Economic Intelligence Brief No. 14

What Capital Costs

The cost and structure of crowdfunding capital by instrument.

11.5% — median crowdfunded debt interest, 2024

Summary

Reg CF isn't one instrument — it's a financing menu, and each option carries a different price. This brief measures the cost of capital across all five.

Key findings

• Five instruments: equity, SAFE, convertible, debt, revenue share.
• The median interest on crowdfunded debt doubled, 5.5% (2016) → 11.5% (2024) — tracking the Fed.
• Debt's share of funded deals nearly tripled, 7.6% → 21.3%.
• Revenue-share deals repay ~1.5x principal; SAFEs/convertibles carry a ~20% discount.

Frequently asked questions

What does crowdfunded capital cost?

By instrument: crowdfunded debt's median interest doubled from 5.5% (2016) to 11.5% (2024), tracking the Fed. Revenue-share deals repay ~1.5x principal; SAFEs and convertibles carry a ~20% discount.

Is the financing mix changing?

Yes. Debt's share of funded deals nearly tripled, from 7.6% to 21.3%.

Audience

Mercatus · Heritage · capital-markets 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.

What Capital Costs · 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.
• 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.
• 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.