Economic Intelligence Brief No. 7

Built to Last

Survival rates of crowdfunded companies vs. national baselines.

79% — of funded issuers still operating

Summary

Are crowdfunded startups lottery tickets? The data says they survive at rates that beat Main Street.

Key findings

• 79% of funded issuers are still operating.
• The 2016 cohort is 71% alive at 10 years — roughly double the ~34% BLS baseline.
• The 2021 cohort is 73% alive at 5 years (vs ~50% nationally); 21% have closed.
• 5,869 funded issuers analyzed. (Association, not causation — selection effects apply.)

Frequently asked questions

Do crowdfunded companies actually survive?

Yes — 79% of funded issuers are still operating. The 2016 cohort is 71% alive at 10 years (roughly double the ~34% BLS baseline); the 2021 cohort is 73% alive at 5 years vs ~50% nationally.

Does this prove crowdfunding causes longevity?

No. These are association statistics with selection effects — funded issuers are pre-screened. The brief states this caveat explicitly.

Audience

Kauffman · SBA · entrepreneurship 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.

Built to Last · 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.
• 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.