Economic Intelligence Brief No. 12

After the Raise

What happens to companies after they crowdfund.

1.8x — aggregate revenue growth among reporting issuers

Summary

Reg CF shows who got funded; it rarely shows what happened next. Using post-funding annual reports, this brief follows issuers forward — and confronts the reporting gap honestly.

Key findings

• Only about 50% of issuers with a reporting obligation ever file an annual report; 62% of filers file once, then go quiet.
• For those that report: aggregate revenue grew $2.6B → $4.5B (1.8x), median +37%.
• The reporting cohort employs 28,000+ people (net +2,914 jobs), though the median company stays lean.
• 21% are out of business; ~15% formally terminated reporting. (Reporters skew to survivors — selection bias stated.)

Frequently asked questions

What happens to companies after they crowdfund?

Among issuers that file required post-funding reports: aggregate revenue grew from $2.6B to $4.5B (1.8x), the median company grew revenue 37%, and the cohort employs 28,000+ people.

How big is the post-funding reporting gap?

Only about 50% of issuers with a reporting obligation ever file an annual report, and 62% of filers file once, then go quiet. The brief states the resulting selection bias explicitly.

Audience

Kauffman · SBA · academics · outcomes research

About this brief

Published by CCLEAR.ai. Anchored to public SEC EDGAR filings and hand-verified against a locked data snapshot. CCLEAR is a data publisher, not an investment adviser; figures describe market activity, not investment outcomes or advice.

After the Raise · CCLEAR Research Library · License the data · Commission research

More briefs in the CCLEAR Research Library

• Democratized Capital — Women & Minority Founders in Reg CF — How crowdfunding distributes capital to women- and minority-led companies.
• Funding America's Industrial Base — Crowdfunding capital flowing to U.S. manufacturing, energy, and clean tech.
• The Main Street Barometer — Retail investor sentiment and participation, tracked over a decade.
• A Market Comes of Age — A decade of valuation and capital-structure trends.
• What's Your Company Worth? — Valuation benchmarks by company age and revenue stage.
• Innovation Geography — How startup capital is decentralizing across the country.
• Built to Last — Survival rates of crowdfunded companies vs. national baselines.
• The $42.5 Billion Engine — The economic output generated by Reg CF companies.
• The First Two Weeks — How a campaign's first 14 days predict its final raise.
• The CrowdFinance Index — A daily, rules-based index of the crowdfunding market.
• The Crowdfunding Genome — America's top-30 startup-crowdfunding ecosystems, ranked.
• The Language of the Raise — NLP on 6,800 pitches — the words that move money.
• What Capital Costs — The cost and structure of crowdfunding capital by instrument.
• Regulation Crowdfunding by Congressional District: A Report Card — A rolling, district-by-district scorecard of Reg CF activity across all 435 U.S. House districts.
• Marked Up — How valuations grow when companies crowdfund again, and the paper markup that creates.
• The Exit File: Sales, Mergers & Public Listings of U.S. Regulation Crowdfunding Companies — Crowdfunded companies are exiting — $6.1B in sales, mergers and public listings in just fourteen months.
• The Intersection Penalty — Why Two Founder-Identity Advantages in Reg CF Do Not Combine — Two founder-identity advantages that are each real on their own do not add up.