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A $19.9M July Ranks Among Reg CF's Weakest Months in Five Years
From platform strategy to a $26M month in Reg CF raises to a founder who built a profitable business out of unrecyclable trash — this week's roundup has range.
Sam Fiske
August 03, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Hi there,
This Week: July's net investment came in at just $19.9 million, one of the softest months for Reg CF in five years, and the capital that did move clustered around a handful of big rounds.
Plus: the SEC closed a Reg CF loophole that leaves some SPV issuers still owing years of C-AR filings, Avadain's Brad Larschan joins the podcast to talk graphene at commercial scale, and last week's Demo Day replay is now live.
Let’s dive in.
Your Audience Is an Advantage, Not a Fundraising Strategy
Regulation A is getting renewed attention as regulators focus on expanding retail investor participation in private markets, and founders with strong communities are asking a familiar question: “Can we turn our fans into investors?” CrowdCheck’s latest post argues that community can be a powerful advantage — but it is not, by itself, a Reg A strategy.
The key reminder for founders: a large audience does not qualify an offering, satisfy SEC review, or guarantee that followers will become investors. Reg A still requires real disclosures, a serious marketing operation, budget, investor acquisition strategy, and ongoing reporting after the round closes.
3 takeaways
Community helps, but it is not enough: engaged followers are an advantage only if paired with a disciplined fundraising plan.
Reg A takes real preparation: SEC qualification can take months and requires responsive, complete disclosures.
Plan beyond the raise: companies must be ready for post-offering reporting obligations, not just launch-day promotion.
FUNDING REPORT
Regulation Crowdfunding closed July 2026 with $19.9 million in net investment, the second-weakest month the industry has seen in the last five years. The capital that did move concentrated heavily, with just two platforms, DealMaker Securities and Wefunder, accounting for 56 percent of all commitments. DealMaker led at $6.7 million and Wefunder followed at $4.5 million, while Netcapital and StartEngine rounded out a top four that left a steep drop-off behind it.
The month also leaned on a small number of large rounds. Cytonics topped the board at $2.3 million on DealMaker, Avadain pulled in $2.2 million on Netcapital, and American Power Gen added just over $1 million, together making up a meaningful share of the entire month's total.
The takeaway for founders: When capital tightens, it flows to the campaigns that look most prepared. A clear story and visible traction matter more in a slow market, not less.
The biggest hurdle for new companies getting ready to raise capital is well.....capital. raisepapers has added financial audit/reviews to the most affordable compliance tech in the capital raising space to help lower that hurdle.
Our Day Zero Accounting service with raisepapers allows founders of new companies to get their mandatory audit or review for their Reg CF raise done at the most affordable price in the industry. New company preparing for a CF round? Get started here: raisepapers Day Zero
Have questions on capital raising? Book a call with our team.
“One and done” SPV reporting? No, not really
A popular shortcut in the Reg CF world may have just closed. For years, the received wisdom held that if an issuer ran its raise through a special purpose vehicle, that SPV counted as a single holder of record, letting the issuer drop out of the three-year Form C-AR reporting regime after filing just one annual report. In a new Corporation Finance staff interpretation, the SEC says that reading is wrong. As CrowdCheck's Sara Hanks explains, SPVs are meant to be conduits that pass through the same rights investors would have if they had backed the company directly, and that includes the full three years of C-AR filings, unless fewer than 300 people actually invested in the offering or another Rule 202(b) exit applies. For founders who assumed they were "one and done," this is a reminder to check whether those annual reports are still owed.
FROM THE INSIDE STARTUP INVESTING PODCAST
This week on Inside Startup Investing, host Chris Lustrino sits down with Avadain CEO Brad Larschan to talk about one of the most hyped materials in advanced manufacturing: graphene. Stronger, lighter, and more conductive than almost anything else out there, graphene has long promised to transform everything from drones and aerospace composites to energy storage and infrastructure. The catch has always been making it at scale. Larschan walks through Avadain's patented approach to producing large, thin, nearly defect-free graphene flakes, and explains the company's capital-light bet: rather than build plants itself, Avadain licenses its production technology to established chemical companies and collects royalties. The two dig into the pilot plant, the road to full commercialization, and the company's recently completed $5 million crowdfunding raise.
RECENT EVENTS
In case you missed it
Kingscrowd Demo Day Q3 2026 went live last Wednesday, July 29, with host Chris Lustrino and the Kingscrowd investment team putting four founders on the spot with live pitches and investor Q&A. This quarter's lineup spanned some genuinely different corners of the market: Oshi and its plant-based whole-cut fish fillets, TibaRay's precision radiation therapy for cancer treatment, Airthium's high-temperature industrial heat pumps for decarbonizing factory heat, and Global Fight League's city-based, franchise-model take on MMA. Each pitch came with live commentary from the Kingscrowd team on the strengths, risks, and questions worth asking before investing.
Couldn't make it?
You can watch the full replay here.
