Several years ago, I posted an honest two-star Google review of this company based on my investment experience. This got a lot of likes and periodic notifications from Google that it was helpful to thousands of people. Then one day, the review disappeared. I then re-posted the same review, and this cycle repeated itself - after a lot of likes and high ranking of the post, it got deleted, along with all others that provided a rating of less than 4 or 5 stars. (I can be under no illusions as to who was responsible for these deletions - reviews of other businesses that I wrote on Google some 10 years ago are still active.) CrowdStreet apparently is unable to delete reviews from TrustPilot, and on seeing the proportion of 1- and 2-star ratings, the truth is self-evident - investing on CrowdStreet is very high risk and once you invest, you're on your own, with no support from CrowdSreet if things go wrong. More than one General Partner privately shared with me that platforms like this are funding sources of last resort, so the poor quality of these deals should not be too surprising. Crowdfunding platforms make their money off listing fees, so when deals go south (as a large number have), unlike their investors, they have no skin in the game. All they can do is try to cover up bad press, which is simply investors who have been burned who are sharing their experience as a warning to others. I recently heard that they shut down investor forums on their site - clearly they experienced heartburn in seeing all the complaints and feared that it would negatively impact fundraising. Rather than posting some boilerplate response to this, CrowdStreet should explain why they're doing everything in their power to silence investors who have lost money in deals on their platform, and what actual steps they have taken to tighten their selectivity and improve their vetting of GPs.
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Crowd Street is a leading platform for direct-access private market investing. The company offers a carefully selected marketplace of alternative investment opportunities that have historically only been available to a small group of people. In addition to providing advanced tools, research, and insights to help investors confidently explore these exclusive opportunities, Crowd Street is also building a member experience rooted in trust and experience – working to further bridge the gap between investment opportunities and our members' financial ambitions. Learn more at https://www.crowdstreet.com/.
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