Economic Intelligence Brief No. 6

Innovation Geography

How startup capital is decentralizing across the country.

64% — of funded capital outside CA/NY/MA

Summary

In crowdfunding, startup capital has already left the coasts. This brief maps where Reg CF capital actually flows.

Key findings

• 64% of funded capital now goes outside CA/NY/MA — up from 47% in 2016.
• Top-five-state share fell from 74% to 52%; California alone fell 44% → 26%.
• $2.74B across 52 states/territories; roughly $8 per resident nationally.
• Per-capita over-indexers: Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Washington.

Frequently asked questions

Where does Reg CF capital actually flow?

64% now goes outside California, New York, and Massachusetts — up from 47% in 2016. The top-five-state share has fallen from 74% to 52%.

Which states over-index per capita?

Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Washington lead on per-capita Reg CF capital.

Audience

EIG · Brookings · Federal Reserve · regional economies

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.

Innovation Geography · 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.
• 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.
• After the Raise — What happens to companies after they crowdfund.
• 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.