Economic Intelligence Brief No. 3 — Data as of July 9, 2026

The Main Street Barometer

Retail investor sentiment and participation, tracked over a decade.

2.32M — investor commitments since 2016

Summary

2.32 million everyday Americans have invested in startups through crowdfunding. This brief reads their sentiment over time and finds fewer, more committed investors.

Key findings

• 2.32M investor commitments, $2.91B, across 7,455 funded offerings (6,063 companies).
• Commitments peaked in 2021, then fell about 60%.
• The average check climbed from $946 (2021) to $1,534 (2025), and more than tripled from its 2019 low of $496.
• Capital stayed resilient ($539M in 2021 to $387M in 2025) even as participation thinned.

Frequently asked questions

How many Americans have invested in startups through Reg CF?

2.32 million investor commitments totaling $2.91B across 7,455 funded offerings from 6,063 companies.

Did the retail investor base shrink after 2021?

Commitments fell about 60% from the 2021 peak, but the average check climbed from $946 to $1,534 — more than tripling from its 2019 low of $496 — keeping capital resilient ($539M in 2021 to $387M in 2025).

Audience

Markets · Federal Reserve · investor behavior

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.

The Main Street Barometer · 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.
• 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.
• 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.