😮 This startup is getting 520% larger checks

Welcome to this week’s edition of CROWDSCALE, where we bring Shark Tank to your inbox. In today’s newsletter:

• ♟️ Checkmate: Why is this startup bringing in large checks??

• 📨 Mailbag Monday: I’m answering your questions on Twitter. All of em.

• 🌴 Retreat!! Wefunder’s got a mansion in Ibiza. You’re not invited.

I'm waiting on the lab results to get back, but I have my guesses.

Creatine? Diesel? A polycarbonate blend of Gatorade flavors?

SOMETHING is in the water supply over at Wefunder HQ because they have been cooking with gas the last few months.

They've been hitting funding records and selling out rounds faster than Pete Davidson goes through girlfriends.

The latest notch in their belt is Arrived - an online platform that lets people invest in individual vacation & rental homes.

Arrived comes from high pedigree, having been previously funded by the VC arms of Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff, and several other prominent CEOs.

The startup manages 264+ rental properties, contains 295,000 users, and claims to have $58.5M in assets under management for 2022.

With this traction, they've gone live with a $100M valuation and have since then received $9.4M(!) in reservations within its first week.

Now, they won't end up raising anywhere near this amount for two reasons.

1. Arrived is doing Regulation CF, a type of raise that lets startups receive a maximum of $5M in investment.

2. Arrived is in the Testing the Waters (TTW) stage, whereby they can gauge investor interest without actually having investors wire them funds.

In TTW, investors write down how much they want to invest in a startup. This is a non-binding amount that they will have to reconfirm at a later date for money to actually be invested.

Now, something about the Arrived raise is incredibly interesting to me. According to the fundraising page, 1,726 investors have committed $9.4M in this current round.

That comes out to $5,436 per investor.

That figure may sound high for a community round, and that's because it is. According to Kingscrowd, the average check size on the Wefunder platform in 2021 was $1,054.

I don't know about you, but a 520% increase against the average raises my eyebrows.

The optimist in me says that they are doing great and receiving numerous large check investments.

The skeptic in me wonders if there is any manipulation going on since they're in a TTW phase. For example. I could go to the page right now and say I'm investing $500,000. I don't need to prove it, and I'm in no way obligated to actually invest that amount.

I'm not accusing Wefunder or Arrived of foul play, but I'll be interested to see if they are still able to hit the $5M investment max when the funds actually need to be wired.

I’d love to cover every startup out there, but I am but a mortal man who also needs to spend time with his dog.

Today, I am locking myself in a room and answering any of your startup investing questions.

Tweet at me with a startup, and I’ll give my unfiltered quick thoughts on it!

Wefunder has been working hard to open the world of startup investing to everyday people. Their extravagant retreat in an Ibiza mansion?

Nah that’s still just for the rich people.

Wefunder is sourcing 10 high-profile venture capital investors & founders to jet away for a 3-day stay in Ibiza.

On the application page, Wefunder claims that the goal of the getaway is to help network and discuss the democratization of investing:

As a 0.0000000265% shareholder of Wefunder, I’ll see if I can put in a good word with the CEO about letting some of us common folk join the retreat.

Please note that this is not financial advice, nor a recommendation to invest in any of the startups mentioned. Readers should conduct their own due diligence and understand that startup investing is a risky asset class.