StartEngine

Overview

Client growth, with the systems to support it.

At StartEngine, I connected the investor story, paid media, founder content, follow-up, and closing plan. I also built the reporting and automation systems that helped turn campaign data into the next action.

StartEngine brought together companies raising capital and investors evaluating private businesses. As Director of Funding Growth, I worked with founders to turn their offerings into actively managed campaigns, from launch preparation and investor messaging to weekly performance decisions and the close.

The work crossed Paid Media, Creative, Compliance, Sales, Investor Experience, campaign operations, and Engineering. I owned the client strategy and coordinated execution across those teams, keeping the message, deadlines, and next decisions connected.

Alongside the client work, I built reusable reporting, audience research, AI workflows, and task routing for the Crowdfunding Department. I also contributed to StartEngine's own growth through sales prospecting, returning-client engagements, and product positioning beyond crowdfunding.

Challenge and goals

Every raise needed a plan. Every plan needed follow-through.

A technical founder, a consumer brand, and an entertainment company could all be raising on the same platform, with different audiences, budgets, proof points, and timelines. Each needed an investor story people could understand and a campaign that kept moving after launch.

The information needed to run those campaigns sat across investment records, advertising dashboards, analytics, email, client conversations, and internal task queues. A growing raise total could hide slowing recent momentum. An interested follower could need several more interactions before investing. An approved creative brief could still stall between teams.

The challenge was to see what needed attention, decide what to do, and get the work through the right people while supporting a large client portfolio.

The playbook

How I connected strategy to execution.

1. 01

   Built one operating plan around each client

   I translated the company's goals into a plan for its message, audience, launch, paid media, content, events, and follow-up. Weekly calls started with a report shared in advance, so the discussion could focus on what to change and who would own it.

   That plan changed with the campaign. Before launch, the priority was readiness. During the raise, it was the next useful message, audience test, or founder interaction. Near close, it was the deadline, creative, promotion, budget, and unresolved investor actions.

2. 02

   Made audience research part of the message

   I built more than 50 client demographic reports comparing investor audiences with relevant StartEngine benchmarks. Age, geography, investment size, and accredited-investor participation informed messaging, creative briefs, and acquisition tests.

   For Etherdyne, nearly six in ten investors were 55 or older. For Innovega's first CF raise, 64% were 55 or older, compared with 50.2% in the platform baseline of 26,866 investors with age data. Those findings helped guide how we explained technical products to the people showing interest.

3. 03

   Kept paid media connected to the rest of the funnel

   I worked with the Paid Media team on messaging, creative, channel selection, budget, and timing. We reviewed follower growth, checkouts, investments, and attribution alongside advertising results, then used those findings to decide whether to scale, refresh, or pause.

   Prospecting built awareness and interested audiences earlier in the campaign. Retargeting and follow-up gave those audiences more reasons to return as proof accumulated and the deadline approached. Budget recommendations were part of the campaign plan, supported by multiple reporting sources and the limits of each.

4. 04

   Turned campaign updates into a learning loop

   I built automated campaign-update analysis and platform benchmarks to identify which topics, titles, and timing were associated with investor activity. Those findings became recommendations for the next update, creative brief, or founder message.

   For Etherdyne, analysis of 54 updates found that final-week countdowns drew the most completed investments in the analyzed update traffic, while third-party validation and concrete proof points drew some of the largest checks. The findings guided the next round's content plan; they were directional attribution rather than a causal lift estimate.

5. 05

   Built a daily reporting foundation

   I created StartEngine's first mass raise tracker, covering more than 2,200 platform fundraising records. Daily workflows brought together raise pace, investors, followers, update activity, and time remaining. That coverage was the reporting universe, separate from my own client portfolio.

   Weekly campaign briefs combined campaign results, analytics, promotions, events, and open tasks into a usable call agenda. Raise projections helped founders consider the pace, budget, and actions needed for different closing scenarios. I also helped launch a client-facing performance dashboard.

6. 06

   Made AI useful through context and review

   I built shared knowledge files for campaign strategy, paid media, operations, and compliance guidance, then added client-specific context from offering documents, campaign pages, approved messaging, and current notes.

   Those sources supported reusable workflows for messaging points, ad-copy themes, update drafts, audience analysis, and meeting preparation. Task automations moved work from direction to Creative, client review, Compliance, and Paid Media. Human judgment and the relevant approvals remained part of deployment.

7. 07

   Supported new business and the next raise

   I led sales and renewal conversations with founders and carried that context into onboarding and campaign delivery. Returning engagements included Epilog, AquiPor, and Etherdyne.

   I also built a KingsCrowd API prospecting system covering more than 3,000 companies with earlier raises. It organized fundraising history and founder context into a scored sales pipeline, helping the team prioritize prospective clients. The workflow supported new-to-StartEngine engagements, including RISE Robotics, which was onboarding as of October 2026.

Webinars and livestreams

Founders, interviewed live.

Investors needed to hear directly from the people building the companies. I hosted more than 20 investor-facing webinars, including founder interviews, partner programming, pitch competitions, and campaign events. I handled speaker preparation, questions and scripts, review coordination, promotion, and follow-up recommendations.

I also put StartEngine's in-app livestreaming product to work as a campaign channel and used event reporting to understand audience response. The work included multiple interviews with Kevin O'Leary on behalf of client raises.

Platform growth + product marketing

Bringing the same discipline to StartEngine's own growth.

Public Fund

StartEngine's Public Fund was planned as an SEC-registered closed-end fund giving investors exposure to private, venture-backed companies. Its registration statement, for the StartEngine Tech Growth Fund, was filed on August 13, 2026. I led the go-to-market strategy work.

• Turned the fund concept into a clear launch narrative about private-market access, rather than a technical securities story.
• Researched retail-access private-market funds, including Fundrise's VCX, Robinhood Ventures Fund I, Destiny Tech100 and ARK Venture Fund, and drew out launch lessons: convert an existing investor base first, keep founder-led communication, and tie media moments to milestones.
• Sourced, vetted and managed a specialized financial-services PR agency as StartEngine's single point of contact, and rewrote its brief through four narrative changes in about a month.
• Coordinated the launch press release process, led meetings between the agency and executives, prepared executives for media, and was the final marketing reviewer before Compliance.
• Independently lined up an exclusive Bloomberg story opportunity with a prominent industry reporter to discuss the fund. Publication was delayed pending the fund's SEC approval.

My part was go-to-market, communications, and research. I did not structure the fund, write the filing, or manage its portfolio. No fund launch is claimed here, and the Bloomberg story had not been published.

Pre-IPO Funds

StartEngine Private gave accredited investors access to private and pre-IPO companies through Reg D funds. I supported its growth marketing with investor intelligence, fundraising analytics, audience research, and PR coordination.

• Automated a master list of companies held across the private funds, with a recurring news check that flagged material developments and listing speculation for review.
• Automated a master tracker of the Reg D fund raises, comparing raise pace, investor mix, followers, and update activity across funds.
• Created StartEngine's first demographic benchmarks for its Reg D offerings by offering type, to sharpen targeting and messaging.
• Wrote the messaging guide for media and financial press and the campaign brief for the private products, and worked with the PR agency and StartEngine's CEO on media outreach.
• Sent investor figures to the data owner and CFO for a check before any reached the press. That check caught overcounting, and only the cleared figures were used.

The work supported marketing decisions and investor communications. It was separate from investment selection and fund management, and news or listing speculation was a signal for review, never a promise of an outcome.

Tokenization

My tokenization work was the commercial side: turning a technical and regulatory idea into something issuers, investors, partners, and the press could understand.

• Positioned ERC-1450, StartEngine's standard for compliant on-chain securities, in which a registered transfer agent approves every transfer, together with StartEngine Secure, its transfer agent. StartEngine's tokenization infrastructure passed an audit by Halborn, a blockchain security firm.
• Shaped go-to-market thinking for tokenized fundraising concepts, framed inside a regulated capital-formation process rather than the unregulated ICO playbook.
• Supported CLARITY Weekly, a content series with StartEngine's CEO, Howard Marks, connecting the CLARITY Act conversation to digital securities.
• Vetted crypto-savvy PR partners on whether they could explain tokenization without hype, and wrote the brief that moved tokenization to background infrastructure when leadership changed the lead story.
• Connected tokenization to the Marketplace and secondary liquidity story, and explored real-world asset concepts, including bringing wine and spirits from Vinovest onto the same compliant rails.
• Supported investor acquisition for crypto-related private offerings. As of June 1, 2026, StartEngine's private offerings page listed Series Kraken, Kraken-2, Kraken-3 and Series Ripple as sold out.

Tokenized fundraising and real-world asset concepts were exploratory product work. My contribution was positioning and go-to-market strategy; technical development and legal structuring belonged to their respective teams.

Issuer case studies

From StartEngine client raises

• 
  • Reg CF
  • AI vision technology

  Epilog

  Managing a live Reg CF raise through a $4.19M close

  • $4.19M

    Invested at close

    January 29, 2026

  • 3.83×

    Closing vs. handoff balance

    Handoff to close

  Alex's role: managed Epilog's StartEngine account as Director of Funding Growth. Invested amounts are campaign totals at handoff and at close.

  Read the Epilog case study
• 
  • Reg CF
  • Wireless power technology

  Etherdyne

  From a technical story to an oversubscribed first Reg CF raise

  • $1.2M+

    Raised, per Etherdyne's announcement

    Closed March 9, 2026

  • 468

    Investments recorded

    Full campaign

  Alex's role: supported the raise strategy, story, and creative as StartEngine's Director of Funding Growth. The raised amount is Etherdyne's announced total.

  Read the Etherdyne case study
• 
  • Reg CF
  • Assistive eyewear technology

  Innovega

  Data-led growth for an FDA-regulated eyewear $2.9M+ CF raise

  • $2.9M

    Raised in the CF1 raise (approximate)

    Closed March 30, 2026

  • 1,084

    Investors in the CF1 raise

    Full campaign

  Alex's role: led campaign strategy and built the research, messaging, and creative workflows as StartEngine's Director of Funding Growth.

  Read the Innovega case study
• 
  • Reg CF
  • Rotary engines and hybrid power

  LiquidPiston

  A $3.9M Reg CF raise built around a technical story

  • $3,899,861

    Invested in the Reg CF offering

    Closed October 15, 2026

  • 3

    Investor webinars hosted

    During the raise

  Alex's role: managed the issuer strategy and growth plan and hosted three investor webinars as StartEngine's Director of Funding Growth, from launch through the close.

  Read the LiquidPiston case study
• 
  • Reg CF
  • Fan-owned entertainment

  Legion M

  Investor engagement for a fan-owned entertainment company's Reg CF raise

  • $965,225

    Raised in the Reg CF offering

    Snapshot as of October 4, 2026

  • 2,359

    Investors in the Reg CF offering

    Snapshot as of October 4, 2026

  Alex's role: supported the campaign and hosted two investor webinars as StartEngine's Director of Funding Growth. Figures are a snapshot of the live raise, not a closing total.

  Read the Legion M case study
• 
  • Reg A+
  • Data-compaction software

  Atombeam

  Automation-led support for an $18.17M Reg A+ raise

  • $18,174,007

    Invested in the 2026 Reg A+ offering

    Closed September 17, 2026

  • 5,567

    Investors in the offering

    Full campaign

  Alex supported the client with campaign strategy and the shared reporting, messaging, and coordination infrastructure he built at StartEngine. The invested amount is the full offering's result, rather than capital assigned to an individual automation.

On Etherdyne's first Reg CF raise, which Alex supported as StartEngine's Director of Funding Growth. Read the Etherdyne case study

Results in context

The campaign totals and the operating work behind them.

The $102.2M headline rounds a role-overlap total of $102,163,023.25 across 65 raises by 52 client issuers. The portfolio calculation subtracts $28,074,000 identified as raised before the role began from $130,237,023.25 in cumulative campaign proceeds. Its snapshot is October 5, 2026, and the pre-role deductions were supplied in rounded dollars.

The approximately 10,800 accredited-investor figure is an estimate across the same campaigns' full runs. It can include pre-role activity and the same person in multiple raises. It is a different measurement window from the role-overlap dollar total.

The systems work produced repeatable reporting, audience research, campaign briefs, creative workflows, and sales intelligence. Separate time savings, incremental fundraising lift, and department-wide adoption have not been quantified.

AI automations

The operating system behind the campaigns.

I was nearly the only automation builder in the Crowdfunding Department. Between May and September 2026, reporting went from largely manual to scheduled AI monitoring, refreshing thousands of client reporting data points every day. The system let me carry more projects than anyone else on the team.

Campaign pulse briefs

Daily and pre-call briefs, first in OpenClaw and later in Grokbot and Claude, delivered in Slack, combining raise pace, follower trends over rolling windows, campaign updates, promotions, livestreams, traffic, open tasks, and a call agenda. Post-call follow-ups became nearly fully automated with Google Apps Script.

Raise projections

Scenario models for base pace, more ad spend, a faster update cadence, a webinar push, and promotion timing. Later versions compared each projection with actual results.

Raise ledgers and ROI

Ad dashboards, GA4 and PostHog site behavior, and Metabase investment data in one view, with fees included for an all-in read, and the usual 10 to 30 day lag before investments show explained to clients.

Campaign update analysis

The department's first automated client-facing update analysis and platform-wide update benchmarks, tracking add-to-carts, investments, and sessions by update from Postgres, GA4, and PostHog.

Audience research

50+ demographic reports against StartEngine benchmarks, and follower and investor overlap analysis across 50+ clients, normalized so the largest raises did not dominate, to find comparable campaigns for messaging and lookalike audiences.

Messaging and ad copy

Claude and GPT skills for messaging points, refreshed through each campaign, and 100+ ad copy variants, built from verified campaign context and routed through compliance review before use.

Scheduled monitoring

Claude scheduled tasks and n8n workflows: a daily refresh of StartEngine's first mass raise tracker (2,200+ platform fundraising records), weekday checks for stalled investment activity and sales activity, weekly milestone and client refreshes, and alerts when a promotion or update was overdue.

Workflow routing

Jira automations moved each asset from messaging direction to Creative, client approval, Compliance, and Paid Media, and sent investor questions to the right client.

Context libraries

The department's first shared library of paid media, operations, creative, compliance, and strategy guidance, plus a library per client built from its campaign page, filings, and approved messaging, kept in Markdown on GitHub.

Livestream tracking

PostHog trackers measuring views, page engagement, followers, add-to-carts, and investments around each livestream, to guide follow-up and future events.

Client reporting

Helped launch AdBlitz, a client-facing dashboard for paid media and campaign performance.

Chief of staff agent

A Grokbot design for one orchestrating agent over seven specialists and a shared client registry, with priority scoring, closing-date math, shadow-mode testing before going live, read-only data access, and emails left as drafts.

The tools supported strategy and approvals; they did not replace them. No capital raised is attributed to any automation here.

Your next raise

Put a clear operating plan behind your raise.

RaiseFM brings this experience to your investor story, launch, paid media, content, founder events, follow-up, and closing plan. We agree who owns each part, then lead the work with your team.