A startup's first 14 days predict how its entire raise ends. We can prove it.

We tested it out of sample across 6,300+ offerings. The fastest-starting quartile finished strong 96% of the time. The slowest quartile? 12%.

The signal holds up year after year (AUC 0.88 to 0.92). Momentum isn't a vibe. It's measurable, and it's predictive.

To be clear, this predicts the raise, not the investment return.

A question for the operators: if the first two weeks are this decisive, is a slow-starting campaign already finished, or can a raise still be saved once it stalls?

Comment "CCLEAR" and I'll send you the full brief.   

In crowdfunding, the data already shows it. 64% of funded Reg CF capital now goes to companies outside California, New York, and Massachusetts, up from 47% in 2016. The top five states' share fell from 74% to 52%. California alone went from 44% to 26%.

And the per-resident leaders aren't who you'd guess: Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado. Take away the gatekeepers and the map of where innovation gets funded looks nothing like the venture map.

A real question: is capital actually decentralizing, or is crowdfunding just reaching the places venture was never going to fund anyway? Curious which way people see it.

Comment "CCLEAR" and I'll send you the full brief. 

When Regulation Crowdfunding (Title III of the JOBS Act) launched in 2016, the industry's first challenge was simple: prove that ordinary investors could participate responsibly in private-company investing and that startups could successfully raise capital from their communities.

To do that, the market relied on familiar securities. Common stock, convertible notes, and later SAFEs had already been developed for venture-backed startups pursuing rapid growth and eventual exits.

That made sense.

Today, however, Regulated Investment Crowdfunding (the umbrella term CfPA has adopted as a Recommended Best Practice for the SEC- and FINRA-regulated exemptions created by the JOBS Act, of which Regulation Crowdfunding is one) serves a much broader market. Established operating businesses, consumer brands, technology startups, local enterprises, real estate ventures, and mission-driven organizations all raise capital under these exemptions. These businesses have very different capital needs and v...more

More than $1 billion has gone to women- and minority-led companies through Regulation Crowdfunding. That's 37% of all the capital raised.

For comparison: all-women teams get about 2% of traditional venture capital.

When you let the crowd decide, the capital distributes very differently. Women- and minority-led founders' share has climbed from 24% in 2016 to nearly 39% today, across 52 states and territories.

This is what democratized access to capital actually looks like in the data.

A question for the room: is the crowd better at backing founders that institutions overlook, or is venture capital simply optimizing for something else? Curious where people land.

Comment "CCLEAR" and I'll send you the full brief.

When a company crowdfunds a second time, what happens to its valuation?

We followed 713 companies that went back to the crowd for at least two priced rounds and tracked each one's valuation across its own journey.

79% came back at a higher valuation. The median company grew from a $10M cap to a $19.8M cap, a 1.54x step up, in a median of just 15 months. The top decile exceeded 5.9x.

Add it up and the roughly $970M invested in those earlier rounds now marks to $2.64B at latest-round prices. That is $1.67B of unrealized paper markup sitting with early investors.

One honest caveat: this is paper, not proceeds. These are primary-round prices, not exits, and early investors get diluted along the way. But the direction is unmistakable. The crowd is pricing these companies up.

A question for the room: when a company comes back and prices at double its first cap, is that real value creation or optimistic pricing? Curious where people land.

Comment "CCLEAR" and I'll send you the full brief.

from Superpowers for Good

A rare bipartisan law could help communities pair factory-built homes with community capital

A New Hope

Every once in a while, Congress does something that gives me genuine hope.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law on July 11, 2026, after passing both houses of Congress with broad bipartisan support. Remarkably, the president neither signed nor vetoed it. Because Congress remained in session, the bill became law without presidential approval after the constitutional review period expired—an unusual path for a major piece of legislation.

The law is enormous. It touches zoning, public land, rural housing, homelessness, veterans, home repairs, mortgage lending, disaster recovery, community banking, manufactured housing and modular construction.

What excites me most is not any single program. It is the possibility of combining the law’s housing tools with regulated investment crowdfunding.

Regulation Crowdfunding...more