MicroVentures
MicroVentures markets itself as equity crowdfunding, and AltStreet's reconstruction of its SEC record shows that channel is now close to dormant: 195 Regulation Crowdfunding offerings by 182 issuers, peaking at 38 initial filings in 2020 and down to 4 in 2025, with no offering open on the platform's own public feed on September 18, 2026. The business still filing steadily is accredited-only, a series of single-purpose Regulation D vehicles numbered in Roman numerals that had reached MVP LS FUND 685. The company publishes 'over $550M' raised on one of its sites and 'over $700+ million' on the other, with no reconciliation between them; AltStreet could verify $289,281,413 of capital sold through the platform's own offerings, and explains below why that is a floor rather than a refutation.
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What the data actually shows - TL;DR
MicroVentures is the trading name of MicroVenture Marketplace Inc., a FINRA-member broker-dealer in Austin, Texas, incorporated in Delaware on October 26, 2009 and wholly owned by MicroVentures Inc. BrokerCheck records two lines of business for it: private placements of securities, and facilitating private company stock transactions. Its Regulation Crowdfunding book ran through its own registration and, from 2016 to 2019, through an affiliated funding portal, First Democracy VC, which withdrew its portal registration on January 31, 2019.
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That retail channel peaked at 38 initial Form C filings in 2020 and has fallen to 4 in 2025, with no offering open on the platform's public feed in September 2026. AltStreet's census records 182 issuers and 195 offerings, 144 of them funded, and $28,540,887 of realized Regulation Crowdfunding capital. The Regulation D side is the business still filing steadily: 1,692 Form D filings across 1,018 issuers since 2011, of which 999 are the platform's own single-purpose vehicles that report $260,740,526 sold. The firm carries one FINRA disciplinary event, a 2019 settlement with a $40,000 fine for failing to file twenty private placement memoranda, and it is comfortably capitalized.
Regulation Crowdfunding offerings and distinct issuers naming MicroVenture Marketplace or First Democracy VC as intermediary, 2016 to 2025, built from 696 Form C family filings (194 Form C, 325 Form C/A, 177 Form C-U). 194 offerings opened with an initial Form C; 11 issuers ran more than one. Initial Form C by year: 6, 31, 29, 36, 38, 17, 18, 8, 7, 4.
Realized Regulation Crowdfunding capital across 144 funded offerings by 137 issuers, taking the largest progress update within each offering and summing across offerings. Median offering $123,698; largest $1,070,000 (Jetson AI, opened 2019). A further 25 offerings filed a progress update that states no amount.
Reported sold by the platform's own 999 single-purpose Regulation D vehicles, across 15,282 investor positions. A floor rather than a measurement: 370 of those vehicles report no sale and were never amended. Separately, 19 third-party issuers naming the firm report $26,076,989 of offering size, which does not establish that MicroVentures placed those rounds.
The most recently disclosed Regulation Crowdfunding fee: a 5 percent cash commission on the amount raised, on 81 offerings from 2020 to 2025, plus securities equal to 2 percent of the securities sold on 126 of 194 offerings. It was 7 percent on 50 offerings from 2016 to 2018. No fee schedule is published on the website.
Regulation Crowdfunding offerings open on the platform's own public endpoint on September 18, 2026, against 145 marked funded. Completing registration and the investor questionnaire unlocked nothing and produced a request to schedule a call.
AltStreet Form C census across both of the operator's Regulation Crowdfunding intermediaries (MicroVenture Marketplace Inc., CIK 1478147, and First Democracy VC, CIK 1683054): 696 filings resolved into 195 offerings by 182 issuers, with outcome classification for 179; a Regulation D universe built from EDGAR full-text search sliced by year (1,692 filings, 1,018 issuers) and priced from each issuer's latest Form D; the platform's public offerings API (145 funded, 0 active); the audited Form X-17A-5 for fiscal 2025; and the FINRA BrokerCheck report for CRD 152513. All as of 2026-09-18.
AltStreet Weekly
Track the filings this platform does not publish
AltStreet resolved 696 Form C filings into 195 Regulation Crowdfunding offerings, priced 1,018 Regulation D vehicles, and read the fee clause out of every offering. Get notified when an issuer files an annual report, terminates reporting, or when a new vehicle files.
Free during beta. Filing-grounded data, no platform marketing.
What's Actually Happening
In plain English, here is what is actually happening.
- 1MicroVentures is two businesses under one brand. The one the marketing leads with, equity crowdfunding open to anyone, has slowed to 4 offerings in 2025 and had none open on the day of this review.
- 2The business still filing steadily sells interests in single-purpose companies that each hold shares of one private startup. Those are open to accredited investors only, and they are numbered in Roman numerals; the latest is in the six hundreds.
- 3There is also a secondary desk where you can buy or sell shares of large private companies like SpaceX or Stripe. The stated buyer minimum on that side is $50,000.
- 4The investing pages publish no fees; the help center gives a typical Regulation D schedule (5 percent placement, 1.5 percent offering costs, 0.50 percent a year with two years up front, 10 percent carry) and the Form CRS says Regulation Crowdfunding investors pay nothing. The SEC filings carry the issuer side: the platform charged issuers 7 percent from 2016 to 2018 and 5 percent from 2020 onward, and on most offerings it also took securities equal to 2 percent of what was sold.
- 5In the crowdfunding years, what you usually bought was a Crowd Note. That is not a share. It converts into equity only if the company later raises a priced round or is sold, and the details depend on the terms of your particular note.
- 6Of the 179 crowdfunding issuers AltStreet could classify, 59 stopped filing their annual reports, 33 never filed one, 35 formally terminated reporting, and 17 are still filing. One became a public company.
- 7AltStreet's editor registered and completed the investor questionnaire on September 18, 2026 and still could not see any offering. The platform asked him to schedule a call instead.
Quick Verdict
Is this platform right for you?
MicroVentures is a long-established broker-dealer running a real and sizeable private-placement business, and it is better capitalized and better disclosed at the filing level than most platforms AltStreet reviews. Its Regulation Crowdfunding issuers file their annual reports more often than the market average, measured issuer by issuer.
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The problems are in the gap between the business and its presentation. Equity crowdfunding is the platform's headline product, and its filings in that channel have fallen to four offerings a year with none open. The company publishes two materially different lifetime capital figures on its own two sites with no reconciliation.
It publishes no fee schedule at all, although its filings disclose a 5 percent commission plus a 2 percent securities interest. And the registration flow that the marketing invites you into does not show you an offering at the end of it. For an accredited investor with a specific company in mind and a willingness to take a call, this is a credible arranger. For anyone expecting a browsable crowdfunding marketplace, the site leads with something that is not currently on offer.
Best for
- Accredited investors who want access to a named late-stage private company through a single-purpose vehicle and will read that vehicle's terms in full
- Sellers of private company stock looking for a registered broker-dealer to facilitate a transaction
- Existing Crowd Note and SAFE holders from the 2016 to 2020 crowdfunding years who need to locate their issuer's filings and conversion terms
- Researchers who want the Regulation D vehicle record of a fifteen-year-old private-placement operator in one place
Avoid if
- You are a non-accredited investor expecting live Regulation Crowdfunding offerings: none was open on September 18, 2026 and only four were filed in all of 2025
- You want to compare the actual terms of an offering before creating an account and speaking to someone: the help center's Regulation D figures are typical ones, and each offering memorandum sets the real ones
- You are relying on the advertised lifetime capital totals: two materially different figures appear on the company's own two sites with no published reconciliation
- You need a defined exit: a Crowd Note converts only on the triggers its terms set out, and the secondary desk carries a $50,000 buyer minimum
Top strengths
- Comfortably capitalized broker-dealer: net capital $4,238,994 against a $250,000 minimum, aggregate indebtedness to net capital of 0.0101 to 1 against a 15 to 1 limit, audited by Bauer & Company
- Fifteen years of continuous SEC and FINRA registration, with X-17A-5 annual reports filed since 2011 and a single disciplinary event on the record
- Regulation Crowdfunding annual-report compliance better than the market on an issuer-level test: 34 of 134 confirmed-raise issuers filed neither an annual report nor a termination, 25 percent against 40 percent market-wide
- Fees are disclosed in the filings on every offering that has an initial Form C, including the securities interest the platform takes alongside the cash commission
Key limitations
- The retail channel was inactive on the day of this review: 4 initial Form C filings in 2025, none open on the platform's own feed, while the accredited Regulation D vehicle count keeps climbing
- Two materially different lifetime capital claims with no published reconciliation, against $289,281,413 AltStreet could verify as sold through the platform's own offerings
- No fee schedule, terms page or how-it-works content on the investing subdomain: every such page returns navigation chrome only; typical Regulation D fees are in a help-center article and the fee types in the Form CRS
- One FINRA disciplinary event: a 2019 settlement, censure and $40,000 fine for failing to file twenty private placement memoranda in 2017, in the business line that is now the firm's main one
Where It Fits
Where MicroVentures fits relative to the alternatives.
Accredited access to single-company private vehicles
If you want
Buy into a named private company through a single-purpose vehicle arranged by a long-established broker-dealer
Use
MicroVentures, on the terms this review sets out
Reg CF startup offerings you can actually see today
If you want
Live Regulation Crowdfunding offerings open to non-accredited investors, with terms visible before you register
Use
Wefunder or StartEngine, each far larger and each with its own FINRA history
Secondary pre-IPO shares with published market data
If you want
Buy or sell shares of large private companies with visible pricing and a stated process
Use
Forge or Hiive, both of which publish more about their market than MicroVentures does
Compare Before Deciding
How MicroVentures compares
MicroVentures sells three different things, and each has a different natural comparison.
The secondary desk, with published market data
Forge
The pre-IPO venue that publishes pricing and market context on the private names it trades; MicroVentures facilitates the same kind of transaction at a $50,000 buyer minimum and publishes none.
Crowdfunding that is still running
Wefunder
2,902 Regulation Crowdfunding offerings, a published 7.9 percent fee and a continuously open book; the contrast for a crowdfunding brand that filed four offerings in 2025 and had none open.
The other single-company vehicle operator
EquityZen
Long-running vehicles that hold private shares for investors; the closest structural comparison to the MVP ES and MVP LS series, and the benchmark for what those vehicles should disclose.
Quick Answers
What most investors want to know first
The highest-signal facts first: minimums, liquidity reality, K-1 timing, and whether distributions are actually part of the experience.
Minimum
Regulation Crowdfunding: described by the platform as 'as low as $100'. Secondary purchases: $50,000 buyer minimum per microventures.com/liquidity. Regulation D vehicles: typically from $3,000, and late-stage secondary offerings from $10,000, per the help center (read October 24, 2026)
Liquidity
There is a secondary business, and it is one of the two business types BrokerCheck records for the firm, but it is a facilitation desk for late-stage private company stock at a $50,000 buyer minimum rather than a venue for the positions Regulation Crowdfunding investors hold. No pricing, volume or completed-transaction data is published, and secondary volume does not appear in any Form D.
K-1 Timing
Not disclosed. Single-purpose LLC vehicles taxed as partnerships would generally issue a Schedule K-1 on the vehicle's own timetable; Crowd Notes and SAFEs generally produce no annual form while held.
Distributions
Crowd Notes, SAFEs and vehicle interests in private companies pay nothing on a schedule. Revenue participation instruments pay per their own terms. Any distribution on a vehicle interest passes through the vehicle if and when the underlying company pays or is sold.
Overview
Platform Overview
A concise read on what the platform is, how the structure works, and where the practical friction shows up for real investors.
Broker-dealer private placement marketplace: MicroVenture Marketplace Inc. (SEC File No. 8-68458, CRD 152513, CIK 1478147, Austin, Texas; wholly owned by MicroVentures Inc.) arranges three kinds of private securities transactions. First and largest by filing volume, interests in single-purpose Regulation D vehicles that each hold securities of one private company, sold to accredited investors and currently branded MVP ES FUND and MVP LS FUND. Second, Regulation Crowdfunding offerings open to all investors, historically Crowd Notes and SAFEs issued directly by early-stage companies, run through the broker-dealer and, from 2016 until its withdrawal on January 31, 2019, through the affiliated funding portal First Democracy VC.
Third, facilitation of secondary transactions in late-stage private company stock, with a stated buyer minimum of $50,000. BrokerCheck records the firm's business as two types: private placements of securities, and facilitating private company stock transactions. The Regulation Crowdfunding fee disclosed in the filings is 5 percent of the amount raised on the 81 offerings that state it from 2020 to 2025, and was 7 percent on 50 offerings from 2016 to 2018, with securities equal to 2 percent of the securities sold on 126 of 194 offerings. No fee schedule is published on the platform's websites.
For everyone else the mechanics are mostly historical. The Regulation Crowdfunding channel through which anyone could buy a Crowd Note or a SAFE at low minimums ran at scale from 2016 to 2020, filed four offerings in 2025, and had none open in September 2026. The platform's own public endpoint confirms it: 145 funded offerings, none active. What the filings add to the picture is a fee record the website omits, an instrument that was usually a convertible note rather than stock, an issuer base whose annual-report compliance is better than the market's, and a Regulation D vehicle series far larger than the crowdfunding book.
Minimum Investment
Regulation Crowdfunding: described by the platform as 'as low as $100'. Secondary purchases: $50,000 buyer minimum per microventures.com/liquidity. Regulation D vehicles: typically from $3,000, and late-stage secondary offerings from $10,000, per the help center (read October 24, 2026)
Investor Eligibility
Regulation D vehicles and secondary transactions: accredited investors only. Regulation Crowdfunding: all US investors subject to the annual limits, but no offering was open on 2026-09-18
Instruments
Across 194 offerings with an initial Form C: Crowd Notes 131, SAFEs 15, preferred stock 18, revenue participation about 11, common stock 4, debt 4; interests in single-purpose LLCs on the Regulation D side
Offering Size
Regulation Crowdfunding targets: median $50,000, range $24,995 to $1,235,000. Maximums: median $425,000, range $100,000 to $5,000,000
Platform Fees
Regulation D, typical per the help center (read October 24, 2026): a 5 percent placement fee and 1.5 percent offering costs taken at closing, a 0.50 percent annual management fee with two years charged up front and later years charged at a distribution, and 10 percent carried interest after the investor's capital is returned; actual terms in each memorandum per the Form CRS, which also names a possible distribution fee and a $500 cancellation fee. Regulation Crowdfunding: no investor fee (Form CRS); issuer fees disclosed in each offering's Form C: 5 percent of the amount raised on 81 offerings since 2020, 7 percent on 50 offerings from 2016 to 2018, plus securities equal to 2 percent of the securities sold on 126 of 194
Liquidity
No secondary market in crowdfunding positions; a facilitated secondary desk in late-stage private company stock with a $50,000 buyer minimum; Reg CF one-year resale restriction running from each investor's own purchase date
Tax Reporting
Not disclosed by the platform. Single-purpose LLC vehicles taxed as partnerships would generally issue a Schedule K-1; Crowd Notes and SAFEs generally produce no annual form while held
Regulatory Status
SEC-registered broker-dealer (File No. 8-68458) and FINRA member since 2009, CRD 152513; affiliated funding portal First Democracy VC registered 2016 and withdrawn 2019-01-31
Regulatory Record
One FINRA disciplinary event: AWC dated 2019-12-30, censure and a $40,000 fine for failing to file twenty private placement memoranda under Rule 5123 between March and August 2017
Net Capital
$4,238,994 at 2025-12-31 against a $250,000 minimum; aggregate indebtedness to net capital 0.0101 to 1 against a 15 to 1 limit
Platform Track Record
182 Regulation Crowdfunding issuers, 195 offerings, 144 funded, $28,540,887 realized; 1,018 Regulation D issuers, $260,740,526 reported sold by the platform's own vehicles
Ownership
Wholly owned by MicroVentures Inc.; CEO William Michael Clark (CRD 5741424) since October 2009; the parent has held 75 percent or more since October 2014
Visual Summary
MicroVentures vs. Key Alternatives
How MicroVentures compares to the venues an investor would weigh against it, on the two things it actually sells.
What you buy
MicroVentures: Crowd Notes and SAFEs historically, interests in single-company Reg D vehicles now · Wefunder: startup equity and SAFEs · StartEngine: startup equity and Reg A shares · Forge: shares of late-stage private companies
Open to non-accredited investors
MicroVentures: in principle, but no offering was open on 2026-09-18 · Wefunder: yes, continuously · StartEngine: yes, continuously · Forge: no
Reg CF scale (offerings)
MicroVentures: 195 · Wefunder: 2,902 · StartEngine: 1,674 through the portal plus 302 through its broker-dealer · Forge: not a Reg CF venue
Fee visibility
MicroVentures: nothing published; 5% plus a 2% securities interest in the filings · Wefunder: 7.9% published · StartEngine: about 7% published · Forge: commission published as a range
Outcome disclosure
MicroVentures: none · Wefunder: none at deal level · StartEngine: none at deal level · Forge: none at deal level
Regulatory record
MicroVentures: FINRA AWC 2019, $40,000 · Wefunder: FINRA AWC 2022, $1.4M · StartEngine: FINRA action on record · Forge: no comparable AWC located
Secondary market
MicroVentures: facilitated transactions, $50,000 buyer minimum · Wefunder: none · StartEngine: its own Reg CF secondary venue · Forge: its own marketplace with published data
ASEconomic Positioning
- The economics of the accredited business are placement fees on vehicle investments, and the audited accounts size them: $4,570,855 from the affiliated funds in 2025. That single year's fee revenue sits oddly against a lifetime Regulation D record of $260.7 million reported sold, and the gap is the clearest evidence that the filed record understates what actually moves through the platform.
- The registered entity is lean and leans heavily on its parent. In 2025 the broker-dealer paid MicroVentures Inc. $4,832,455 under expense-sharing and platform-technology agreements, including $3,820,785 of salaries and wages, which is more than the broker-dealer's entire balance sheet of $4,414,112. The staff and the technology sit with the parent, which files nothing public; the registered entity is the licensed counterparty through which the transactions pass.
- On the crowdfunding side the platform's take was larger than the cash headline suggests. A 5 percent cash commission plus securities equal to 2 percent of the securities sold is worth roughly 7 percent of offering value at the issue price, which is close to what Wefunder charges in cash. Because the securities interest is in the same instrument the crowd bought, the platform's own position converts on the same triggers as the investors'.
- The two channels have very different economics. The median crowdfunding offering realized $123,698, which at 5 percent is about $6,000 of cash commission, against the cost of preparing a Form C and chasing annual reports for years afterwards. Affiliated placement fees alone were $4,570,855 in 2025. The contrast does not establish why the filing mix changed, but it does show which channel is commercially significant.
Key Gaps & Non-Disclosures
- The actual fee terms of any Regulation D vehicle or secondary transaction; only typical Regulation D figures are published.
- The terms, carried interest and expenses of the single-purpose Regulation D vehicles.
- The basis for the 'over $550M' and 'over $700+ million' figures, and why they differ.
- Outcomes of any offering in any channel, including whether any vehicle has realized.
- The financial statements in fifteen of the sixteen broker-dealer annual reports, which were filed on paper.
Platform Intelligence
MicroVentures Milestones (AltStreet filing-tracked)
Key platform events, regulatory turns, liquidity stress points, and product launches that shape how the review should be read.
MicroVenture Marketplace Inc. incorporated
Incorporated in Delaware on October 26, 2009. William Michael Clark becomes CEO the same month and still holds the role. SEC broker-dealer registration follows under File No. 8-68458, CRD 152513.
First annual report, and the first vehicles
The first Form X-17A-5 annual report is filed on February 25, 2011. The MicroAngel fund series begins filing Form Ds the same year, the first generation of the single-company vehicle structure that is still the platform's main filing activity.
First Democracy VC registers as a funding portal
Form CFPORTAL filed August 30, 2016 (CIK 1683054, formerly Democracy VC LLC), opening the Regulation Crowdfunding channel. Six initial Form C filings follow that year, then 31 in 2017 and 29 in 2018.
The funding portal registration is withdrawn
First Democracy VC files Form CFPORTAL-W on January 31, 2019, ending its portal registration after five amendments. All Regulation Crowdfunding since runs through the broker-dealer. Every one of that year's 36 offerings states that the issuer owes no cash commission, and none records a securities interest, a pattern that appears in no other year.
FINRA settlement over unfiled private placement memoranda
A letter of acceptance, waiver and consent dated December 30, 2019 (docket 2017052392101): censure and a $40,000 fine, paid January 6, 2020, for failing to make Rule 5123 filings for twenty private placement offerings between March and August 2017 and one late filing. The firm consented without admitting or denying, and later terminated the compliance principal who had received the automated alerts.
The Regulation Crowdfunding channel peaks
Thirty-eight initial Form C filings in 2020, the platform's high-water mark, and the commission settles at 5 percent of the amount raised plus securities equal to 2 percent of what was sold. Filings fall to 17 the following year and keep falling.
Four crowdfunding offerings all year; the vehicle series keeps filing
Four initial Form C filings in 2025, against 52 Regulation D filings by the platform's own vehicles. The MVP LS FUND series reaches into the six hundreds. The audited accounts for the year record $4,570,855 of placement fee revenue from the affiliated funds.
AltStreet census, capture and registration test
AltStreet resolves 696 Form C family filings into 195 offerings across 182 issuers and prices 1,018 Regulation D issuers from their latest Form D. The platform's public endpoint returns 145 funded Regulation Crowdfunding offerings and none active. AltStreet's editor completes registration and the investor questionnaire on September 18 and is shown no offerings, then asked to schedule a call.
Mental Model
How MicroVentures actually works, simplified.
The platform forms a vehicle for one company
For the accredited business, MicroVentures creates a single-purpose LLC that will hold securities of one private company, files a Form D for it, and sells interests in that vehicle. The naming has changed over fifteen years: MicroAngel funds in 2011 and 2012, MV Startup Fund and MV Venture Fund in 2013 and 2014, MV Liquidity Fund and MV Opportunity Fund alongside them, and currently MVP ES FUND and MVP LS FUND, almost certainly early stage and late stage, numbered in Roman numerals to 167 and 685 respectively by September 2026.
You invest in the vehicle, not in the company
Your counterparty is the vehicle. It holds the underlying shares, and you hold an interest in it. The broker-dealer charges a placement fee on the investment, recognized when the issuer accepts it, and its audited accounts show $4,570,855 of such fees from the affiliated funds in 2025 alone. The vehicle files its own Form D, though in 370 of 999 cases that filing reports no sale.
Or, historically, you bought a Crowd Note directly
In the Regulation Crowdfunding channel, which ran at scale from 2016 to 2020, you bought a Crowd Note or a SAFE issued by the company itself, at minimums the site describes as low as $100. The platform took 7 percent and later 5 percent of the raise, plus securities equal to 2 percent of what was sold on most offerings. That channel filed 4 offerings in 2025 and had none open in September 2026.
You wait, and there is no scheduled exit
A Crowd Note converts on the triggers its own terms set out. A vehicle interest realizes only when the underlying company is sold or lists. The platform runs a secondary desk for large private names with a $50,000 buyer minimum, which serves its own deal flow rather than the positions retail investors hold. Of the 179 crowdfunding issuers AltStreet could classify, one is a public company today.
Investor Operations
The practical questions investors actually care about: when tax documents arrive, how cash distributions work, and whether capital can be exited before the underlying asset is sold.
Tax Documents
K-1 Timing
What to expect
Not disclosed. Single-purpose LLC vehicles taxed as partnerships would generally issue a Schedule K-1 on the vehicle's own timetable; Crowd Notes and SAFEs generally produce no annual form while held.
Confidence: Low
Cash Flow
Distributions
Frequency
none
Timing
Crowd Notes, SAFEs and vehicle interests in private companies pay nothing on a schedule. Revenue participation instruments pay per their own terms. Any distribution on a vehicle interest passes through the vehicle if and when the underlying company pays or is sold.
Consistency
Not applicable. No filing on the platform's record discloses a distribution or a return of capital to Regulation Crowdfunding investors.
Liquidity
Exit Reality
Holding period
Regulation Crowdfunding securities carry the one-year resale restriction running from each investor's own purchase date, with the statutory exceptions. Vehicle interests have no stated term and no redemption right that the platform publishes.
Exit options
- Conversion of a Crowd Note or SAFE on the triggers its own terms define, followed eventually by a sale of the resulting security.
- A sale or listing of the underlying company, which for a vehicle interest passes through the vehicle to the investor.
- The platform's facilitated secondary desk for late-stage private company stock, with a stated buyer minimum of $50,000; it is not a market in the crowdfunding positions retail investors hold.
- Limited exempt transfers within the first year as Regulation Crowdfunding permits, to the issuer, an accredited investor, a family member or in a registered offering.
Secondary market
There is a secondary business, and it is one of the two business types BrokerCheck records for the firm, but it is a facilitation desk for late-stage private company stock at a $50,000 buyer minimum rather than a venue for the positions Regulation Crowdfunding investors hold. No pricing, volume or completed-transaction data is published, and secondary volume does not appear in any Form D.
Confidence: Medium
Investment Structures
Single-Purpose Regulation D Vehicles (the business still filing steadily)
999 issuers in AltStreet's Form D universe are the platform's own vehicles, each an LLC holding securities of one private company and each filing its own Form D. The naming has moved through MicroAngel (21 issuers, $5,983,000), MV Startup Fund (52, $14,693,000), MV Venture Fund (12, $3,271,000), MV Liquidity Fund (39, $35,055,000), MV Opportunity Fund (3, $4,180,000), MV EI Fund (4, $4,264,000) and now MVP ES FUND (156, $13,245,255) and MVP LS FUND (646, $164,954,728), the latter two numbered in Roman numerals to 167 and 685. The investor holds an interest in the vehicle, not shares of the company. Terms, carried interest and expenses are not published.
Two filed facts shape the series: 870 of the 885 vehicles with a Form D in AltStreet's ledger claim Rule 506(b) rather than 506(c), so the offerings may not be generally solicited, and 873 claim the Investment Company Act Section 3(c)(1) exclusion, which limits a vehicle to 100 beneficial owners. The single-company, deal-specific structure is why the series runs into the hundreds, since a separate vehicle holds each company's securities; the 3(c)(1) cap is why each one stays small, at a median of 9 investors.
Crowd Notes (the historical retail instrument)
131 of the 194 offerings with an initial Form C sold a Crowd Note, a convertible instrument that becomes equity on the triggers its own terms define, typically a qualifying priced round or a liquidity event. The holder has no vote and no share until conversion. Whether the note carries a maturity, a repayment right or an outside date varies between offerings, so what a holder actually owns has to be read from the individual instrument. This was the dominant instrument through the platform's crowdfunding years and is what most existing retail holders own.
SAFEs, Preferred and Common Stock
Fifteen offerings sold a SAFE or Crowd SAFE, which converts on the same kind of trigger and carries no vote. Eighteen sold preferred stock with stated preferences and four sold common stock, so about 25 of 194 offerings made the retail investor a shareholder at the point of purchase.
Revenue Participation and Debt
About eleven offerings sold revenue participation rights, promissory notes tied to a share of revenue, or net operating profit participation rights, and four sold debt. Two sold simple agreements for future tokens. A small tail of the book, with economics set by the individual instrument rather than by an equity outcome.
Facilitated Secondary Transactions
The platform facilitates purchases and sales of late-stage private company stock, one of the two business types BrokerCheck records for the firm, with a stated buyer minimum of $50,000. The investing subdomain carries roughly eighty marketing pages for named companies including SpaceX, Stripe, Ripple, Reddit, Circle, Turo, Plaid, Rubrik, Betterment and Acorns; each ends in a prompt to create an account. No pricing, volume or completed-transaction data is published, and secondary volume would not appear on any Form D.
Risk
Risk Structure
This is where the marketplace pitch gives way to the actual operating reality: delayed exits, limited disclosure, fee drag, and path-dependent outcomes.
The Advertised Channel Is Not the One Filing
Equity crowdfunding leads the platform's investor-facing site. Its initial Form C filings fell from 38 in 2020 to 4 in 2025, and the platform's own public endpoint returned no active offerings and 145 funded ones on September 18, 2026. An investor arriving from the crowdfunding marketing is arriving at a business whose current filing activity is overwhelmingly accredited-only private placements. Nothing in the record establishes whether the platform intends to reopen the retail channel.
Nothing Is Priced Before the Call
No fee schedule, terms page or how-it-works content is published on the investing subdomain: /fees, /pricing, /terms, /terms-of-service, /how-it-works, /docs, /legal, /tax, /investor-resources and /liquidity there all return navigation chrome and no content. The help center, linked from the site footer as Education, does publish a typical Regulation D fee schedule (a 5 percent placement fee and 1.5 percent offering costs taken at closing, a 0.50 percent annual management fee with two years charged up front and later years charged at a distribution, and 10 percent carried interest after the investor's capital is returned) and typical minimums, and the Form CRS on microventures.com describes the fee types; AltStreet's September 18 review missed both and corrected this on October 24, 2026. AltStreet's editor completed registration and the investor questionnaire on September 18, 2026, saw no offerings, and was asked to schedule a call.
There is a structural reason for that last part: 870 of the 885 vehicles with a Form D in AltStreet's ledger claim Rule 506(b), which prohibits general solicitation, so platforms relying on it typically gate access and establish an investor relationship before showing deal materials rather than advertising offerings. That explains the gate. It does not excuse the absence of published fees and terms, which 506(b) does not require anyone to withhold.
You Own the Vehicle, Not the Company
On the Regulation D side the investor's counterparty is a single-purpose LLC that holds the underlying securities. The LLC's records are the register, its manager votes and receives distributions, and its operating agreement governs fees and expenses. None of those terms is public, and the vehicles are numbered rather than named after anything an investor can look up independently.
A Convertible Note Is Not a Share
The dominant retail instrument was the Crowd Note, which converts on the triggers its own terms define. Whether it carries a maturity, a repayment right or an outside date varies by offering, so a holder in a company that neither raises a priced round nor is sold needs to read the instrument to know what they are owed and when. Of the 179 issuers AltStreet could classify, one is a public company today, 59 have lapsed in their reporting and 33 never filed an annual report at all.
The Filed Record Cannot Settle the Company's Figures
The company publishes 'over $550M' on one site and 'over $700+ million' on the other, with no reconciliation between them and no stated methodology for either. AltStreet could verify $289,281,413 sold through the platform's own offerings: $260,740,526 across its 999 Regulation D vehicles plus $28,540,887 of realized Regulation Crowdfunding capital. That is a floor: 370 of the 999 vehicles report no sale on a Form D stating the first sale had not yet occurred and were never amended; 826 of 848 vehicles sampled declare exactly $2,000,000 sought, a template value carrying no information; the audited 2025 accounts show $4,570,855 of placement fees from the affiliated funds in one year; and secondary volume never appears on a Form D. The company's figures are unverifiable rather than disproven, and the two may simply have different scopes.
One Disciplinary Event, Directly On Point
FINRA accepted a letter of acceptance, waiver and consent dated December 30, 2019 (docket 2017052392101): censure and a $40,000 fine, paid January 6, 2020. Between March and August 2017 the firm failed to make the private placement memorandum filings required by FINRA Rule 5123 for twenty offerings and made one late filing, violating Rules 5123 and 2010. The firm consented without admitting or denying.
It used an automated alert system, but the compliance principal who received the alerts did not file, and the firm later terminated that person's association. Private placements are the firm's main business.
Total Loss on an Unconverted Private Position
Crowd Notes and vehicle interests in early and late-stage private companies, with no scheduled repayment, no dividend and conversion contingent on events set by the individual instrument.
Why it matters
The return depends on the underlying company raising a priced round, being acquired or listing. Of the 179 Regulation Crowdfunding issuers AltStreet could classify, 59 have lapsed in their annual reporting and 33 never filed one, which is usually what a company that has stopped looks like from the outside. No realized return has been published for any offering in any channel.
Mitigation / verification
Read the instrument before you commit: what triggers conversion, whether there is a maturity or a repayment right, and what happens if no priced round occurs. Check the issuer's Form C-AR history on EDGAR. Size every position for total loss.
No Published Terms Before You Engage
The platform's investing pages publish no fee schedule and no terms of service (its typical Regulation D fees are in a help-center article, its fee types in the Form CRS), and registering plus completing the investor questionnaire does not reveal any offering.
Why it matters
You cannot compare this platform's cost or terms against an alternative in advance, and the process routes you to a conversation before it routes you to a document. The filings show the crowdfunding fee was 5 percent in cash plus securities worth roughly another 2 percent of offering value, which a 5 percent headline would not tell you.
Mitigation / verification
Pull a recent Form C on EDGAR and read the intermediary compensation and financial interest clauses. For a Regulation D vehicle, ask in writing for the operating agreement, the placement fee, any carried interest, and the expenses charged to the vehicle, before the call rather than after it.
The Vehicle Layer
On the accredited side you hold an interest in a numbered single-purpose LLC managed by the platform's affiliate, not shares of the company it holds.
Why it matters
The vehicle's manager controls voting, information rights and distributions, and its operating agreement governs what the vehicle may charge you. If the platform or its parent ceased, the vehicle's register and its manager are the same group. No continuity or backup arrangement is disclosed.
Mitigation / verification
Obtain the vehicle's operating agreement and identify the manager, the fee waterfall, the information rights and what happens on a manager change. Ask whether the vehicle issues a Schedule K-1 and on what timetable.
Marketing Totals That Cannot Be Checked
Two materially different lifetime capital figures appear on the company's own two sites, with no published reconciliation or methodology.
Why it matters
A lifetime total is the headline number an investor uses to judge whether a platform is established. When the operator publishes two of them and explains neither, that number cannot carry weight in a decision, in either direction.
Mitigation / verification
Judge the platform on what is checkable: fifteen years of registration, one disciplinary event, net capital of $4,238,994, and the filed record of 1,018 Regulation D issuers and 182 crowdfunding issuers set out in this review.
A Lean Registered Entity Behind a Larger Private Group
The broker-dealer paid its parent $4,832,455 in 2025 under expense-sharing and platform-technology agreements, more than its entire balance sheet of $4,414,112, and carries an accumulated deficit of $1,338,674.
Why it matters
The registered entity you contract with holds the license; the staff, the technology and the brand sit with the parent, which does not file publicly. Net capital is comfortable today, but the platform's continuity depends on the group, and the group's accounts are not public.
Mitigation / verification
Read the annual Form X-17A-5 for the broker-dealer's net capital and related-party position. Note that only the fiscal 2025 report is readable on EDGAR; the previous fifteen were filed on paper and exist only as a stub naming a document control number.
Biggest Misconceptions & What Actually Happens
- Ask which entity you are contracting with on any given transaction: the broker-dealer, the parent, or the single-purpose vehicle.
- Ask for the fee in writing before the call, and read the Form C compensation clause yourself for the crowdfunding side.
- On a vehicle investment, ask for the operating agreement, the carried interest, the expenses charged, and the K-1 delivery history.
- On any Crowd Note you already hold, read the conversion terms and ask the issuer whether any qualifying round has occurred.
- Ask what a specific vehicle actually raised and closed; the Form D record frequently reports no sale because no amendment was filed.
- For a secondary transaction, ask how the price is set, what the commission is on each side, and how settlement and transfer approval work.
Regulatory & Legal Posture
Security Status
Private Placements under Regulation D and Regulation Crowdfunding, Intermediated by an SEC-Registered Broker-Dealer and FINRA Member With One Disciplinary Event; Affiliated Funding Portal Registration Withdrawn in 2019
MicroVenture Marketplace Inc. is registered with the SEC as a broker-dealer (File No. 8-68458) and is a FINRA member (CRD 152513), incorporated in Delaware on October 26, 2009 and regulated from the FINRA Dallas office. It operates under the Rule 15c3-3(k)(2)(i) exemption and is not currently suspended. BrokerCheck records its types of business as two categories: private placements of securities, and facilitating private company stock transactions.
Those categories describe how the firm reports its business lines and do not limit its authority as a registered broker-dealer to intermediate Regulation Crowdfunding, which its own Form C record shows it does. Its affiliated funding portal, First Democracy VC (CIK 1683054), registered on Form CFPORTAL on August 30, 2016 and withdrew that registration on January 31, 2019, so all Regulation Crowdfunding since has run through the broker-dealer. AltStreet's legal scan on September 18, 2026 located one disciplinary event: a FINRA letter of acceptance, waiver and consent dated December 30, 2019 (docket 2017052392101), censure and a $40,000 fine for failing to make required private placement memorandum filings under Rule 5123 for twenty offerings between March and August 2017 and one late filing, consented to without admitting or denying the findings.
No SEC enforcement action, administrative proceeding or investor class action was located against the firm or its principals. The scan covered web sources, the BrokerCheck disclosure section and EDGAR; PACER and state securities regulators were not searched, so this is an absence of located record rather than a clean one. A name collision to be aware of when checking this firm: searching MicroVentures litigation returns Microvast Holdings (Nasdaq: MVST), an unrelated battery maker with its own securities class actions. What these registrations do not provide: no SIPC protection on the securities themselves, no registered-investment-company governance for the vehicles, no audit of issuer financials below the Regulation Crowdfunding review threshold, and no regulator review of the merits of any offering.
Disclosure Quality
Complete at the filing level, absent at the website level. Every Regulation Crowdfunding offering carries a Form C with issuer financials and a compensation clause, and the firm has filed X-17A-5 annual reports since 2011. Against that: the platform publishes no fee schedule, no terms of service and no how-it-works content on its investing subdomain, where ten such pages return navigation chrome only; it publishes no outcome data for any offering in any channel; it advertises two materially different lifetime capital totals on its two sites with no reconciliation; and fifteen of its sixteen annual reports were filed on paper and exist on EDGAR only as an auto-generated stub naming a document control number, with no report at all between February 2020 and February 2022. On the Regulation D side, 370 of the platform's 999 vehicles report no sale on a Form D stating the first sale had not yet occurred and were never amended, and 826 of 848 sampled declare exactly $2,000,000 sought, a template value. The filed record is therefore a floor on activity rather than a measurement of it.
Custody Model
Escrowed Subscriptions During a Regulation Crowdfunding Offering + Direct Issuer Securities or Interests in an Affiliated Single-Purpose LLC; Broker-Dealer Operates Under the Rule 15c3-3(k)(2)(i) Exemption
Regulatory Backing
The broker-dealer operates under paragraph (k)(2)(i) of Rule 15c3-3 and is accordingly exempt from the remainder of that rule, which is the exemption used by firms that do not carry customer accounts. At December 31, 2025 it reported net capital of $4,238,994 against a required minimum of $250,000, an excess of $3,988,994, and an aggregate indebtedness to net capital ratio of 0.0101 to 1 against a 15 to 1 limit. Its balance sheet was $4,414,112 of assets, almost all cash, against $43,012 of liabilities, audited by Bauer & Company.
After a Regulation Crowdfunding close the investor holds securities of the issuer, recorded by the issuer; after a Regulation D placement the investor holds an interest in the single-purpose LLC, recorded by the vehicle. No SIPC protection applies to those positions, and no backup registrar or continuity arrangement is disclosed for the vehicles.
Tax Treatment
Reporting
Not disclosed by the platform. Interests in a single-purpose LLC taxed as a partnership would generally produce a Schedule K-1; Crowd Notes and SAFEs generally produce no annual form while held; interest on debt instruments is generally reported on Form 1099-INT, and revenue participation rights depend on the instrument's terms
The platform publishes no tax guidance; its /tax page returns navigation chrome only. A vehicle organized as an LLC taxed as a partnership issues a K-1 on its own timetable, which for private-company vehicles is often late in the filing season. Holding a Crowd Note or a SAFE is generally not a taxable event, so no form arrives in a year without a conversion or disposition. Confirm the treatment of any specific instrument with the issuer or the vehicle manager.
Income Character
Capital Gain or Loss on Conversion or Disposition; Partnership Items on Vehicle Interests; Possible QSBS Treatment on Qualifying C-Corporation Stock
A Crowd Note that converts into stock and is later sold generally produces capital gain or loss, with the holding period and basis depending on the conversion terms. Interests in an LLC taxed as a partnership pass through the vehicle's items of income, gain, loss and deduction, which may include state-sourced items. Stock in a domestic C corporation may qualify as qualified small business stock under Section 1202 if the issuer meets the active-business and gross-asset tests and the shares are held at least five years; whether a converted Crowd Note starts that clock at conversion or at purchase is instrument-specific and not something this review establishes.
Limitation
Losses on a failed issuer are capital losses, available only when the security is sold or becomes worthless, and establishing worthlessness in a given year for a dormant private company is rarely straightforward. QSBS eligibility is issuer-specific and must be verified from the issuer's records. Vehicle interests add K-1 timing risk and possible filing obligations in other states. Regulation Crowdfunding annual investment limits apply across all intermediaries combined. Confirm treatment with a tax adviser; the platform publishes no tax guidance of its own.
Special Considerations
- Keep the subscription agreement and the fee confirmation as your basis record; the platform publishes no document library.
- Ask the vehicle manager for the K-1 delivery history before investing, not after; a late K-1 on a private-company vehicle can force an extension.
- A Crowd Note that has not converted generates no annual form and no deduction; the position persists until its own terms are triggered.
- State treatment depends on your residence and, for vehicle interests, potentially on the vehicle's activity; this review does not establish state conclusions.
- Regulation Crowdfunding investment limits are computed across all portals and broker-dealers combined, not per platform.
Account Suitability
Taxable
The practical default for both channels. Capital-gain character on a successful conversion and sale, partnership items on vehicle interests, and capital-loss treatment on failures.
Roth IRA
Conceptually attractive for a long-dated, lottery-shaped payoff, but a self-directed custodian must be willing to hold an LLC interest or a Crowd Note and to value it annually, and the custodial fees are material against a small position.
Traditional IRA
Same practical barrier. A vehicle interest that generates unrelated business taxable income would also create a filing obligation for the account.
HSA
Not offered by mainstream HSA providers, and the open-ended illiquidity is a poor match for an account meant to fund near-term medical costs.
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AltStreet Data Layer
What the data actually shows
AltStreet reconstructed both of MicroVentures' channels from EDGAR, read the fee clause out of every offering's Form C, re-read all 177 progress updates from their filed prose, priced 1,018 Regulation D issuers, and tested what the platform shows a registered user. These are the findings that matter most.
The channel the marketing leads with has gone quiet, and the platform's own feed confirms it
Initial Form C filings went 6, 31, 29, 36 and 38 from 2016 to 2020, then 17, 18, 8, 7 and 4. The platform's public offerings endpoint returned 145 funded offerings and none active on September 18, 2026. Over the same span, Form D filings naming the firm ran between 82 and 186 a year, and the MVP LS FUND series reached 685.
What this means
An investor arriving from the crowdfunding marketing is arriving at a business whose current filing activity is overwhelmingly accredited-only. That also explains the registration experience: completing the questionnaire unlocks nothing because no retail offering was open. Whether the platform intends to reopen the channel is not something the record shows.
The filings disclose a fee the website does not, and it is larger than the cash headline
Each of the 194 offerings with an initial Form C carries a compensation clause. The commission was 7 percent on 50 offerings from 2016 to 2018 and 5 percent on 81 offerings from 2020 to 2025, and on 126 of the 194 the platform also took securities equal to 2 percent of the securities sold. Meanwhile /fees, /pricing, /terms, /how-it-works and six more pages on the investing subdomain each return 158 characters of navigation chrome and no content.
What this means
At the issue price the securities interest is worth roughly a further 2 percent of offering value, so the cost to an issuer on most offerings was about 7 percent rather than 5. Because that interest is in the same instrument the crowd bought, it converts on the same triggers. An investor who wants this platform's terms has to read EDGAR.
Two unreconciled capital totals, against $289.3 million AltStreet could verify
microventures.com/about says 'Over $550M has been raised on our platform to date'; invest.microventures.com says investors have 'invested over $700+ million', captured the same day, with no reconciliation between them. AltStreet verified $260,740,526 reported sold by the platform's own 999 Regulation D vehicles and $28,540,887 of realized Regulation Crowdfunding capital across 144 funded offerings, $289,281,413 in total. A further $26,076,989 of offering size is reported by 19 third-party issuers that name the firm, which does not establish it placed those rounds.
What this means
The verified figure is a floor: 370 of 999 vehicles report no sale on a form saying the first sale had not occurred and were never amended, 826 of 848 sampled declare exactly $2,000,000 sought as a template value, the audited 2025 accounts show $4,570,855 of placement fees from the affiliated funds in one year, and secondary volume never appears on a Form D. The company's figures cannot be reconciled to filings and cannot be called false either; they may simply measure different things.
What retail investors bought was a convertible note, not a share
Across the 194 offerings with an initial Form C, 168 describe the security as 'Other'. The descriptions resolve to a Crowd Note on 131 offerings and a SAFE or Crowd SAFE on 15. Only 4 offerings sold common stock and 18 preferred, so about 25 of 194 conveyed equity at purchase. A Crowd Note becomes equity on the triggers its own terms define, usually a qualifying priced round or a liquidity event.
What this means
What a holder owns depends on the individual instrument, including whether it carries a maturity or a repayment right. When checking an old position, the conversion terms matter more than the company's story.
The issuers file their annual reports more often than the market's do, and it survives deduplication
Measured at the issuer level, because Rule 202 places the obligation on the issuer, 100 of the 134 issuers with a confirmed raise whose first funded offering opened before 2025 filed at least one Form C-AR and 35 filed a Form C-TR; 34 filed neither, a 25 percent gap against 40 percent market-wide. The result holds at a 2024 cutoff. Across the full classified base, however, 59 issuers have lapsed in their reporting and 33 never filed at all.
What this means
This is the platform's clearest strength and it is a real one: the information exists more often here than at the peer venues AltStreet has tested, and it is not an artefact of counting repeat issuers twice. It does not change what the information eventually shows, which is that most of these companies stop reporting.
The vehicles claim the exemption that forbids advertising, which is why registration shows you nothing
Of the 885 MicroVentures vehicles with a Form D in AltStreet's ledger, 870 claim Rule 506(b) and only 9 claim 506(c); 873 also claim the Investment Company Act Section 3(c)(1) exclusion, which limits a vehicle to 100 beneficial owners. The median vehicle reports 9 investors. By contrast StartEngine's 118 Form D vehicle series all claim 506(c), the exemption that permits general solicitation in exchange for verifying every investor's accredited status.
What this means
Rule 506(b) prohibits general solicitation, so platforms relying on it typically gate access and establish an investor relationship before showing deal materials. That is the mechanism behind completing the questionnaire and being asked to schedule a call. The 3(c)(1) cap is a separate constraint, and it explains why each vehicle stays small rather than why there are so many; the single-company structure accounts for the count. None of it explains why no fee schedule or terms of service is published, which the exemption does not require anyone to withhold.
2019 is the one year in which no offering states a cash commission
All 36 offerings opened in 2019 state that the issuer owes no cash commission, 31 in the form 'the issuer will not owe a commission' and 5 stating a zero amount. None of the 36 records a securities interest, where 126 offerings in other years do. All 36 name the broker-dealer rather than the portal as intermediary. First Democracy VC withdrew its funding portal registration on January 31, 2019.
What this means
AltStreet notes the coincidence in time and does not assert a cause. The platform has not explained the year, and it is the single clearest discontinuity in an otherwise consistent fifteen-year fee record.
A lean registered entity in front of a private group that files nothing
In 2025 the broker-dealer paid its parent $4,832,455 under expense-sharing and platform-technology agreements, including $3,820,785 of salaries, against a total balance sheet of $4,414,112 and an accumulated deficit of $1,338,674. Fifteen of the sixteen annual reports on EDGAR were filed on paper and survive only as a stub naming a document control number, with none at all between February 2020 and February 2022.
What this means
Net capital is comfortable and the license is sound, but the staff, technology and brand sit with a parent that publishes nothing. Only one year of this firm's financial history is readable, so no trend can be established from the public record.
Data as of 2026-10-15 . AltStreet review evidence layer . Public-source analysis
Full datasetAltStreet Weekly
This analysis runs on AltStreet's filing database
1,692 Form D filings, 696 Form C family filings, 179 issuer outcomes and a fee record read from every offering, reconciled for one platform. The same data layer covers 100+ alternative investment platforms.
So What?
What to do differently because of this.
What this means
The filings are the only place this platform's terms are published
What to do
Before dealing with MicroVentures, pull a recent Form C on EDGAR and read the intermediary compensation and financial interest clauses. They disclose the cash commission and the securities the platform takes. The website publishes neither.
What this means
Value the securities interest alongside the cash fee
What to do
On 126 of 194 offerings the platform took Crowd Notes equal to 2 percent of the securities sold, on top of a cash commission. At the issue price that is worth roughly another 2 percent of offering value, so the comparison against a platform charging 7 percent in cash is closer than the headline percentage suggests.
What this means
A Form D that reports no sale usually means no amendment was filed
What to do
Do not read the Regulation D record as a scoreboard. 370 of the platform's 999 vehicles report zero sold on a form stating the first sale had not yet occurred, and were never amended. Ask the platform directly what a specific vehicle raised and closed.
What this means
The annual report is the only ongoing disclosure, and most issuers eventually stop
What to do
On any Regulation Crowdfunding position you already hold, look up the issuer's Form C-AR history. Of the issuers AltStreet could classify, 59 lapsed and 33 never filed at all. A gap in filings is the earliest signal you will get.
Decision Fit
Investor Fit
Who this works for, who it does not, and what level of patience and complexity tolerance the platform really demands.
Existing Crowd Note and SAFE Holders
This review is most immediately useful to people who already hold a position from the 2016 to 2020 crowdfunding years. The work is administrative: find your issuer's Form C and later filings on EDGAR, read what actually triggers conversion of your own note, and check whether the issuer is still filing annual reports. Of the 179 issuers AltStreet could classify, 59 have lapsed and 33 never filed one.
Accredited Investors Targeting a Named Private Company
The platform has arranged single-company vehicles for fifteen years, is properly registered and comfortably capitalized, and this is the business it files most. The fit is neutral rather than positive because nothing about a specific vehicle is published: not the fee, not the carried interest, not the expenses, not the operating agreement. Everything depends on what you extract in writing before you commit.
Sellers of Late-Stage Private Company Stock
Facilitating private company stock transactions is one of the two business lines BrokerCheck records for the firm, so the capability is real and registered. Against that, the platform publishes no pricing, no volume and no completed-transaction data, so you cannot judge execution quality in advance the way you can at venues that publish market data.
Non-Accredited Investors Seeking Startup Offerings
No Regulation Crowdfunding offering was open on the platform's public endpoint on September 18, 2026, and only four were filed in all of 2025. Completing registration and the investor questionnaire does not reveal offerings; the platform asks for a call. The venues that run this product continuously are elsewhere.
Investors Who Compare Costs Before Registering
Ten fee, terms and process pages on the investing subdomain return navigation chrome only. The help center publishes a typical Regulation D schedule (5 percent placement, 1.5 percent offering costs, 0.50 percent a year, 10 percent carry) that each memorandum may vary, the Form CRS names the fee types and says secondary fees are negotiated per transaction, and the Regulation Crowdfunding terms are in the SEC filings, where the fee is 5 percent in cash plus securities equal to 2 percent of the securities sold.
Investors Requiring Liquidity, Income or Outcome Reporting
No instrument here pays on a schedule, no realized return has been published for any offering in any channel, and the secondary desk carries a $50,000 buyer minimum and no published market data. Anyone who needs any of the three should look elsewhere.
Tradeoffs
Key Tradeoffs
The attraction of pre-IPO access is real, but every benefit comes bundled with a corresponding liquidity, transparency, or pricing cost.
Registered and Capitalized vs. Unpublished Terms
Fifteen years of SEC and FINRA registration, net capital of $4,238,994 against a $250,000 minimum and a single small disciplinary event; against a platform that publishes no fee schedule, no terms of service and no tax guidance, and shows a registered user nothing until they book a call.
A Real Private-Placement Business vs. a Retail Storefront
1,692 Regulation D filings across 1,018 issuers and a vehicle series still filing; against an investor-facing site that leads with equity crowdfunding, a channel that filed four offerings in 2025 and had none open.
Complete Filing Disclosure vs. Absent Platform Disclosure
Every offering's fee, instrument and issuer financials are on EDGAR, and the annual-report compliance of this platform's issuers beats the market on an issuer-level test; against a website that publishes no outcomes, two unreconciled lifetime totals, and fifteen annual reports that exist only as paper stubs.
Access to Named Companies vs. Ownership Through a Vehicle
Exposure to specific late-stage private names most investors cannot reach; against holding an interest in a numbered LLC whose operating agreement, fees and manager terms are not public.
Low Headline Commission vs. the Securities Interest
A 5 percent cash commission reads below Wefunder's 7.9 percent; add the securities equal to 2 percent of what was sold that the platform took on 126 of 194 offerings and the cost is roughly 7 percent of offering value at the issue price.
Avoid
Who This Is Not For
This section should be read as a filter, not an afterthought. If you need income, simplicity, or near-term access to capital, the structure is working against you.
Non-Accredited Investors Looking for Live Offerings
No active Regulation Crowdfunding offering on the platform's own feed on September 18, 2026, and four initial Form C filings in all of 2025.
Investors Who Will Not Book a Call
Registration and the investor questionnaire unlock nothing; the platform's next step is a scheduled conversation, and no terms are published in the meantime.
Investors Who Need the Fee Before They Engage
The investing pages carry no fee schedule; the help center's typical Regulation D figures and the Form CRS are the published terms, and each memorandum sets the actual ones. The Regulation Crowdfunding 5 percent commission plus the 2 percent securities interest is knowable only from the SEC filings.
Investors Relying on Platform Outcome Reporting
No realized return, exit or write-off data is published for any offering in any channel, and the Form D record reports no sale for 370 of 999 vehicles.
Investors Who Want a Share Rather Than a Claim
The dominant retail instrument was a Crowd Note that converts on the triggers its own terms define; about 25 of 194 offerings conveyed equity at purchase.
Editorial View
AltStreet Perspective
The compressed version of the review: what matters, what marketing tends to obscure, and how we would frame the platform for a serious allocator.
Verdict
MicroVentures is a competent private-placement business wearing a retail storefront it is no longer stocking. The broker-dealer has been registered since 2009, is comfortably capitalized, carries one small disciplinary event, and has arranged private placements at a scale the filings can only partly capture. Its Regulation Crowdfunding issuers file annual reports more often than the market's do, and that survives being measured issuer by issuer, which is a real and unglamorous strength. What does not hold up is the presentation. The site leads with equity crowdfunding at minimums as low as $100, and that channel filed four offerings in 2025 and had none open on the day of this review. The company publishes two materially different lifetime capital totals on its own two sites and reconciles neither. It publishes no fee schedule at all, although its filings disclose 5 percent in cash plus a 2 percent securities interest on most offerings. And an investor who does what the marketing asks, creating an account and completing the questionnaire, is shown nothing and asked to schedule a call. A firm with a real business should lead with the business it is actually doing.
Positioning
AltStreet reconstructed both channels from EDGAR: 696 Form C family filings resolved into 195 offerings by 182 issuers with outcome classification for 179, and a Regulation D universe of 1,692 filings across 1,018 issuers built from full-text search sliced by year and priced from each issuer's latest Form D. For existing Crowd Note holders: read your instrument's conversion terms and check your issuer's annual-report history. For accredited investors: the arranger is credible and the vehicle terms are not published, so get them in writing before you commit. For non-accredited investors: this is mostly a historical book, and the venues that still run this product continuously are elsewhere.
The Bottom Line
A fifteen-year-old broker-dealer running a large Regulation D vehicle business behind an equity-crowdfunding storefront with no open offerings, no published fees, and two unreconciled capital totals on its own two websites.
Action
Next Steps
If you still want to engage after reading the review, these are the practical next moves that reduce avoidable mistakes.
If you hold a Crowd Note or SAFE from this platform: find the instrument and read what triggers conversion and whether it carries a maturity or repayment right, then check your issuer's Form C-AR history on EDGAR. Of the 179 issuers AltStreet could classify, 59 have lapsed in their reporting and 33 never filed at all.
Before any Regulation D vehicle investment: ask in writing for the operating agreement, the placement fee, any carried interest, the expenses charged to the vehicle, and the K-1 delivery history. The help center's figures are typical ones; the vehicle's own terms are not published.
Before any Regulation Crowdfunding investment, if one reopens: read the intermediary compensation and financial interest clauses in the Form C, and value the securities interest alongside the cash commission when comparing platforms.
For a secondary transaction: ask how the price is set, what the commission is on each side, how transfer approval works and what happens if the company blocks the transfer.
Ask the platform directly what a named vehicle raised and closed.
The Form D record reports no sale for 370 of 999 vehicles because no amendment was filed.
If you are non-accredited and want live startup offerings, check the platform's own offerings feed first; it showed none active on September 18, 2026.
Keep your own copies of every subscription agreement, fee confirmation and instrument; the platform publishes no document library and no terms page.
Final Answer
What this means for your decision.
Finding
The channel that is open to you was inactive on the day of this review
Meaning
Initial Form C filings ran 6, 31, 29, 36 and 38 from 2016 to 2020, then 17, 18, 8, 7 and 4. The platform's own public offerings endpoint returned 145 funded Regulation Crowdfunding offerings and none active on September 18, 2026. Over the same period its Regulation D filings held steady or rose, running 1,692 filings across 1,018 issuers since 2011, almost all of them the platform's own single-purpose vehicles.
Action
If you are a non-accredited investor, check the offerings feed before creating an account. The crowdfunding book here is mostly historical, and nothing in the record shows whether the platform intends to reopen it.
Finding
Registering and answering the questionnaire does not show you anything
Meaning
AltStreet's editor created an account on September 18, 2026 and completed the investor questionnaire the platform requires. No offerings became visible. The platform then asked him to schedule a call. Separately, every fee, terms and how-it-works page on the investing subdomain returns navigation chrome and no content; the fee information the platform does publish sits elsewhere, in a help-center article giving typical Regulation D terms and in the Form CRS (see the fees section).
Action
Do not expect to compare this platform's terms before speaking to someone. The gate is partly structural: 870 of 885 vehicles claim Rule 506(b), which prohibits general solicitation, so platforms relying on it typically gate access before showing deal materials. If you want the fee before the call, read a recent Form C on EDGAR, where the commission is disclosed because the rules require it.
Finding
The fee is not on the website, but it is in every filing, and it changed
Meaning
The intermediary's compensation is disclosed on the initial Form C of all 194 offerings that have one. It was 7 percent of the amount raised on 50 offerings from 2016 to 2018 and 5 percent on 81 offerings from 2020 to 2025. On 126 of the 194 the platform also took securities: 'a number of Crowd Notes of the Issuer equal to two percent (2%) of the total number of Securities sold'. In 2019 every one of the year's 36 offerings states that no cash commission is owed, and none of them takes securities either.
Action
On any Regulation Crowdfunding offering, read the intermediary compensation and financial interest clauses in the Form C before you commit. Value the securities interest alongside the cash commission rather than looking only at the percentage.
Finding
What you bought was usually a Crowd Note, not stock
Meaning
Across the 194 offerings with an initial Form C, 168 describe the security as 'Other', and 131 of those name a Crowd Note, a convertible instrument that becomes equity only if a qualifying priced round or liquidity event happens. A further 15 are SAFEs. Only 4 offerings sold common stock and 18 preferred stock, so about 25 of 194 conveyed equity at the point of purchase.
Action
Read your own instrument rather than the pitch. Ask what triggers conversion, whether the note carries a maturity or repayment right, and what happens if no priced round occurs. Those terms vary between offerings and they decide what you actually hold.
If you read nothing else
MicroVentures is a FINRA-member broker-dealer that has been arranging private placements since 2009 and is comfortably capitalized, with net capital of $4,238,994 against a $250,000 minimum. Its Regulation Crowdfunding issuers file annual reports more often than the market does, and that holds up when measured issuer by issuer, which is a genuine mark in its favor. The reservations are about what the platform is and what it says. BrokerCheck records its business as private placements and private company stock transactions, and its crowdfunding filings have fallen to four offerings in 2025 with none open on its own feed. The company publishes two materially different lifetime capital figures on its two websites with no reconciliation between them. No fee schedule is published, though the filings disclose one on every offering. And an investor who completes registration and the questionnaire is shown nothing and asked to book a call. A capable private-placement operator whose public face leads with a retail product it has largely stopped filing.
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Deal Intelligence →Appendix
Sources, Disclosures, and Supporting Context
The lower section is structured like a report appendix: relationship context first, adjacent reading second, and evidence last.
Report Appendix
Disclosure
Relationship and compensation context
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Report Appendix
Disclosure
Relationship and compensation context
Report Appendix
Comparison Guides
Head-to-head guides featuring MicroVentures
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Report Appendix
Comparison Guides
Head-to-head guides featuring MicroVentures
Report Appendix
Related Resources
Adjacent platform comparisons, frameworks, and category links
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Report Appendix
Related Resources
Adjacent platform comparisons, frameworks, and category links
Further Reading
Related Resources
Adjacent frameworks and reviews that help place the platform in a broader allocation or due-diligence context.
Fund Landscape
Similar Platform Reviews
- Forge
The pre-IPO secondary venue that publishes market data; the comparison for MicroVentures' facilitation desk, which publishes none.
- Wefunder
Regulation Crowdfunding at fifteen times the offering count and still running continuously, with a published 7.9 percent fee; the contrast for a crowdfunding brand whose filings have slowed to four a year.
- EquityZen
The other long-running single-company vehicle operator for private shares; the closest structural comparison to the MVP fund series.
Report Appendix
Tracked Offerings
4 MicroVentures offerings with disclosed terms in the AltStreet database
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Report Appendix
Tracked Offerings
4 MicroVentures offerings with disclosed terms in the AltStreet database
Report Appendix
Evidence & Methodology
Sources, scope, and how the review was assembled
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Report Appendix
Evidence & Methodology
Sources, scope, and how the review was assembled
ASReview Evidence
Methodology
UNITS, because the counts in this review only mean anything if the units are fixed. A FILING is one Form C-family document on EDGAR; there are 696, comprising 194 Form C, 325 Form C/A and 177 Form C-U. An OFFERING is one Regulation Crowdfunding offering; there are 195, of which 194 opened with an initial Form C and one is known only from a progress update whose Form C is absent from AltStreet's ledger. Because Form C filings carry no pointer to the filing they amend, offerings were reconstructed by sequence: for each issuer the filings are ordered by date, every initial Form C opens a new offering, and the amendments and progress updates that follow attach to the offering that is open. An ISSUER is one CIK; there are 182, of which 11 ran more than one offering. AltStreet's internal census stores 239 rows, which is a storage unit that splits some offerings and merges others; no figure in this review is denominated in it. Six primary sources. (1) The Form C census across both of the operator's intermediaries, MicroVenture Marketplace Inc. (CIK 1478147) and First Democracy VC (CIK 1683054), 2016 to 2025, with outcome classification for 179 of the 182 issuers; the three without a classification each ran one offering with no filed raise. Realized capital is the largest Form C-U progress update within each offering, summed across offerings, because progress updates are cumulative within an offering and additive across them. Every one of the 177 progress updates was re-read from its filed prose rather than taken from a stored field, which corrected three filer-mangled amounts ($450.008 and $313.038 using a period as a thousands separator, and '$278, 829' broken by a comma-space). (2) A Regulation D universe built from EDGAR full-text search for Form D filings naming 'MicroVenture Marketplace', sliced by year to beat the 1,000-result cap: 1,692 filings across 1,018 distinct issuers, 2011 to 2026, priced from each issuer's latest Form D using AltStreet's market-wide ledger for the 900 CIKs it covers and primary_doc.xml for the other 118. (3) A capture of the platform's public offerings endpoint, api.microventures.com/v1/queries_public, on 2026-09-18: 145 funded Regulation Crowdfunding offerings and 0 active. (4) Firecrawl scrapes of microventures.com (93 pages) and invest.microventures.com (103 pages) captured 2026-09-18. (5) The firm's registration and financial record: Form X-17A-5 for fiscal 2025 (accession 0001478147-26-000003, filed 2026-02-26); the Form CFPORTAL, five amendments and Form CFPORTAL-W of First Democracy VC; and the FINRA BrokerCheck report for CRD 152513. (6) The intermediary compensation and financial interest clauses read from the initial Form C of each of the 194 offerings that has one. AltStreet's editor also created an ordinary investor account and completed the platform's investor questionnaire on 2026-09-18 to test what registration reveals.
Scope
Offering terms, filed amounts, instruments, fees and outcome classification for the whole Regulation Crowdfunding record; filed amounts and vehicle families for the whole Regulation D record; the broker-dealer's fiscal 2025 financial condition; and the platform's public-facing content and registration flow as of 2026-09-18. Not in scope and not publicly available: the terms of any individual Regulation D vehicle; any fee schedule, which the platform does not publish; outcomes or realized returns for any offering in any channel; secondary transaction pricing and volume; the parent company's financial statements; and the contents of fifteen of the sixteen broker-dealer annual reports, which were filed on paper. The legal scan covered web sources, the BrokerCheck disclosure section and EDGAR; PACER and state securities regulators were not searched. Company-reported figures are labeled as such and are not verified.
Key Findings
- *Regulation Crowdfunding record: 696 Form C family filings (194 Form C, 325 Form C/A, 177 Form C-U) resolve into 195 offerings across 182 issuers; 11 issuers ran more than one offering. Initial Form C filings by year: 2016:6, 2017:31, 2018:29, 2019:36, 2020:38, 2021:17, 2022:18, 2023:8, 2024:7, 2025:4. Offerings by intermediary: MicroVenture Marketplace under its four spellings 135, First Democracy VC 60. Targets: median $50,000, range $24,995 to $1,235,000. Maximums: median $425,000, range $100,000 to $5,000,000.
- *Realized Regulation Crowdfunding capital: $28,540,887 across 144 funded offerings by 137 issuers, computed as the largest progress update within each offering summed across offerings, with every progress update re-read from its filed prose. Median offering $123,698, mean $198,201. Seven issuers ran more than one funded offering, and 25 offerings filed a progress update that states no amount. Largest offerings: Jetson AI $1,070,000 (opened 2019); Tallgrass Pictures $882,961 (2024); Unlimited Tomorrow $870,511 (2018); Oscilla Power $870,847 across two offerings; goDeskless $759,590 (2020); MicroSalt $750,000 (2020); Napa Valley Limoncello $722,978 (2017); Lend Grow $704,565 (2020); Arbit $700,000 (2017); 3DaGoGo $697,276 (2017); ArtCraft Entertainment $668,000 (2016).
- *Instruments across the 194 offerings with an initial Form C: 'Other' 168, preferred stock 18, common stock 4, debt 4. The free-text descriptions of the 'Other' category resolve to Crowd Notes on 131 offerings, SAFEs or Crowd SAFEs on 15, revenue participation or revenue-share notes on about 11, membership or LLC interests on 4, preferred stock described in free text on 3, simple agreements for future tokens on 2, and a convertible promissory note on 1. About 25 of 194 offerings conveyed equity at the point of purchase; the rest were contingent claims.
- *Fees as disclosed on each offering's initial Form C, the only place this platform publishes them: a 7 percent commission on 50 offerings (2016:5, 2017:27, 2018:17, 2024:1), a 5 percent commission on 81 offerings (2017:2, 2018:1, 2020:32, 2021:15, 2022:16, 2023:7, 2024:4, 2025:4), and scattered rates of 6, 6.5, 4, 3, 2.9 and 2 percent on 12 more, with 5 offerings using wording that states no rate. On 126 of the 194 the intermediary also takes 'a number of Crowd Notes of the Issuer equal to two percent (2%) of the total number of Securities sold', which at the issue price is worth roughly a further 2 percent of offering value; 122 offerings carry both a cash percentage and the securities interest. In 2019 all 36 offerings state that no cash commission is owed, 31 in the form 'the issuer will not owe a commission' and 5 stating a zero amount, and none of the 36 records a securities interest. All 36 name the broker-dealer rather than the portal, consistent with First Democracy VC having withdrawn its portal registration on 2019-01-31; AltStreet notes the coincidence and does not assert a cause.
- *Issuer outcomes across the 179 issuers AltStreet could classify: lapsed filing 59; terminated other 35; no realized capital 34; never filed an annual report 33; still filing 17; terminated as a reporting company 1. The three unclassified issuers each ran one offering with no filed raise. Separately, 35 offerings show a Form C-TR, 7 issuers went on to run a Regulation A offering, 40 are followed by a Form D (83 filings in total), and 1 issuer is a public company today.
- *Annual-report compliance, measured at the ISSUER level because Rule 202 places the obligation on the issuer rather than on each offering: of the 134 issuers with a confirmed raise whose first funded offering opened before 2025, 100 filed at least one Form C-AR and 35 filed a Form C-TR; 34 filed neither, a 25 percent gap against 40 percent market-wide on the same issuer-level test. The result is stable at a 2024 cutoff (33 of 130, also 25 percent). An offering-level denominator would have counted the seven issuers with two funded offerings twice, so it is not used. AltStreet's census records the existence of these annual reports but not their financial contents for this platform, so no issuer revenue figure is claimed here.
- *Regulation D universe: 1,692 Form D filings naming 'MicroVenture Marketplace' across 1,018 distinct issuers, 2011 to 2026, built by slicing EDGAR full-text search by year to beat the 1,000-result cap. Filings by year: 2011:8, 2012:16, 2013:42, 2014:64, 2015:124, 2016:182, 2017:141, 2018:82, 2019:102, 2020:123, 2021:186, 2022:152, 2023:109, 2024:140, 2025:118, 2026:103 to date. Of the 1,018 issuers, 999 are the platform's own single-purpose vehicles and 19 are outside operating companies that name the broker on their own Form D.
- *Regulation D amounts, and what they do and do not represent. The platform's own vehicles report $260,740,526 sold across 999 issuers and 15,282 investor positions. By family: MVP LS FUND 646 issuers $164,954,728; MV Liquidity Fund 39 $35,055,000; MV Startup Fund 52 $14,693,000; MVP ES FUND 156 $13,245,255; other MV vehicles 62 $10,737,543; MicroAngel 21 $5,983,000; MicroVentures itself 4 $4,357,000; MV EI Fund 4 $4,264,000; MV Opportunity Fund 3 $4,180,000; MV Venture Fund 12 $3,271,000. Separately, the 19 outside issuers report $26,076,989, which is the full size of their own offerings and does not establish that MicroVentures placed those rounds; the largest is Art Craft Entertainment at $11,711,242 on 2020-01-27, an issuer that had also raised $668,000 through the platform's Regulation Crowdfunding channel in 2016. The figure this review uses for capital sold through the platform's own offerings is therefore $260,740,526 plus $28,540,887 of Regulation Crowdfunding, or $289,281,413; adding the third-party offering size gives $315,358,402 on the widest reading.
- *WHY THE REGULATION D FIGURE IS A FLOOR: 370 of the 999 vehicles report no sale on their latest Form D, and the ones examined in detail state that the first sale had not yet occurred and were never amended, so any capital they later raised is absent from the record. 826 of 848 vehicles sampled declare exactly $2,000,000 as the amount sought, a template value that carries no information, which is why no 'amount sought' total appears in this review. Note 5 of the audited fiscal 2025 report discloses $4,570,855 of placement fee revenue from the affiliated funds in that single year, which implies transaction volume the Form D record does not capture. And secondary trading, one of the firm's two BrokerCheck-recorded business lines, would never appear on a Form D at all. The company's figures are therefore unverifiable rather than disproven. A first pass that matched vehicle names by pattern rather than by full-text search reached only $173,476,013, missing the MV Liquidity, MV Opportunity and MV EI families entirely; the method is stated here because it changed the answer by $113 million.
- *Broker-dealer financial condition at 2025-12-31 (Form X-17A-5, accession 0001478147-26-000003, audited by Bauer & Company): net capital $4,238,994 against a $250,000 minimum, an excess of $3,988,994, aggregate indebtedness to net capital 0.0101 to 1 against a 15 to 1 limit. Total assets $4,414,112 (cash $4,282,006; investments in privately held companies $86,913, all Level 3; property and equipment $17,814; other $27,379) against liabilities of $43,012. Equity $4,371,100: paid-in capital $5,709,773 less an accumulated deficit of $1,338,674, on 103 shares issued of 1,000 authorized. The firm paid its parent $4,832,455 in 2025 under expense-sharing and platform-technology agreements (salaries and wages $3,820,785, occupancy $476,741, insurance $307,066, technology fees $183,016, communication $12,684, other $32,163), more than its entire balance sheet. Texas margin tax expense $20,355. Note 6 states management believes no pending or threatened claim would be material. Fifteen of the sixteen annual reports on EDGAR were filed on paper and exist only as an auto-generated stub naming a document control number; no report appears between 2020-02-21 and 2022-02-25.
- *Registration and legal scan (2026-09-18): MICROVENTURE MARKETPLACE INC., SEC File No. 8-68458, CRD 152513, 2903 E 2nd St, Austin TX 78702, FINRA Dallas office, incorporated in Delaware 2009-10-26, not currently suspended, operating under Rule 15c3-3(k)(2)(i). Owner MICROVENTURES INC at 75 percent or more since 10/2014; CEO William Michael Clark (CRD 5741424) since 10/2009. Types of business recorded on BrokerCheck: 'Private placements of securities' and 'Other - FACILITATE PRIVATE COMPANY STOCK TRANSACTIONS'. Those categories describe the firm's reported business lines and do not limit a registered broker-dealer's authority to intermediate Regulation Crowdfunding, which its Form C record shows it does. One regulatory disclosure event: FINRA AWC dated 2019-12-30, docket 2017052392101, censure and a $40,000 fine paid 2020-01-06, for failing to make Rule 5123 private placement memorandum filings for twenty offerings between March and August 2017 and one late filing, violating Rules 5123 and 2010; consented to without admitting or denying. No SEC enforcement action, administrative proceeding or investor class action located; PACER and state regulators not searched. NAME COLLISION: searching MicroVentures litigation returns Microvast Holdings (Nasdaq: MVST), an unrelated company with its own securities class actions.
- *Entity structure: CIK 1478147 is the broker-dealer. CIK 1511691 carries the same name and Austin address but only five filings (three Form D and two amendments, 2011-03-28 to 2014-02-19), including the operator raising $1,544,000 for itself in 2014; it is a duplicate registration, not a second broker-dealer. CIK 1683054 is First Democracy VC (formerly Democracy VC LLC), which filed Form CFPORTAL on 2016-08-30, five amendments through 2018-07-03, and Form CFPORTAL-W on 2019-01-31. A naming trap worth recording: the brand is plural and the registrant singular, with four spellings across the one CIK, so an EDGAR search for 'MicroVentures' returns a small fraction of the filings.
- *Platform capture and registration test (2026-09-18): the public offerings endpoint returned 145 funded Regulation Crowdfunding offerings and 0 active, split by intermediary as MicroVenture Marketplace 96 and First Democracy VC 49, with the most recent offering window closing 2026-03-17. Industries of the funded book: consumer products and services 24, cannabis 12, restaurant and beverage 12, technology 8, entertainment and media 8, distillery 8, healthcare 7, and a long tail. On the same day, /fees, /pricing, /terms, /terms-of-service, /how-it-works, /docs, /legal, /tax, /investor-resources and /liquidity on the investing subdomain each returned 158 characters of navigation chrome and no content, and AltStreet's editor completed account registration and the investor questionnaire without any offering becoming visible, receiving instead a request to schedule a call.
AltStreet Data Layer
AltStreet Form C census + Regulation D universe + public offerings capture (CIK 1478147 and 1683054, 2026-09-18)
AltStreet's MicroVentures dataset holds the Regulation Crowdfunding record as 696 filings resolved into 195 offerings across 182 issuers, with offering terms, fee clauses and outcome classification for 179 of those issuers; one deal record per offering in the platform's public feed (145, of which 84 are linked to their filing records, the remainder being trading-name against legal-name gaps rather than missing filings); a Regulation D universe of 1,018 priced issuers; and three platform-level performance records. No IRR or realized return is claimed: no exit, distribution or write-off is disclosed by the platform or recorded in any filing on either channel.
- Units: 696 Form C family filings · 195 offerings (194 opened by an initial Form C) · 182 issuers, 11 with more than one offering
- Realized Reg CF capital: $28,540,887 across 144 funded offerings by 137 issuers · median offering $123,698 · largest $1,070,000 · none active on the platform's feed
- Regulation D: 1,692 filings · 1,018 issuers · 999 of them the platform's own vehicles · $260,740,526 reported sold · 15,282 investor positions
- Capital sold through the platform's own offerings: $289,281,413. Adding $26,076,989 of offering size reported by 19 third-party issuers naming the firm gives $315,358,402 on the widest reading
- Floor markers: 370 of 999 vehicles report no sale and were never amended · 826 of 848 declare exactly $2,000,000 sought · $4,570,855 of placement fees in 2025 alone
- Fees, from the filings only: 5 percent cash on 81 offerings since 2020 (7 percent on 50 from 2016 to 2018) plus securities equal to 2 percent of what was sold on 126 of 194
- Outcomes (179 classified issuers): lapsed filing 59 · terminated other 35 · no realized capital 34 · never filed an annual report 33 · still filing 17 · public company 1
- Compliance, issuer level: 100 of 134 confirmed-raise issuers filed an annual report; 34 filed neither report nor termination (25% vs 40% market)
- Coverage boundary: no fee schedule, terms page or outcome data is published by the platform; annual-report financial contents are not extracted for this platform
Source: SEC EDGAR Form C family filings (intermediaries CIK 1478147 and CIK 1683054), EDGAR full-text Form D universe, api.microventures.com public offerings capture, Form X-17A-5 fiscal 2025, FINRA BrokerCheck CRD 152513, and AltStreet's platform database, September 2026
Primary Source Pages
Comparable Platforms
- Forge
The pre-IPO secondary venue that publishes market data and completed-transaction context; the benchmark for MicroVentures' facilitation desk, which publishes neither.
- Wefunder
Regulation Crowdfunding at 2,902 offerings and still filing continuously, with a published 7.9 percent fee; the contrast for a crowdfunding brand whose filings have slowed to four a year.
- EquityZen
The other long-running operator of single-company vehicles for private shares; the closest structural comparison to the MVP ES and MVP LS fund series.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
High-intent search questions answered directly, without making users hunt through the full review.
Is MicroVentures legit?
On the located regulatory record, yes, with one qualification. MicroVenture Marketplace Inc. has been an SEC-registered broker-dealer and FINRA member since 2009 (File No. 8-68458, CRD 152513), is not suspended, and reported net capital of $4,238,994 at the end of 2025 against a $250,000 minimum, audited by Bauer & Company. The qualification is a FINRA settlement dated December 30, 2019: censure and a $40,000 fine for failing to make the required private placement memorandum filings for twenty offerings between March and August 2017, in the business line that is now the firm's main one. The firm consented without admitting or denying the findings. AltStreet located no SEC enforcement action and no investor class action, though PACER and state regulators were not searched. Separately, be careful when searching: results for MicroVentures litigation often return Microvast Holdings, an unrelated company.
Can I still invest on MicroVentures if I am not accredited?
In principle Regulation Crowdfunding is open to everyone, but in practice there was nothing to buy. The platform's own public offerings endpoint returned 145 funded offerings and none active on September 18, 2026, and the company filed only four initial Form C offerings in all of 2025, down from 38 in 2020. AltStreet's editor created an account and completed the platform's investor questionnaire that day and still saw no offerings; the platform asked him to schedule a call. Nothing in the public record shows whether the platform intends to reopen the channel.
What fees does MicroVentures charge?
In two places, neither of them the investing pages, whose /fees, /pricing, /terms, /how-it-works and six other pages each return navigation chrome and no content. For Regulation D vehicles, the help center (read October 24, 2026) gives typical terms: a 5 percent placement fee and 1.5 percent offering costs taken at closing, a 0.50 percent annual management fee with two years charged up front and later years charged at a distribution, and 10 percent carried interest after the investor's capital is returned; the Form CRS says each offering memorandum sets the actual figures, adds a possible distribution fee and a $500 cancellation fee, and says secondary-transaction fees are negotiated. For Regulation Crowdfunding, investors pay no fee (Form CRS); the issuer's fees are in the SEC filings, because Regulation Crowdfunding requires the intermediary's compensation to be disclosed on every Form C. Across the 194 offerings with an initial Form C, the commission was 7 percent of the amount raised on 50 offerings from 2016 to 2018 and 5 percent on 81 offerings from 2020 to 2025, and on 126 of them the platform also took 'a number of Crowd Notes of the Issuer equal to two percent (2%) of the total number of Securities sold'. At the issue price that securities interest is worth roughly another 2 percent of offering value, so the cost on most offerings was about 7 percent rather than 5. The fees on the Regulation D vehicles and on secondary transactions are not published anywhere, and the audited accounts show only the aggregate: $4,570,855 of placement fees from the affiliated funds in 2025.
Has MicroVentures really raised over $550 million?
That figure cannot be reconciled to public filings, and it is also not the only figure the company publishes. On the same day, microventures.com/about said 'Over $550M has been raised on our platform to date' while invest.microventures.com said investors have 'invested over $700+ million'. The company publishes no methodology for either and no reconciliation between them, so they may be stale versions of one metric or may measure different things. AltStreet could verify $289,281,413 of capital sold through the platform's own offerings: $260,740,526 reported sold by its 999 single-purpose Regulation D vehicles, plus $28,540,887 of realized Regulation Crowdfunding capital across 144 funded offerings. A further $26,076,989 of offering size is reported by 19 third-party issuers that name the firm on their own Form D, which does not establish that MicroVentures placed those rounds. The verified figure is a floor rather than a measurement, for four reasons. Amendments were never filed, so 370 of the platform's 999 vehicles still report no sale on a Form D saying the first sale had not yet occurred, and any capital they later raised is absent from the record. 826 of 848 vehicles sampled declare exactly $2,000,000 sought, a template value that carries no information. The audited fiscal 2025 report discloses $4,570,855 of placement fee revenue from the affiliated funds in that single year, which implies volume the filings do not capture. And secondary trading never appears on a Form D at all. The company's figures are unverifiable, not disproven.
What is a Crowd Note, and is it the same as owning shares?
No. A Crowd Note is a convertible instrument that becomes equity only if a qualifying event happens, typically a later priced financing round or a sale or listing of the company. Until then the holder has no shares, no vote and no dividend. It was the dominant instrument on this platform: across the 194 offerings with an initial Form C, 131 sold a Crowd Note and 15 sold a SAFE, against 18 that sold preferred stock and only 4 that sold common stock. Whether a particular note carries a maturity, a repayment right or an outside date varies between offerings, so if you hold one, the conversion and repayment terms in your own instrument are the thing to read.
What happened to companies that raised on MicroVentures?
AltStreet classified 179 of the 182 Regulation Crowdfunding issuers on the record; the three without a classification each ran one offering with no filed raise. Of the 179, fifty-nine lapsed in their reporting, 35 formally terminated it, 34 show no realized capital, 33 never filed an annual report at all, 17 are still filing, and 1 became an Exchange Act reporting company. Seven went on to run a Regulation A offering and 40 offerings were followed by a Form D. No platform in this channel publishes outcome data, and MicroVentures is no exception: no realized return, exit or write-off is disclosed for any offering. On the positive side, the issuers that did raise file their annual reports more often than the market average: measured issuer by issuer, 34 of 134 confirmed-raise issuers filed neither an annual report nor a termination, 25 percent against 40 percent market-wide.
What are MVP LS FUND and MVP ES FUND?
They are MicroVentures' single-purpose investment vehicles, each an LLC that holds securities of one private company and files its own Form D. LS and ES almost certainly denote late stage and early stage, and the vehicles are numbered in Roman numerals: by September 2026 the LS series had reached 685 and the ES series 167. AltStreet's Form D universe holds 646 LS vehicles reporting $164,954,728 sold and 156 ES vehicles reporting $13,245,255. Earlier generations used other names: MicroAngel funds in 2011 and 2012, then MV Startup Fund, MV Venture Fund, MV Liquidity Fund, MV Opportunity Fund and MV EI Fund. If you invest in one you hold an interest in the LLC, not shares of the company it holds, and the vehicle's operating agreement, fees and carried interest are not published.
Can I sell my MicroVentures investment?
Not easily, and not through anything published. Regulation Crowdfunding securities cannot be resold for a year except to the issuer, an accredited investor, a family member or in a registered offering, and that year runs from each investor's own purchase date. After that there is no venue for them: MicroVentures operates a secondary business, and BrokerCheck records it as one of the firm's two business types, but it facilitates transactions in late-stage private company stock at a stated buyer minimum of $50,000, not in the Crowd Notes retail investors hold. No pricing, volume or completed-transaction data is published. A vehicle interest realizes only when the underlying company is sold or lists.
How does MicroVentures compare to Wefunder, StartEngine or Forge?
On Regulation Crowdfunding the comparison is unflattering in scale and in availability: MicroVentures has run 195 offerings against Wefunder's 2,902 and StartEngine's 1,674 through its portal, and unlike both it had none open. Wefunder publishes a 7.9 percent fee and StartEngine about 7 percent; MicroVentures publishes nothing, though its filings show 5 percent in cash plus securities worth roughly another 2 percent of offering value, which is about the same all-in. All three carry a FINRA action, MicroVentures' being the smallest at $40,000. On the secondary side the comparison is with Forge, which publishes market data on the private names it trades where MicroVentures publishes none. Where MicroVentures is genuinely distinct is the Regulation D vehicle business, 999 single-company funds, which neither crowdfunding venue runs at that scale.
Why does searching EDGAR for MicroVentures return almost nothing?
Because the brand is plural and the registrant is singular. The company is MicroVentures, but the SEC registrant is MicroVenture Marketplace Inc., and four different spellings appear across its one CIK. Searching the plural returns a small fraction of the filings and makes the platform look far smaller than it is. The right identifiers are CIK 1478147 for the broker-dealer and CIK 1683054 for First Democracy VC, the affiliated funding portal that operated from 2016 until it withdrew its registration on January 31, 2019. A third registration, CIK 1511691, carries the same name and address but holds only five of the firm's own Form D filings from 2011 to 2014; it is a duplicate, not a second broker-dealer.
Update History
What's changed in this MicroVentures review
New data, new findings, corrections, and confirmations as they emerge. Most recent updates appear first.
- Correction
Fee statements corrected throughout: typical Regulation D fees (5% placement, 1.5% offering costs, 0.50% a year with two years up front, 10% carry) per the help center; fee types, no Reg CF investor fee, negotiated secondary fees and a $500 cancellation fee per the Form CRS. Regulation D minimum typically $3,000; late-stage secondary offerings from $10,000.
- Structural
Fee transparency analyst input 3 to 5 of 10; platform rescored. The sources read on October 24, 2026 are the help-center articles 360030037752 and 360031039771 and microventures.com/customer-relationship-summary.