The “startup that analyzes startups” is making savvy acquisitions and raising funds.
“Data is NOT the new oil. It’s the new soil from which innovation grows.”
– David McCandless
Investing in startups is like navigating a maze.
We all know the rewards for choosing winners are mouth wateringly delicious, but the downsides are brutal. It feels like a game of darts, based on instinct, hype, and vibes.
Of course, you shouldn’t be investing based on vibes, you should be investing based on data.
And one company in particular has aggregated more data on startup investing than anyone else in the market…
Today, we’re not just exploring another startup — we’re diving into KingsCrowd: The startup that analyzes startups. (So meta, I know…)
KingsCrowd is building the Bloomberg terminal for startups and private markets. They deliver useful insights to make smart investing decisions; illuminating a market that is notoriously fragmented and opaque.
Now they’re raising funds, and letting you buy into the company itself.
Interestingly, KingsCrowd has just announced a very smart acquisition of a company called CrowdCheck, which helps startups file their Regulation A+ paperwork with the SEC.
More on that in a moment…
For now, check out these highlights:
- 2,000+ paying users | 16,000 registered users | $750k revenue 2024
- $4m projected in 2025 following CrowdCheck acquisition
- First mover advantage in a large, rapidly-growing, highly fragmented market
- Last year’s $1.5m round sold out at $10m valuation with 219 investors
- Today they are raising $2.5m at a (very reasonable) $13.9m valuation
- Round closes April 30
KingsCrowd is one of our longest-running partners here at Alts, and one of the most important companies in the fundraising space.
Let’s go 👇
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Note: This issue is sponsored by our friends at KingsCrowd, with research & due diligence performed by Stefan von Imhof and Tim Lea. As always, we think you’ll find it informative and fair.
Table of Contents
Meet Chris, KingsCrowd’s CEO
This week, Stefan and I had a chat with Chris Lustrino, KingsCrowd’s savvy CEO who founded the company 7 years ago.
Over the past decade, retail investors have started to realize the traditional 60/40 portfolio has underperformed.
No coincidentally, many have begun to embrace early-stage investing as part of their allocation into alternatives.
Per Chris:
“As access expands and liquidity improves, alternative investments like startups will no longer be “alternative”; they’ll be mainstream and an essential part of a balanced portfolio.”
“A quagmire of unstructured data”
The growth in the startup investment market speaks for itself, with over 2,500 startup investment opportunities emerging every year across 100+ platforms (!)
Yet startup investing remains one of the most fragmented and blurry corners of the market.
While public equities benefit from standardization, private startup markets remain stuck in a quagmire of unstructured data.
- Each platform presents deals in its own unique format
- There are wildly different data points & varying levels of disclosure
- There’s no good way to compare opportunities side by side
- Lack of consistency makes it hard to perform due diligence
As the space continues to scale, the need for a centralized and trusted data layer — a place where investors, founders, and platforms can all operate from a trusted source of data and insights – is becoming increasingly important.
That’s where KingsCrowd comes in. They aggregate all this unstructured data, bringing clarity and intelligence to this fragmented space.
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KingsCrowd has three revenue streams
Just like a good portfolio, KingsCrowd’s business model has been carefully diversified across three key verticals.
Retail investors
Aggregation is just the beginning. KingsCrowd offers subscriptions to a suite of investing tools
- Startup due diligence research
- Comparisons
- Ratings
- Personalized portfolio management
Founders
But unlike Bloomberg, KingsCrowd also serves startup founders as well.
In fact, KingsCrowd offers a full suite of advisory services that span the entire fundraising lifecycle.
- Form & legal filings
- Investor relations tools
- Benchmarking
- Deal structuring guidance
- Compliance support
Chris knows that founders have all sorts of questions about valuation, pricing shares, dealing with investors, minimum and maximum investment, pricing, security types…all sorts of questions.
But when they ask their lawyers for advice, they hear “We have no idea. We’re not in the market. We just help you create the formal filing.”
🎧 Listen to Chris explain how they fill this gap
Institutional investors
Finally, KingsCrowd’s API infrastructure delivers its proprietary data to a growing list of institutional partners — including everything from the SEC to university endowment funds.
This isn’t just a tool for individuals — it’s becoming a core data layer for the next generation of private capital markets.
Each revenue stream reinforces the other, creating a flywheel of data, insights, and relationships that deepen KingsCrowd’s defensive moat.
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Data sources and AI
The real challenge with aI isn’t building the models, it’s feeding them with the right data.
On that front, KingsCrowd brings together 300+ unique data points for every company they track, including:
- SEC filings
- Funding platforms
- APIs from third-party databases
- Proprietary historical performance data
- Real-time sentiment: bullish/bearish ratings from the KingsCrowd community
This powerful flywheel of structured data gives agencies, financial institutions, and forward-thinking investors a serious edge, which they are willing to pay for.
Strong traction & revenue
With 16,000 registered users and (more importantly) 2,000+ paying customers, KingsCrowd has proven strong product-market fit among retail investors.
Chris claims platform has a low monthly churn (about 2% month-on-month, confirming the stickiness of their content. This foundation has helped the team grow to $700,000 of revenues in 2024.
The company has 60% YoY revenue growth (cash-basis, non-audited), and 50% of revenues are now generated by B2B sales.
But it’s their acquisition strategy which is creating the most interesting growth opportunities.
KingsCrowd is making smart acquisitions
KingsCrowd has now made three acquisitions:
- Raisepapers (formerly called Lawcloud) — a platform to create, file, and manage capital raising docs.
- Lustro (formerly CrowdLustro) — an investor relations portal.
- And just this month they acquired CrowdCheck, one of the most highly respected names in advisory services for Reg CF and Regulation A+ crowdfunding offerings.
Crowdcheck is Kingscrowd’s largest acquisition to date and adds over $3m in historical annual revenue to KingsCrowd’s top line, boosting projected 2025 revenue to $3.9 – $4.7m.
CrowdCheck acquisition: A $4.5m non-dilutive transaction
Importantly, the CrowdCheck deal has been structured in a non-dilutive manner, delivering immediate and long-term value to shareholders without issuing new equity.
The deal structure has at its core a profit-sharing methodology:
- $500k paid upfront
- $4m Promissory Note to founder paid on a percentage of profits
Per Chris:
“We’re super excited to have completed this acquisition. Crowdcheck has an amazing reputation in the regulated crowdfunding marketplace…[they’re] the go-to source of expertise in the space. Their network and deal flow give us plenty of new opportunities to cross-sell from our suite of services. It’s a win-win-win for both Crowdcheck, Kingscrowd, and our clients.”
Combined, these acquisitions allow build a future where AI-driven tools streamline deal structuring, compliance, and capital raising.
🎧 Listen to Chris explain the non-dilutive structure
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Reasonable valuation
KingsCrowd’s last fundraising was in April 2024. They raised $1.5m from 219 investors, at a valuation of 16c per share.
Following the non-dilutive acquisition of Crowdcheck, KingsCrowd’s market valuation is expected to rise healthily, paving the way for a higher valuation of $22–$25m.
However, Kingscrowd has decided to raise $2.5m at their current $13.9m valuation ($0.18 per share). 👏
Use of funds
Going forward, the bias of expansion will be towards sales & marketing:
- Growing sales team. A new director of sales has already been made — an ex-StartEngine professional that brings additional expertise. The next step is to support him with a second sales pro.
- A marketing agency will be activated to start scaling spend as the team team consolidates in the wake of acquisitions
- R&D will be activated to better tech-enable the new advisory business (for example, to write drafts of Form Cs and 1-As with AI trained on our data sets)
- Product enhancements, including an Investor Relations platform
- Further acquisition capital to support new opportunities that may arise
🎧 Listen to Chris explain the use of funds
Key risks
Data source risk
KingsCrowd relies heavily on external data sources — it’s at the core of Kingscrowd’s value proposition and revenue generation.
Therefore, one of the largest risks would be losing access to some of this data.
Now, Kingscrowd reviews 300+ data points per transaction from 100+ different sources. So there is already considerable diversification of data sources, and no “single point of failure.”
Acquisition integration risk
When companies make acquisitions, there is always a risk that the integrations don’t go smoothly.
Their recent CrowdCheck acquisition is a big one. But the fact that Chris structured the deal in a non-dilutive way ensures the company doesn’t get in over its head.
Competitive risk
I’m actually surprised how little notable competition KingsCrowd seems to have.
In discussions Chris, here has been a lot of competition over the years that have sort of come and gone. (Angels & Entrepreneurs, Crowditz, and Newchip, to name a few.)
The company is aware of Crowdfund Capital Advisors and Hubtas, but their presence is not significantly felt at this stage.
Per Chris:
“In the future, competitors could be the Bloomberg or Morningstars, but I don’t worry much about the big guys. I worry more about the college kid thinking about building in this market. The big guys will just buy us!”
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Closing thoughts
Overall, it’s very difficult for me to find any serious fault with KingsCrowd.
This company has first-mover advantage in a fragmented market, little competition of note, they’re making savvy acquisitions to diversify their business, and fusing everything together to expand their moat.
If it weren’t for the recent acquisition, this would mostly be a data play. But the acquisition of CrowdCheck and the new advisory side of the business is truly impressive — and it creates a robust offering that is worth more than the sum of its parts.
In terms of exit possibilities, I think any exit in the near-term is likely to be a trade sale, probably through an information provider or institution, such as Morningstar, S&P, or Bloomberg. (After all, Blackrock recently acquired alternative investing data company Preqin.)
Chris also gave us more color around why the exit would tend to come from the larger data players
“The way we’re really going to advance this industry…is to work with someone like Bloomberg, who could take us to the masses and say, “Hey, Wall Street, we now provide this solution.” That’s how we really start to grow the markets; go beyond our own walls.”
What does Chris have to say about selling the company?
“Like any good founder, I’ll always keep all options on the table. Our main target is to continue making our acquisition strategy work for all stakeholders, aiming to start throwing meaningful cash in the next 3-5 years, with a plan to IPO in the next 8-10 years. Of course, we would always be open to listening to serious offers from institutional information providers!”
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That’s it for today!
Come chat with me and Chris in the Alts Community.
See you next time,
Tim
Disclosures from Alts
- This issue was written by Tim Lea and edited by Stefan von Imhof
- KingsCrowd was able to review an early draft of this article. Tim and Stefan made final editorial decisions.
- Neither the authors nor Alts currently holds shares or interest in KingsCrowd.
This issue is a sponsored deep dive, meaning Alts has been paid to write an independent analysis of KingsCrowd. KingsCrowd has agreed to offer a deep look at its business, offerings, and operations. KingsCrowd is also a sponsor of Alts, but our research is neutral and unbiased. This should not be considered financial, legal, tax, or investment advice, but rather an independent analysis to help readers make their own investment decisions. All opinions expressed here are ours, and ours alone. We hope you find it informative and fair.
