That's my impression too. Some, like Cringle on Companisto, looks OK-ish, but most of it is crap. At worst it's "delightful" candy subscriptions and at best it'

That's my impression too. Some, like Cringle on Companisto, looks OK-ish, but most of it is crap. At worst it's "delightful" candy subscriptions and at best it's a slightly better implementation of something that already exists. EDIT: Having just looked at Companisto's page I now get lots of advertisements all over the web from them. So that's why no good start-ups bother with crowd-investing - because the portals take a big fat cut and so the start-up effectively gets a lower valuation.