What In August's Edition?

1. August's Top News Stories

   • 🚨 The CrowStreet Saga Continues

   • 🤑 StartEngine Private Has A Big Act 2

   • 👏 Alternative Investing Recognized

2. All Our News Coverage From August

3. The Latest Educational Resources

4. Site News And Commentary

‼️ TOP STORIES
🚨 The CrowStreet Saga Continues

This month saw more coverage of the apparent fraud by a sponsor that raised tens of millions of investor capital through CrowdStreet.

The Wall Street Journal published a piece about the offerings in question, as well as the history of the platform. Here's a few of the main points:

👉 Missed 🚩 in the Nightingale offerings.

👉 This is not the first instance of fraud on the platform.

👉 Even the legitimate deals underperformed targets over 50% of the time (based on an analysis of 104 deals).

👉 Sponsors require more funds from investors when costs overrun projections. That includes a $45M project needing another ~$32.5M after the initial raise.

Possibly the craziest point is that the operating agreement for the Nightingale offerings required disputes to be resolved through an Israeli court system based around religious law.

🤑 StartEngine Private Has A Big Act 2

After launching an offering for SpaceX shares, StartEngine followed up with one for fintech giant Stripe.

These are two big, splashy offerings for the start of their accredited offerings. It's also a very different approach than any of their equity crowdfunding competitors.

In general, it seems like a part of business strategy that is designed to elevate their buzziness and brand awareness. It might just work too.

What do you think? Are you excited about the opportunity to invest in companies like SpaceX and Stripe, even though they already have hefty ($50-$150B) private valuations?

👏 Alternative Investing Recognized

This month there were two different industry reports that recognized alternative investment platforms.

The first was the CNBC Top 200 Fintech companies. That list featured familiar names - Realty Mogul, Republic, Roofstock, SeedInvest, and Honeycomb Credit.

The second was the Inc 5000. It's basically a list of the fastest growing companies (based on revenue) in America. Once again we saw some familiar names announce their inclusion on the list - StartEngine, Groundfloor, and Roofstock.

This recognition further cements our belief that accessible alternatives are gaining traction.

📰 LATEST NEWS & ARTICLES
Roundups

The Week Of August 13th

The Week Of August 6th

From The Week Of July 30th

Special News

The Latest Way To Buy Stripe Stock

Our Experience

I Invested For One Year On SongVest – Here’s How It Went

📚 NEW RESOURCES
Wefunder Vs StartEngine Vs Republic

Wefunder, Republic, and StartEngine are the tree most popular equity crowdfunding platforms. We take a detailed look at how they stack up against each other. Which one is best?

Take a look here

🌐 SITE
Time Off On The Horizon

New content production will be paused for the last couple of weeks of August. We'll also be off for the end of September into the first week of October.

We'll continue to have new content for the other weeks.

I'm sending August's end-of-month newsletter early to make sure it goes out before heading off for time away. We may do the same for September as well.

First Personal Performance Overview

This month I published a look into my personal results in my first year of investing on SongVest. It's a new type of content for us and the first push into documenting personal experiences with investment platforms. Let me know if this is something you'd like to see more of!