InvestmentX - Now Powered By CClear
[PRE-Script – Don’t miss the end of this announcement for a few crowdfunding issuers who are on CClear’s radar RIGHT NOW. – SL]
More than anything, investment crowdfunding is about great stories.
Think about it.
What’s more exciting to investors than hearing about some amazing invention or product that could change the world, and the (frequently) ragtag band of driven entrepreneurs who have dedicated their lives to shaking up the status quo?
Those stories excite and motivate us, and sometimes get us to cut checks to help those people make their visions a reality.
But just because somebody tells a good yarn, that doesn’t mean we should get completely whipped up and hand over our hard-earned money.
At the end of the day, investment crowdfunding is still INVESTING.
And at the end of the day, investing decisions should include looking at some NUMBERS.
With that said, we couldn’t be more excited to announce our new investment crowdfunding data partner, CClear.ai.
These guys are pretty amazing.
CClear launched its groundbreaking database way back in 2016, when the ink was barely dry on the JOBS Act that created crowdfunding as we know it today.
The group’s comprehensive platform pulls data on all private companies relying on Regulation CF to raise funds from both retail and professional investors.
This includes things like company sales, cash-on-hand, receivables, debt, valuation, venture capital backing, investor sentiment and many other factors.
All told, CClear’s methodology looks at 1,411,587—and counting!—data points, runs those through various screens and filters, applies a proprietary algorithm, and seeks to use all of that information to generate predictive signals about crowdfunding companies before anyone else.
And in the months ahead, we’ll get deeply into the weeds on the types of data that CClear collects and what it does with it.
But for now, a good place to start is the idea of investor sentiment.
While its deal is live, every crowdfunding issuer is required to report how much money it has raised so far.
In other words—its “velocity of money”.
Because that data is updated pretty much in real time, if you had a way to track and record those numbers, you could see which companies have the most traction with “the crowd” at any given point in time.
There’s a lot of uncertainty investing in early-stage companies. Nobody has a crystal ball to see how things are going to turn out. But something that we CAN see is how things are going for them RIGHT NOW.
And that pretty much comes down to how much money they’re raising.
Does that mean they can execute on their vision?
Change the world?
Become the next unicorn?
While CClear’s other data can at least give us a way to sort the most promising from the least, sorry, there’s just no way anyone can know for certain.
But seeing how much money the company has raised DOES tell us a few things:
That people are excited about what the company is doing (which, if it does anything consumer-related, could also suggest how easily they might attract customers in the future);
That the company’s management knows how to do SOMETHING right. In crowd, we are often “betting on the jockey and not the horse,” so it is nice to see that management is at least competent enough to get money in the door. This shows that they are able to execute, and may succeed in doing other things (like growing the business) as well; and
The “Wisdom of Crowds” theory argues that large groups of people together can make better decisions than individuals—even experts—in the right situations. If you put any faith in that idea, then issuers raising money from the crowd more quickly might be more likely to be on to something than those who don’t.
When CClear layers all of its other data on top of these companies’ current traction, it starts to get extremely interesting.
But again, we’ll get to that.
For now, with no further ado, here are three companies that CClear data shows were some of the top money-raisers in crowdfunding over the past few weeks:
The #1 cash-raiser by far over the past few weeks was consumer ag tech company Lettuce Grow, which brought in $6.18 million.
Lettuce Grow sells a self-watering, self-fertilizing, hydroponic vertical gardening platform for people who want to grow vegetables, fruits and herbs, but don’t have a big yard to do it in. Its product appears to be doing well, as Lettuce Grow had $11.6 million in sales last year.
The company was raising on WeFunder, but we weren’t able to find a live deal page as of this writing. The crowd round may have been maxxed out—it happens quickly sometimes. But here’s their website if you’re interested in learning more about the company.
AptDeco is another consumer-related issuer who has seen recent traction, raising over $706k over the past few weeks in its crowd offering on the WeFunder crowdfunding platform. The venture capital-backed company has built a tech-enabled marketplace for reselling furniture.
AptDeco has over 500,000 active users and has sold over $84 million worth of furniture to date, with over $6.5 million in sales last year alone.
Turning to the pre-revenue side of the ledger, Pressman Film raised $934,400 over the past two weeks through an offering on the Republic platform.
Pressman is an independent film production company whose namesake producer Edward R. Pressman was involved in over 100 movies worth a combined $2+ billion in present-day box office value, including Wall Street, Conan the Barbarian and The Crow.
While Pressman passed away last year, lifelong mentee and son Sam Pressman has picked up the reins, and the group features an advisory board including Oliver Stone, Werner Herzog and Jason Blum (of Blumhouse fame).
So, there’s the scoop.
Access to CClear’s data is going to be a powerful tool for InvestmentX subscribers to get hot takes like this on the industry that won’t be available anywhere else in financial publishing.
‘Til next time!
Sean Levine
InvestmentX