Rate and Review Equity Funding Platforms
2022 Analysis, Comparisons, Pros & Cons
MicroVenture Marketplace
5% + 10% Carried interest
$99 application fee, $250 due diligence fee, 5% of what you raise
Startup equity with secondary offerings. A full service online Equity Crowdfunding platform for early stage venture investments open to the public. They offering connections, research, deal flow, education.
Legal Structure
They offer both primary and secondary investment opportunities through special purpose vehicles (SPVs) or directly into issuers, as well as opportunities under Regulation CrowdFunding. They are one of the few that operate their own broker-dealer registered by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Review our fees section to compare broker and fee comparisons.
Stats
- +$220 Mil invested
- 400+ Investment Opportunities
- as of August 2020 according to their website (we wrote an article on the challenges of the provided data and comparing apples to apples.)
Investor Fee Details
In January of 2019 Microventures dropped their fee for non-accredited investors and regulation crowdfunding offerings to $0 for both investors and entrepreneurs according to this press release. Fees for accredited offerings will remain.
Neminem shared some additional fees that may pop up via Reddit with profit-share, "I have actually gotten paid - first payment was last September, I've gotten paid quarterly since, I'm up to about $200 of the $750 they will eventually pay me (from my $500 investment). The thing is, if I pull out the money each quarter like I would definitely do otherwise, they're going to charge me a $1 BS "distribution fee" on top of the initial investment fee." He goes on to state, "so that's only $4 a year, but still, if you're talking fairly small numbers ($40-50 a distribution), that's nontrivial, percentage-wise, and was completely not mentioned up front. Other than that, though. (It was a dollar initially, then it went up to $2, and it's stayed there so far. I haven't taken the money out because I'm curious how much it will go up and how quickly, since again, it's not documented anywhere that I can tell.)" Our research focuses on equity capital types, but Microventures and others offer these revenue share opportunities.
FunFIFacts shared their experience, in the same Reddit post, using the investing portal prior to the reduction of fees. His comment on the front-loaded fee to invest in a company, "if it takes off, surely you won't be worrying about the 7% fee. But you're paying a lot to get access to ultimately very high-risk investments. I would feel better about this (or at least more educated) if this site listed average returns or had any information about past performance, just to get a sense for how this asset class performs." Microventures had leveraged a sliding scale of fees which drops as one increases the amount to invest. We have observed that most platforms are continually updating fees to compete.
History
Founded in 2009 by Bill Clark and based in Austin, Texas.
In November 2016 Microventures partnered with Indiegogo to offer Title III Equity Crowdfunding investment offerings to allow for non accredited investor access as little as $100. After a few years of this partnership Indiegogo has stepped away and Microventures operates independently again. JD Alois at CrowfundInsider shares the details of why.
In 2011 Microventures gained access to sell $300,000 in pre-IPO shares of Facebook which 30 investors bought according to TechCrunch. The fund that helped provide access was created by MicroAngel Capital Partners, the Austin-based VC management company founded by MicroVentures Founder.
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External Reviews
Less than 0.5% of companies who apply get listed. This process of company vetting saves you time. The average amount of time they state they will spend assessing company's applications is 6 weeks.
Industries Covered
Offerings from the same Platform
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Would not recommend at all -- stay away at all costs. Twice now their "fund manager" has made poor decisions which have ruined investments. Originally with Spotify they apparently got nervous with the direct listing and sold our shares "on a private market" for a considerable discount to what the direct listing would have been. Left a TON of money on the table because of these poor decisions.
More recently they sold SpaceX shares "after receiving a private offer" we've been holding for years at a 40% gain, when current valuations suggested we should at least see a return of 100% or more.
Don't have the expectation you'll get any sort of fair market value with Microventures. Twice now I've gotten burned because of them.