NEWS & NOTES
💻 From the Editor
The Kingscrowd Newsletter is now arriving every other week.
We’ve heard your feedback, and we’re making the Kingscrowd Newsletter even more focused, starting by giving our team more time to uncover the data, insights, and stories that matter most to private market investors. This means fewer emails, deeper insights, and more value every time we land in your inbox.
There’s even a new design in the works, so keep an eye out.
We’re excited about what’s ahead.
🎤 SuperCrowd26 Starts Today
SuperCrowd26 kicks off today, and there’s still time to join us!
Kingscrowd’s Léa Bouhelier-Gautreau takes the virtual stage today for “The False Tradeoff: Debunking the Myth of Impact vs. Profit.” Tomorrow, August 26, CTO Brian Belley will present “Innovating Crowdfunding: Lessons from the Frontlines,” while Léa returns as a judge for the event’s Live Pitch competition.
The three-day event runs August 25–27 and brings together founders, investors, and crowdfunding leaders from across the private markets.
🏛️ SEC Charges Netcapital in Alleged Revenue Fraud
The SEC filed a civil complaint against publicly traded Netcapital Inc. and five individuals, alleging the company improperly recognized nearly $14 million in revenue from sham consulting agreements tied to 11 companies that conducted Regulation Crowdfunding offerings. The SEC alleges the resulting financial statements overstated Netcapital's revenue by approximately 345%.
There is an important Reg CF angle that hasn't received much attention. Of the 11 offerings involved, eight never met their minimum funding target. The three that did fund raised just $78,740 combined. Meanwhile, the SEC alleges Netcapital itself raised more than $25.6 million through public and private securities offerings while relying on financial statements containing the allegedly inflated revenue.
Kingscrowd's diligence team had also independently raised concerns about several of these offerings while they were live. In fact, one warning from our team is quoted in the SEC's complaint.
The case raises serious questions about oversight and due diligence, but it also presents an interesting counterpoint to long-standing concerns that everyday crowdfunding investors are uniquely vulnerable to questionable offerings.
UPCOMING WEBINAR: An Inside Look at the Company Building the NASDAQ for the Creator Economy
YouTube pays creators billions. Until now, fans and investors had no way to own a piece of it. GigaStar changed that. They are the first and only SEC-registered platform turning Creator businesses into investable deals. With offerings from Creator megastars, GigaStar turns creators' revenue into a real, SEC-registered security. Once it clears, it trades on GigaStar Trading, the secondary market live in all 50 states.
Kingscrowd CTO Brian Belley sits down with GigaStar CBO Scott Kitun to unpack how it works, why the creator economy is becoming an asset class, and where GigaStar goes from here. GigaStar hosted the fastest Wefunder raise of last year, and now they’re scaling.
Bring your questions. Register to save your seat.
CHART OF THE WEEK
By Léa Bouhelier-Gautreau | Read
A strong first raise doesn't guarantee an equally strong second act. Our latest analysis looks at hundreds of follow-on raises to see which startups keep building momentum, where valuations are headed, and what investors should watch when a familiar company comes back for more.
PITCH REVIEW 💸
By Teddy Lyons | Deal Report
Brief: DermaSensor
Teddy’s Quick Take: When it comes to cancer diagnosis, early detection is key. Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, and must be treated before it spreads. If caught early, Melanoma has a 99% survival rate. If caught too late, survival rates can drop to as low as 35%.
Today, skin cancer detection typically follows these steps:
A primary care doctor notices an abnormal looking spot on a patient’s body.
The doctor makes a judgement call on whether or not to refer the patient to a dermatologist.
A dermatologist will look at the spot, and order biopsies if needed, and put together a treatment plan for the patient.
The issue here is in step two. Primary care doctors often have minimal dermatological training, and studies have shown that physicians can miss up to 30% or more of melanomas (see the analyst report for a deeper dive into these studies).
Today’ pitch review, DermaSensor, has developed a hand-held device that identifies 95.5% of cancers through a probe that sends broadband white light into a lesion and reads what scatters back.
DermaSensor’s device is FDA authorized and being used in hundreds of practices, with nearly 48,000 lesions scanned since the device hit the market. The company ended 2025 with $1M in ARR, and projects $3M in ARR by the end of 2026.
In our analyst report (available to Edge members), we dig into what actually sits behind that $1m in ARR, how frequently the devices are used once installed, and an overall analysis of whether this is an investable opportunity.
The Edge Summer Event has arrived!
If you’re not a Kingscrowd Edge member and have been thinking about upgrading, now is the perfect time. With Edge, you’ll be able to find promising startup investments faster, make more informed decisions with human-led research, and stay on top of your portfolio with the premium insights and tools available through your membership.
During our Edge Summer Event, you can save $30 on an annual Edge membership through August 31. Compared to a monthly membership, that's like getting 4 months of Edge for free.
Opportunities like this only come around a few times each year.
STAFF PICKS 🌶️
By Léa Bouhelier-Gautreau
Cognivix is at a time that is both exciting and stressful for hardware startups: commercialization. After years of developing its product, the company is about to find out whether there is real product-market fit. For investors, this could be the last opportunity to invest before the valuation increases significantly, but it is also a risky stage. Our team identified several risks that could make or break the investment case...
By Léa Bouhelier-Gautreau
CharaChorder is betting that the keyboard, a technology that has barely changed in decades, is ready for disruption. Its technology can dramatically increase typing speed, but speed alone does not guarantee mass adoption. I'm wondering if people are actually willing to make the effort to relearn how to type on a completely different keyboard. That could ultimately determine how big CharaChorder can become.
By Teddy Lyons
We've seen our share of public stock analytics apps come through equity crowdfunding, and it's often difficult to distinguish what is thin GPT-wrapper versus a platform with a defensible business case. Tykr has great early traction, with over 13,000 users using its stock analytics tools and education modules. However, this is a hyper-competitive space, and my analyst report dives into the differentiation + possible wedge Tykr could forge in the public equities space.
Until next time!
Thanks for reading and for being part of the Kingscrowd community. If you found something valuable in this issue, share the newsletter with a fellow investor. We’ll see you again in two weeks.
