New York, NY, April 23, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Indie Investor, a pioneering force in the intersection of technology, community, and capital, has released a groundbreaking study that sheds light on the sustainability of crowdfunded startups.
Less than half of Reg CF companies are verifiably operating based on SEC or Linkedin/WHoIS online sources.
Of the 4,338 companies that raised capital from retail investors under SEC Regulation Crowdfunding between January 2020 and December 2022, 1,913 — or 44.1% — were confirmed operational by two independent public-web signals four years later, according to a study published by The Indie Investor. The study cross-verified each company’s SEC-filed website against an independently discovered LinkedIn page to rule out false positives common in online-presence research, and reconstructed year-over-year web presence using Internet Archive Wayback Machine snapshot dates. Full study: https://theindieinvestor.substack.com/. Cumulative web-presence retention across the 4,338-issuer sample fell from 95.3% at end of 2022 to 79.1% at April 2026 — a decline of 704 companies over 40 months — while verified-alive rates varied across the ten largest funding platforms from 59.8% at StartEngine to 17.0% at MainVest.
Methodology
The Indie Investor retrieved all Form C filings recorded in SEC EDGAR between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2022, deduplicated by issuer identifier (CIK), and tested each company’s filed website for HTTP liveness, with Internet Archive Wayback Machine cross-reference for transient errors. Each issuer was then independently matched to a LinkedIn company page via Google Search and verified by comparing the LinkedIn-listed website domain and company name against the SEC filing using a two-factor domain-plus-name cross-check. Year-over-year cumulative web-presence counts were reconstructed from Wayback Machine last-snapshot dates available for 3,344 of 4,338 issuers (77.1%), with rule-based fallbacks applied to the remainder. All current-state measurements were captured on April 18–19, 2026.
Key Findings
Verified operational: 1,913 of 4,338 issuers (44.1%) were confirmed operational by both a live website and a corroborating LinkedIn page as of April 2026.
Verified non-operational: 30 of 4,338 issuers (0.7%) were confirmed non-operational by both an unreachable website and an inactive LinkedIn page.
Platform variance: StartEngine recorded the highest verified-alive rate at 399 of 667 issuers (59.8%); MainVest the lowest at 84 of 495 issuers (17.0%) — a 42.8 percentage-point gap across the ten platforms with 50 or more issuers.
“Death illusion” cases: 278 of the 1,032 companies whose filed websites had failed (26.9%) were still active on LinkedIn, with 90.3% of those meeting activity thresholds of ≥100 followers, ≥2 employees, or a post within the previous 18 months.
Cumulative web-presence retention across the 4,338-issuer sample declined from 4,135 (95.3%) at end of 2022 to 3,987 (91.9%) at end of 2023, 3,823 (88.1%) at end of 2024, 3,739 (86.2%) at end of 2025, and 3,431 (79.1%) at April 2026.
Full Results
Read the full study at https://theindieinvestor.co
About
The Indie Investor is a publication covering public markets, equity crowdfunding, startup equity, and digital assets for retail investors. Nathan Brantley is the founder and researcher behind the publication. This study is part of an ongoing series auditing the outcomes of the post-2020 retail investing expansion.
Press Inquiries
Nathan Brantley
naterobbrant [at] gmail.com
https://www.TheIndieInvestor.co
