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.