USA Alternative Investing Market

Part
01
of four
Part
01

USA Alternative Investing Market, Rows 3-7

Information regarding the founding date, number of deals completed, total deal volume, total number of investors, and fee structures/policies of Start Engine, Crowdcube, Wefunder, EquityZen, and Lending Club has been included in rows 3-7, column C-H of the attached spreadsheet.

START ENGINE

  • Founding date: March 19, 2014
  • Number of deals completed: 275+
  • Number of deals completed in 2018: 181
  • Total deal volume: $100,000,000+
  • Total number of investors: 1,328
  • Fee structures/policies: "The company offers a common stock at the price of $7.50 per share and a minimum investment of $502.50 valued at $119,000,000."
  • Start Engine charges companies $10,000 and 9-14% of the total capital raised via Regulation CF; 2% for equity and 7-12% in cash for regulation CF; $10,000 and 9% of the total capital raised for Regulation A offerings; 2% for equity and 7% in cash for regulation A.

CROWDCUBE

  • Founding date: September 2011
  • Number of deals completed: 821
  • Number of deals completed in 2018: 198
  • Total deal volume: $758,897,100.73
  • Total number of investors: 500,000+
  • Fee structures/policies: Crowdcube charges Investors an investment fee of 1.5% of the invested price, with a minimum investment fee of £0.50 and a maximum investment fee of £250.

WEFUNDER

  • Founding date: 2012 [s6]
  • Number of deals completed: 301
  • Total deal volume: $103,949,890
  • Total number of investors: 277,991
  • Number of deals completed in 2018: 1
  • Fee structures/policies: The minimum investment is $2,200 while the maximum is $107,000.
  • The company calculates investors annual investment limit by their net worth and income provided at the account opening. Investment limits are calculated every 12 months.
  • The company operates an investment policy based on the SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) investment plan.

EQUITYZEN

  • Founding date: 2013
  • Number of deals completed: 8,500+
  • Number of deals completed in 2018: None
  • Total deal volume: $440,000,000,000
  • Total number of investors: 16
  • Fee structures/policies: Equityzen minimum investment stands at $20,000, with a 5% charge on investment smaller than $500,000, a 4% charge for investment between $500,000 and $1,000,000, and 3% charge for investment above $1,000,000.

LENDING CLUB

  • Founding date: 2006
  • Number of deals completed: 4,046,402
  • Number of deals completed in 2018: 841,177
  • Total deal volume: $50,373,171,478
  • Total number of investors: 23
  • Fee structures/policies: Investors can invest as low as $25 for the individual loan.
  • "Investors may avoid the ups and downs associated with the stock market because LendingClub Notes have low correlation to the stock market".



Part
02
of four
Part
02

USA Alternative Investing Market, Rows 8-12

Details regarding the date of establishment deals completed in the last 12 months and to date, the number of investors, and fees of the companies given in rows 8-12 have been provided in the attached spreadsheet. A brief overview of the same is provided below.

SOME OF THE COMPANIES FROM THE SPREADSHEET

WUNDER CAPITAL

  • The company raises money in private equity and use that to finance several commercial and industrial-scale solar energy projects in the U.S.
  • The company was founded in February 2014 and is headquartered in Colorado, US.
  • It has completed 200 deals to date and 80 in 2018.
  • The total deal volume to date is $85 million.
  • The company has a total of 10 investors.
  • It charges an average fee of 0.25% per year on the total investment amount.
  • This platform is only open to accredited investors investing a minimum amount of $1000.

ROOFSTOCK

  • Roofstock is an online platform that enables its investor's real estate investments to focus on asset allocation.
  • The company was founded in June 2014 and is headquartered in California, US.
  • It has completed 36 deals to date and 10 deals in 2018.
  • The total deal volume to date is $1 billion.
  • The company has a total of 20 investors.
  • It charges an average fee of 0.5% of the contract price or $500 whichever is higher.
  • This platform is open to every investor with no minimum limit of investment.

FUNDRISE

  • Fundrise provides its investors' alternatives to invest in stock and bonds.
  • The company was founded in June 2011 and is headquartered in Columbia, US.
  • It has completed 100 deals to date and no deal in the last 12 months or in 2018.
  • The total deal volume to date is $1.2 billion.
  • The company has a total of 13 investors.
  • It charges an average fee of 0.85% per year on the total investment amount.
  • The platform is open to all investors and has restricted the investment amount to a minimum of $500.

RESEARCH STRATEGY

We commenced our research by reviewing the official websites of the given companies along with their press releases, annual reports, and several other financial sources including Assets and others. Through this research, we were able to determine most of the information regarding the founding date, deals, and others. Since most of the companies haven't directly published the information regarding the deals completed on their websites and reports therefore considering the fact that as all these platforms are raising money from investors and then performing different operations, we consulted credible third party databases including Crunchbase, Bloomberg, and others as they are most likely to contain such kind of information. Following the same, we were able to provide the information regarding the deals completed in the past 12 months and to date for most of the companies.

Of note: The actual date when Wunder Capital was found is not publicly available neither on the company's website nor on several other databases including Crunchbase and Bloomberg. But as the company was founded in 2014 and the month of the establishment of its Twitter account on February 2014, hence we assumed February as the month when it came to existence since it is a fully online platform and it is most likely to have created its several business accounts at the time of its founding.
Part
03
of four
Part
03

USA Alternative Investing Market, Rows 13-17

CrowdStreet and Cadence charge no fee to investors for services rendered or assets under management, while EquityMultiple and YieldStreet charge 0.5% and 2% annual fees, respectively. All these companies are based in the United States, make use of online platforms to provide services to clients, and offer their services to accredited investors only. The requested information has also been added in rows 13 to 17 in the spreadsheet attached.

CROWDSTREET

EQUITYMULTIPLE

  • EquityMultiple was founded in February 2015 in New York.
  • The company is an online marketplace for real estate investing.
  • They have completed 33 deals in total and one in the last 12 months.
  • The company's total deal volume to date is over $1 billion.
  • They charge a 0.5% fee for assets under management, and the minimum investment is $5,000.
  • They deal exclusively in large commercial real estate. This real estate is sourced by experienced national and regional agents/agencies.

YIELDSTREET

  • YieldStreet was founded in January 2015 in New York.
  • YieldStreet is an investment platform that connects investors to asset-based alternative investments.
  • They have completed 73 deals in total and five in the last 12 months.
  • The company's total deal volume to date is over $824 million.
  • The platform charges a 2% fee for assets under management, and the minimum investment is $5,000.
  • They do not charge an initial account opening fee.

CADENCE

HARBOR

Part
04
of four
Part
04

USA Alternative Investing Market, Rows 18-22

Masterworks investors buy shares in art, Slated investors buy shares in films, Binance trades bitcoins, and Peer Street and Patch of Land are real estate investment firms. Information on these companies has been compiled in rows 18-22 of the attached spreadsheet.

ALTERNATIVE INVESTING MARKET IN THE US


RESEARCH STRATEGY

We were not able to find the number of deals for the last 12 months or 2018 for Slated, Peer Street, or Patch of Land. We were also unable to find a date or month in which Peer Street was founded.
To search for these metrics, we began our research by looking at the Slated, Peer Street, and Patch of Land websites. We were able to find information about their offerings, as well as some sites with information on the total number of deals for the company, which we have included in our sources below. We searched for financial reports on these sites as well, but no relevant reports were found. We were unable to locate the number of deals over the last 12 months or the number of deals for 2018.
We then reviewed corporate financial databases for additional financial information on each company. We were able to locate founding dates for all companies except Peer Street, which is included in this report. We also found information on the companies' investors. However, the number of deals each company made was not available through these measures. Some information is available behind paywalls, but it is unlikely that the number of deals is available even through a paid subscription to financial databases, as this information is likely private.
We also searched investment industry publications looking for articles and press releases about Slated, Peer Street, and Patch of Land. We found information on new rounds of investing, reviews, and investing information for these companies, but we were unable to locate any information that gave an average for the company's yearly or monthly sales that we could triangulate into the last 12 months of sales or an approximation of sales for 2018. We also noted that the only date given in any of the articles for Peer Street is 2013.
Since all of these companies are private investment companies, they are under no legal obligation to provide specific financial information, so they have chosen to keep the number of deals they conducted in the last 12 months (or in 2018 overall) private.

We also reviewed social media sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook when looking for Peer Street's founding date. Only the year is provided. The exact day or month is not available in the public domain.


Calculations for Binance Transactions

According to Binance's website, they have an average daily volume of 1.2 billion, in addition to over 1,400,000 transactions per second. The company started on July 7, 2017.

TO CALCULATE THE NUMBER OF TRANSACTIONS COMPLETED IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS
1.4 million (transactions per second) x 60 (seconds per minute) = 84 million (transactions per minute)
84 million (transactions per minute) x 60 (minutes per hour) = 5,040 million (transactions per hour)
5,040 million (transactions per hour) x 24 (hours in a day) = 120,960 million (transactions per day)
120,960 million (transactions per day) x 365 (days in year) = 44,150,400 million (transactions per year)

TO CALCULATE THE TOTAL NUMBER OF DEALS COMPLETED
Binance has been in business for two years and one month.
44,150,400 million (transactions per year) x 2 (two years) = 88,300,800 million (transactions in two years)
120,960 million (transactions per day) x 30 (average days in a month) = 3,628,800 million (transactions in a month)
88,300,800 million (transactions in two years) + 3,628,800million (transactions in a month) = 91,929,600 million (total transactions)

TO CALCULATE THE TOTAL VOLUME OF DEALS
Binance has been in business for two years and one month.
$1.2 billion (average daily volume) x 365 (days in a year) = $438 billion (yearly average volume)
$438 billion (yearly average volume) x 2 (years) = $876 billion (two year average volume)
$1.2 billion (average daily volume) x 30 (average days in a month) = $36 billion (monthly average volume)
$876 billion (two year average volume) + $36 billion (monthly average volume) = $912 billion (total average volume)

Did this report spark your curiosity?

Sources
Sources

From Part 01
From Part 03
Quotes
  • "CrowdStreet is a provider of online commercial real estate investment offerings and technology connecting investors with CRE firms."
  • "EQUITYMULTIPLE is an online marketplace for real estate investing."
  • "YieldStreet is an investment platform that is changing how wealth is created by connecting investors to asset-based alternative investments."
Quotes
  • "Unlike other marketplaces that mix single-family home fix-and-flips with commercial real estate offerings, CrowdStreet is 100% focused on the commercial real estate market, and this shows in the quality of the investment offerings available on the site."
  • "Deals at EquityMultiple have a minimum investment of $5,000, higher than Fundrise and a few other platforms out there."
Quotes
  • "Since launching in 2014, the CrowdStreet Marketplace has published over 352 commercial real estate investment offerings. To date, 17 of those offerings have been fully realized."