is a great example of why investing in a regulated market over an unregulated one is better for investors. We have often found many of the available crypto deals to be overpriced or underperforming in absolute terms. That's the power of our rating algo. In the fund to date, we are invested in everything from consumer, medical device, biotech, industrials, agriculture, AI, natural foods, clean tech, energy and many more unique areas. In the future, we plan to launch specific vertical and themed funds. More on this can be found in some of the below questions that have been asked prior. Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":2,"created_at":"2024-04-05T15:22:13Z"}]},{"id":280695,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:280695","question":"Chris: Thank you for all of the candid feedback and answers. I second what Roger Evans wrote, and really appreciate the straight, unvarnished truth. I really am I believer that you are onto something here and filling a void that exists in the quickly burgeoning marketplace of private investing for the masses. One question I have (that you may have answered already and, if so, I apologize for being redundant) is what is the longterm growth plan for KingsCrowd Capital? More specifically, will that be a single open-ended fund or a series of funds that invest in a basket of portfolio companies in each? How would KingsCrowd Capital be compensated for overseeing that? Is it a management fee + promote structure? Just looking to understand more because as much as I see the massive opportunity on the data side, I feel that the opportunity to create an investment vehicle could potentially be even more lucrative. I invested in the Republic round in 2022 and am looking to \"double down\" but just want to make sure I understand all of the aspects of the opportunity here. Thanks! Garrett","author_name":"Garrett Miller","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-04-05T11:51:17Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-280695","answers":[{"id":280701,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:280701","answer":"Garrett, First off, thanks for the kind words and continued support of KingsCrowd. It means a lot to have long-term believers in our business. To your question, I actually dive in on this topic in my interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGpztuyfIC8\u0026amp;t=730s Jump to 10:24 to hear more about my thoughts on KingsCrowd Capital. But to summarize, KingsCrowd Capital Fund I is essentially our beta fund to prove the model of KC Capital, which is to your point, the idea that we can expand this business to host a multitude of diversified fund products across various themes and asset classes. Over time, our vision is to launch funds across new themes such as the female founders fund, the profitability fund, a clean-tech fund, and so on. As we also add asset classes like real estate and debt we will be able to create funds around these strategies as well. In a perfect world, a few things would ultimately happen. First off, eventually, fund products become available to non-accredited investors and we can offer these to all of our customers. But more importantly, in a perfect world, the major asset managers would eventually want us to sell our fund products through their RIA and wealth advisor channels and eventually if there was enough demand/support, these would actually become 'ETF' type fund products that trade with real liquidity and are sold through the tens of millions of brokerage accounts in the US. That's the grander long-term vision but there is quite a long way to go to get to that place. Near-term I see us launching 1-2 new funds in the next 24-36 months and once we have a better handle on how our first fund is performing, begin to lean more into growing AUM. We charge a 1/10 management fee right now and will continue to do so in the near term though we are open to other structures, whether that is more of a membership model or something else altogether. We will determine this as we have more time in market and can determine how these new types of funds will be monetized to best meet customer needs. In short, we absolutely see the capital business as a major long-term growth opportunity for us as well. Hope that makes sense. Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":1,"created_at":"2024-04-05T14:49:07Z"}]},{"id":280674,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:280674","question":"Hi, would you mind elaborating on the $5000 dollars perks? It says the investment threshold can be reduced to $1000 dollars from $20,000 dollars to invest in KC capital investment. Does it still require the investor to be an accredited investors defined by SEC？ Or everyone can invest as long as you invest more than $1000 dollars? And as to KC capital investment, is it a venture capital fund? Has it be lauched yet or it is to be launched? And for the $4.01M expense of General, administrative, and operation in 2022, what is the cost for? Is that mainly employee salaries?","author_name":"Nick Zhang","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-04-05T00:50:48Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-280674","answers":[{"id":280703,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:280703","answer":"Hey Nick, Great question. Unfortunately, to invest in KC Capital right now, you need to be an accredited investor. Sorry about that. We hope in the future this will change. This is a venture capital fund that has been actively deploying capital for the past 1.5 years with over 30 investments to date and we are aiming to hit 100 investments out of the fund over the next 2.5 years. You can learn more about it here: https://kingscrowd.com/capital/ As for the 2022 G\u0026amp;A, that is correct. It was nearly all salaries-based though to be clear this included nearly $2M in stock-based compensation, which was not a cash expense so the actual G\u0026amp;A cash cost was about $2M. If you have read into more info on our business we have significantly reduced our G\u0026amp;A over the past year and a quarter as we reduced our team size by more than half during the major tech dip that took place in late 2022 through 2023. Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":2,"created_at":"2024-04-05T14:55:37Z"}]},{"id":280375,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:280375","question":"Hi Chris, I am a subscriber and I really enjoy the product. KingsCrowd markets themselves as bloomberg for alt investing. One of the things that I see as a rate limiter for KingsCrowd it's approach to rating companies. From my understanding, you use an AI + analyst model to come up with your proprietary ratings. That means that the number and quality of analysts hired by KC will determine the usefulness of the rating. What would be even more useful would be to the research of VC firms on these companies and use the aggregate findings to calculate one's metrics. Are you looking at any ways to crowdsource your research?","author_name":"Justin Olson","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-04-02T22:17:43Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-280375","answers":[{"id":280706,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:280706","answer":"Hey Justin, Thanks for the thought. To explain a bit more about our rating system. This is a system that we have developed over almost five years that is a quant-based model that compares and contrasts all of the available investments in the market at any one time against one another to determine each business's areas of strength and weakness. We built a bottoms-up model, which ingest 300+ data points on each company across key dimensions such as valuation, market (e.g., addressable market size), performance (e.g., traction/revenue), differentiators (e.g., # of competitors) and team (e.g., level of industry experience). One of the reasons we have felt it important to build our own rating model and develop it over time is that venture capitalists have historically said investing is more of an art than a science. One of the reasons why this was the case is because they didn't have access to scalable data. For instance, in traditional VC, they don't have access to financials on every company they analyze and even if they do get some sort of financials in their due diligence, they as one firm can never look at enough aggregate companies to develop thoughtful insights. Unlike VCs, our rating algo is now ingesting CPA-created financials on 2,000-3,000+ companies a year. This level of granular data on thousands of companies allows us to in fact glean real insights and develop more of a scientific approach to rating private companies. This is all thanks to the dynamic of our market where companies are required to disclose far more information than in traditional private markets. Our goal is now to track how the companies in our database perform over time and as we learn continue to adapt and improve the algorithm based on performance. With enough aggregate data and performance data say over 10+ years, we may then be able to actually create a profile of what the best companies look like from a data perspective and instead of using a comparative rating model, actually have more of a predictive model at that point. Time will tell if this is possible, but it certainly seems feasible. To your point about crowdsourcing, we do believe there is value in crowdsourcing some data to help inform our ratings over time. That is why we created the bullish/bearish capability on KingsCrowd, where you the investor can vote if you are bullish or bearish on every opportunity. This data will help us over time to determine if this crowdsourced info actually helps provide a market sentiment that our analyst and algorithm can't capture. If this were the case, we'd certainly have to find a way to incorporate the bullish/bearish sentiment score from the crowd into our overall rating. Our thesis is that with enough aggregate data coupled with longitudinal performance data 'aka' how do companies perform over time versus our rating, that we can create one of the more effective due diligence tools for navigating private market investing. Now, if I can take a step back there is another reason for this approach of creating an institutionally created algo over crowdsourced ratings. When I worked in consulting and private equity firms paid us hundreds of thousands of dollars to conduct due diligence on their deals, the partners at our firm always said, the insights are valuable, but the structure of how to think about the deal is actually just as valuable to them. What they were saying is that people like having a standardized structure to think about deal opportunities. It helps simplify the due diligence process and make it easier to process information on a plethora of deals. One of the things people pay us for is to simply make the decisioning process far easier with a standardized structure for analyzing deals. It is why I believe Morningstar is worth well north of $10B as a company with its institutionally created rating that has been known to be wrong many times throughout history, while Seekingalpha, a crowdsourced provider of research on public equities is worth a mere fraction of that. While Seekingalpha is amazing, it is crowdsourced and no one article/research is the same. When people just want the answer they go to Morningstar to understand how it rates quickly on financials, competitive moat, etc. and they know that they are getting a standard, quick answer to every question they have. We will never be perfect but our standardization is greatly desired by investors and gives them the room to do their own due diligence within our structure and system. I believe this to be the right structure to doing things well, controlling the quality and creating a trusted, tried and true product that investors can depend on. Hope that makes sense. Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":2,"created_at":"2024-04-05T15:15:31Z"}]},{"id":280213,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:280213","question":"Hey Chris, I run a venture fund and have a few questions for you that weren't touched on in the overview and details that I'd love to ask 1 on 1 if possible. What's the best way to reach you for a zoom meeting?","author_name":"Tristin Chambers","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-04-01T11:57:36Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-280213","answers":[]},{"id":280212,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:280212","question":"Hi, this is my first time using WeFunder, so I am not as familiar with where to find the information I need (or indeed whether such information is provided). Can you let me know more about your total addressable market? What statistics or data do you have to evidence the demand for detailed analytics in the alternative investment market? Also, what percentage of subscribers are repeat subscribers compared to subscribers who only subscribe for say 3 months (if monthly) or 1 year (if annual)? Many thanks, Josh","author_name":"Josh Martin","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-04-01T10:05:43Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-280212","answers":[{"id":280231,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:280231","answer":"Hey Josh, Thanks for the questions. Please see below and lmk if you have any follow ups. In terms of addressable market size, typically the\u0026nbsp;going\u0026nbsp;number that is used is that 5% of total invested dollars are spent on due diligence. This would suggest that if across RegA+ and RegCF equity and debt markets today transact about $3B, our addressable market just for our due diligence subscription service called Edge would be about $150,000,000. If you believe\u0026nbsp;over the next decade the $13T in alt assets that sit offline today even become 25% digitally native and we are to cover that entire space, that would suggest $3.25T\u0026nbsp;in investments yearly and thus well over a\u0026nbsp;$100B\u0026nbsp;addressable market. And that is not considering all of the other applications and sales of our data that can occur outside of just due diligence\u0026nbsp;opportunities. But hopefully this helps tee up that there is a substantial long term addressable market opportunity for us to pursue. In our first years of business, we have been able to garner thousands of paid customers with product market fit indicators provided below and we have over 4,000 individuals backing our company, which I think alone is a testament to the fact that investors in our world want and demand our services. Based on the fact that we have been able to build sizeable revenues in still the very early days of our market, with devout users across both individuals and institutions, much of which I discuss above, I think should provide clear indications that there is a real need and demand for our types of data services.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp; To your question regarding subscribers, the best data I can give you is to look at some of our key churn numbers. In our most recent months including February and March 2024 our churn was just 1.1% and 1.4% respectively, which is best in class for a consumer subscription business from our perspective and shows product market fit. Our annual churned revenue is down 30.5% thanks to our subscription simplification that went from 2 paid tiers to 1 paid tier, an enhancement of the overall value we are providing to customers (most notably around providing more company updates through things like exits and failures for when investors are not actively deploying capital), and customers perceiving more value with our enhanced deal explorer tools and portfolio management capabilities, all of which our early adopters asked for and helped inform our product enhancements over the last 18 months. Additionally, the macroeconomic environment is improving leading investors once again to stick around as they become more active on the investing front, whereas last year investors were far more likely to conserve cash and walk away from a subscription. We also implemented some retention efforts to recapture individuals considering leaving. When looking at annual memberships most stay at least 2 years and when diving into those who canceled in the last couple of months the average paid account age was 559 days or about 1.5 years old, which would suggest an LTV of about $540! Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":1,"created_at":"2024-04-01T16:36:37Z"}]},{"id":279994,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:279994","question":"About CHRIS / CEO... I invested in KingsCrowd about 4 years ago on NETCAPITAL. Since that time of investment, I have had no updates regularly. His excuse was that he was sorry that I had not received it. I do not go into Wefunder daily. Why would I go on Wefunder if I didn't buy it from them? I have requested many times to Chris that any updates and all company information be sent to my email address. I have repeatedly asked Chris to do that with no success. Anyone thinking of investing, think again. I do not believe Chris has your best interest at heart. He, in my opinion, does not care about investors, just their money. Ask him what his plan is for an ROI or what are his plans for a possible IPO. He did not answer these questions at today's webinar. Now he is asking for more money from investors to invest in KingsCrowd. NOT ME. I know I am hurting myself by telling you the truth but I invested in KingsCrowd because I thought KingsCrowd would be a great investment and that Chris would be a CEO who cared for his investors and their investments. I WAS WRONG. I am not telling all of you that this will happen to you. I am telling you this is what is happening to me. You would think that after informing him multiple times that I was not receiving any updates from KingsCrowd, that he would make a special effort to see that I was getting all the information and every update on a timely basis. It has not happened. There was a webinar today that he said went out a week or so ago. I never received it. Then, 2 hours before this webinar I received it in my email. Up until now, I had no idea that he was campaigning on Wefunder for additional funds for KingsCrowd. You be the judge. What would you do? Remember, you've been warned.","author_name":"David Komitau","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-03-28T18:40:47Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-279994","answers":[{"id":280001,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:280001","answer":"Hey David, I have sent an email to netcapital asking them to make sure you are on our update list and sent you the last 2 updates sent to all investors on netcapital. Additionally, I apologize we did not get to your question on the webinar today. We had over 25 questions submitted and tried our best to get to all of them. As to your question around exit/IPO, please see here for more details on my thoughts around exit/IPO: https://wefunder.com/comments/278758 Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":3,"created_at":"2024-03-28T19:07:21Z"},{"id":279998,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:279998","answer":"Hey David, I am very sorry you have not received our near quarterly updates via Netcapital. I will personally reach out to Netcapital and ask why you are not receiving the updates I send via Netcapital once a quarter. I have missed quarters before and have always apologized when I have missed a quarter and provided reasons for that. Our over 2,000 investors on Netcapital have seemed pleased with my update cadence since our last round on the platform and I am disappointed you have not received them. I will be in touch shortly. Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-03-28T18:51:39Z"}]},{"id":279794,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:279794","question":"Hello, I invested in your company in 2020 on Netcapital and have 1400 shares.. I am wondering if I am able to sell them? I'm not sure how this process works. thanks, Janine janine_c@earthlink.net","author_name":"Janine Castaldo","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-03-27T00:03:17Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-279794","answers":[{"id":279844,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:279844","answer":"Hey Janine, Thanks for the question. At this time, Netcapital does not have an operating secondary market so the ability to sell your shares is not possible. However, I do know Netcapital is actively working to enable a secondary market. At the time, you will likely have an opportunity to post your shares purchased on Netcapital for sale at a price you are okay selling at and if there is a match be able to sell your shares. If I hear anything about the launch of their secondary market, I will let you know. Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-03-27T16:05:44Z"}]},{"id":279413,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:279413","question":"I see company is having too much of losses compared to revenue you are generating. How much you are planning to raise and what are you planning to use for? Anything will be used for encashing insiders?","author_name":"Karthikeyan Kuppusamy","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-03-22T14:15:14Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-279413","answers":[{"id":279449,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:279449","answer":"Hey thanks for the question Karthikeyan. It is important to note that the current financials provided as part of our form C represent 2022 financials. Our 2023 are currently being worked on by our CPAs, but as I have dove into in further detail on our offering page and below, in 2023 we worked very hard to reduce our overhead significantly and were able to bring our overhead cost down over 80% YoY. We are making significant strides towards our break even goal over the next 12-15 months. We also increased revenues over 60% in 2023 to over $700K (unaudited, cash based accounting). The use of funds as stated above will be focused on investing in sales growth via our VP of Sales hire, R\u0026amp;D investments, bolstering our balance sheet and keeping cash on hand for potential acquisitions. There are no selling shareholders in this round of funding. All dollars will be used to fuel our future growth as a company. Hope this helps answer your questions. Best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":2,"created_at":"2024-03-22T19:28:16Z"}]},{"id":279342,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:279342","question":"I am interested on investing and learning more. How do you guys generate your revenue","author_name":"Chris Santos","votes":0,"created_at":"2024-03-21T23:21:26Z","canonical_url":"https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd#question-279342","answers":[{"id":279446,"entity_id":"wefunder:comment:279446","answer":"Hey Chris, Thanks for the question. I go into this a bit above in the business model section of our offering page. Nonetheless, to try and answer your question, below are our key lines of revenue with brief descriptions of each. Subscriptions: We charge $30 per month or $300 per year to retail clients looking to access our core ratings and analytics offering on KingsCrowd. Data sales: We sell our large database on a per use basis typically between $5K and $20K+ for institutions looking to analyze our space. This can include universities, platforms, service providers and more. Management fees: We charge a 1% management fee and 10% carry on our KingsCrowd Capital fund product. Sponsorship: We charge sponsors for the opportunity to sponsor our newsletter, virtual and live events and podcasts. SaaS fees: We charge our raisepapers a per use SaaS fee to utilize our form C, form 1-A, form C-AR and form D tools that help them file the necessary paperwork to raise online. All the best, Chris","author_name":"Chris Lustrino","votes":2,"created_at":"2024-03-22T19:04:39Z"}]}],"faq":[{"question":"What happened to the share price?","answer":"Hey Jeremy, thanks for the question. I believe you are asking why we are currently raising a round of funding at a downward valuation to when we raised funding in the spring of 2022 at a $45M valuation. When we began our last raise in August of 2021, market comps suggested valuations in the range of 100X multiples to past 12 months' revenues. And that level was supported in that we raised almost $4.2M at that valuation via RegA. However, last year, when it came time to raise capital and the t..."},{"question":"Has the valuation gone down from $45M to $10M?","answer":"Hey Varun, Thanks for the question. I have provided a response above on Jerry Kempa's question. Best, Chris"},{"question":"$40M valuation, down to $10M? WTF! I've heard of down rounds but this is ridiculous. Besides $2M of it ending up in the pockets of Lustrino and Co. over the years, what happened to investors money from your numerous prior crowdfunding rounds?","answer":"Hey Shane, Thanks for the question. First off, above on Jerry Kempa’s question you will find my answer to your valuation question, which I certainly understand. If you need more clarification, please let me know. As to your question, let me provide some details below. Between August of 2021 and spring of 2022, we raised the bulk of $4.2M at the $45M valuation you mentioned on Republic under RegA+ rules. And you are correct, there were two selling shareholders in that round including myself. T..."},{"question":"Hi Chris, I see that you are predicting a ton of growth for the coming years. I can imagine that there must be much more then \"hope\" to underpin these agressive forecasts. Can you please clarify where the growth should come from and what is already tangible in this? I am also ...","answer":"Hi Joris, Thanks so much for this question. And yes you are absolutely right.\u0026nbsp; The major drivers of growth in the near term are expected to come from the growth of sponsorship sales, data sales, and\u0026nbsp;founder sales as well as some expected growth in assets under management at KingsCrowd Capital in the next year. So what does that look like? To give you a few examples. Our Pitch Review newsletter, which is one of the most followed newsletters in our industry with a strong mass affluent..."},{"question":"Hi Chris, Can you also explain where accredited investors must look for the reg D offering details?","answer":"Hi Joris, Our RegD is run congruently to this RegCF and is all the exact same terms. The easiest way is to probably just invest through our CF raise here on Wefunder. But let me know if I am missing something. Best, Chris"}]}}}