# Kingscrowd

Bloomberg For Alt Investing

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/kingscrowd
- Entity ID: wefunder:company:149802
- Last updated: 2026-06-10T05:01:20Z
- Generated at: 2026-06-11T04:15:55Z

## Quick facts
- $735,000+ in 2023 revenues, +60% YoY revenue growth (cash-basis, non-audited)
- Created KingsCrowd Capital - A $1.7M ‘ETF-like’ data-driven fund powered by our algo
- Pursuing path to profitability late 2024/early 2025 (forecast, not guaranteed)
- 50% of revenues now generated by B2B sales
- Building a data flywheel to serve all stakeholders in the growing digital private markets
- Launched raisepapers brand to serve founders with form filing and data solutions
- Nearly 100% equity/debt coverage of RegCF/RegA+ markets over 5+ years

## Active fundraises
- wefunder:fundraise:105992: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)
- wefunder:fundraise:105991: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)

## 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. 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). 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. 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. 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. 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. Retail investors: We provide retail investors with a robust suite of tools that better enable search, diligence, and management of their startup investments.  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). 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. 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. Our data and insights are so respected that top platforms regularly cite them, solidifying our position as the market's trusted authority. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.  With these focus areas in mind, we are raising capital for four key purposes: 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. 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.  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. 

## FAQ
1. **What happened to the share price?**
   - 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...
2. **Has the valuation gone down from $45M to $10M?**
   - Hey Varun, Thanks for the question. I have provided a response above on Jerry Kempa's question. Best, Chris
3. **$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?**
   - 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...
4. **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 ...**
   - Hi Joris, Thanks so much for this question. And yes you are absolutely right.  The major drivers of growth in the near term are expected to come from the growth of sponsorship sales, data sales, and 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...
5. **Hi Chris, Can you also explain where accredited investors must look for the reg D offering details?**
   - 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

## Team
- Chris Lustrino (Founder & CEO)
- Peyton Meredith (COO - raisepapers)
- Brian Belley (VP of Product)
- Olivia Strobl (Senior Investment Associate)
- Scott Kitun (Co-founder & COO at Songfinch, GP at Kingscrowd)
- Sam Fiske (Head of Content)
- Léa Bouhelier-Gautreau (Senior Investment Research Analyst)
- Teddy Lyons (Senior Investment Analyst)
- Chris Martin (Integrated Operations Manager)
- Michael Vandenbos (VP of Business Development)

## Recent posts
- 30 Minutes To Close (2024-04-30T03:30:53Z)
- Last Call: 1 Hour To Close (2024-04-30T02:55:08Z)
- Our Community Round In Review (2024-04-30T01:54:54Z)
- KingsCrowd Closes $60K Institutional Investment (2024-04-29T23:18:47Z)
- Less Than 12 Hours To Go! (2024-04-29T18:32:56Z)
- Last Day! Upgrade your perks (2024-04-29T13:39:59Z)
- KingsCrowd Capital Adds $175K+ in AUM (2024-04-28T18:31:03Z)
- An Ask From KingsCrowd (2024-04-27T17:18:05Z)
- Closing Alert: Invest Before Our Monday Deadline (2024-04-26T17:49:43Z)
- Form C-AR Sales Surpass $45,000 (2024-04-25T17:39:17Z)
- New Deal Considerations Checklist Feature + Final Week Countdown (2024-04-24T16:52:50Z)
- Live In 1 Hour - Investor Webinar (2024-04-23T15:57:37Z)
- KingsCrowd Closes On $155,000 Investment (2024-04-18T18:37:44Z)
- A Deep Dive With Chris Graebe (2024-04-16T18:51:14Z)
- 39.7% YoY Q1 Sales Growth! (2024-04-11T19:43:18Z)

## Q&A
- Q: 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.
  - A: 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
- Q: 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.
- Q: 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. 👍
- Q: What happened to the share price?
  - A: 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
- Q: 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?
  - A: Hi Joris, Thanks so much for this question. And yes you are absolutely right.  The major drivers of growth in the near term are expected to come from the growth of sponsorship sales, data sales, and 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  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.  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.  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.  We continue to garner interest and new investment commitments to KC Capital's first fund product and even have growing interest in a second fund product.  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.  Best, Chris
- Q: $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?
  - A: 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
- Q: Thanks for the open and detailed response to my comments Chris. I believe it may have won over many investors.
- Q: Has the valuation gone down from $45M to $10M?
  - A: Hey Varun, Thanks for the question. I have provided a response above on Jerry Kempa's question. Best, Chris
- Q: 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.
  - A: 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&P. By the way, Morningstar and S&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&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
- Q: Could you share the burn rate for 2023?
  - A: 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.  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.  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 burn Q4 - Total Burn: $143,038 - $47,579 monthly burn I should also note some of the burn that occurred near year end was actually paying for items that occurred 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 related to severance into Q3.  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&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.  Hopefully, this helps give you a sense of where we came from and where we are headed.  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.  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.  Best, Chris
- Q: What makes this contract custom if we invest? How will it benefit the investor
- Q: 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
- Q: 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?
  - A: 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
- Q: 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.
  - A: 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
- Q: 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?
  - A: 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