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StartEngine
👤 Howard Marks (Activision Studios chairman 1991-97. Built the portal in 2014, two years before Reg CF even went live.)🌐 site
A decade of startup raises built 1.79M users. Now 79% of revenue comes from selling them pre-IPO fund stakes.
Will it work? · our read
Audience beats fees. But 79% of revenue is one line the 10-K itself flags as concentration risk, and it books gross: $109.6M of revenue leaves $37.9M of gross profit and $1.47M of net income.
01How the money moves
1.79M people sign up free to browse startup raises
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StartEngine buys shares of late-stage private companies
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Sells stakes in those funds to accredited users: $86.6M
02The numbers
$109.6MFiledFY2025 revenue (10-K)
2025-12-31source:
$109,580,580 (FY2025, Form 10-K)
GMV is money investors put into issuers, not StartEngine's revenue. SEC Form 10-K, FY2025
Up from $48.6M in 2024. Net income $1,472,852 — its first profitable year.
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SEC Form 10-K, FY2025 — StartEngine Crowdfunding, Inc. (filed 2026-03-31): revenue $109,580,580, cost of revenues $71,699,643, net income $1,472,852, StartEngine Private $86,603,559.Same 10-K, Items 1 and 5: about 1,785,000 registered users, 425,700 investors, 1,513 offerings raising over $642 million via Reg CF since 2016, 52,954 shareholders of record.SEC XBRL company facts, CIK 1661779: CY2025 revenue tagged $109,580,580 USD, confirming period, currency and subject.StartEngine: the live platform.
Revenue is FILED: $109,580,580 for FY2025 in the Form 10-K of StartEngine Crowdfunding, Inc. (filed 2026-03-31), matching the CY2025 XBRL tag for period, currency and subject. Read it carefully. $86.6M of that is StartEngine Private, which the 10-K says is booked on a gross basis because the company is principal — it buys the private shares and resells them to its own SE Funds. So $71.7M of cost of revenues leaves $37.9M of gross profit and $1,472,852 of net income; this is not $109.6M of commission, and we do not call it that. The $642M raised on the platform is GMV — money investors put into issuers, never StartEngine's revenue. The 12% headline is Reg CF platform fees ($10,562,073) plus Reg A commissions ($2,052,926) = $12.6M, which is 11.5% of revenue, rounded to 12%. The 10-K names no portfolio company, so we name none — not SpaceX, not anyone. StartEngine publishes no take rate on any page we could open, so we state none. Rival bars are our read of reach, not revenue; the rival names and their regulatory arenas come from the competitor paragraphs of the 10-K. The founder's personal social accounts could not be confirmed (the name collides with the Oaktree investor Howard Marks), so only the product site is linked. We never score you.