Trends Watch: VC Investing Utilizing AI

EisnerAmper’s Trends Watch is a weekly entry to our Alternative Investments Intelligence blog, featuring the views and insights of executives from alternative investment firms. If you’re interested in being featured, please contact Elana Margulies-Snyderman.   

This week, Elana talks with Sherwood Neiss, Principal, D3VC.   

What is your outlook for early-stage VC investing utilizing data science and AI to identify targets? 

We're seeing an inflection point in early-stage investing where founders are increasingly choosing to start their fundraising journey via Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF). It’s online, transparent, and standardized—typically completed in 90 days—and unlike traditional VC, it's unrestricted in terms of who can participate. This democratization of capital formation is producing a new class of investment-ready startups whose funding rounds and investor sentiment are fully visible and structured. 

As the number of issuers continues to grow—five-to-ten new offerings per day, with over 650 active at any time—the ability to harness structured data and AI to identify promising opportunities has never been more important. Reg CF is rapidly becoming a foundational layer of early-stage venture finance, and the data it generates is ripe for alternative investment strategies that are quantitative, scalable, and signal-rich. 

Where do you see the greatest opportunities and why? 

Twofold: data and community-backed signals. 

First, data is gold, and we sit on the only comprehensive dataset of 10,000+ online capital raises tracked under Reg CF and 506(c)—100% coverage, 150+ datapoints per offering. With this, we can observe performance over time and develop predictive algorithms that surface “needles in haystacks.” For any allocator or GP looking to systematize early-stage sourcing, that’s a game-changer. 

Second, the rise of the investomer—the customer who becomes an investor—is one of the most underpriced signals in the market. It not only drives faster and more successful capital raises, but materially increases post-raise brand awareness and revenue. From an alternative investment standpoint, this behavioral dynamic is creating a new category of traction and value that deserves institutional attention. 

What are the greatest challenges you face and why? 

The largest challenge is still market awareness. Although Reg CF has been live since 2016, many startups, VCs, and alternative investors still don’t know it exists—let alone that it has already funneled nearly $3 billion into private companies with robust compliance oversight and virtually no fraud. 

We’re waiting for CNBC, Bloomberg, and others to connect the dots between successful exits and the early-stage investors who made outsized returns by backing community-led rounds. Until that happens, Reg CF remains under the radar for most mainstream allocators. 

What keeps you up at night? 

Despite the industry's clean track record and rising momentum, I worry that state-level regulatory pushback could derail the progress we’ve made. If that happens, the greatest harm won’t be to institutions—it’ll be to the underserved. Reg CF has become a critical engine for diverse founders, rural innovation, job creation, and economic stimulus across the U.S. If the momentum slows, the opportunity gap widens. That’s not just bad policy—it’s a threat to the future of entrepreneurship itself. 

The views and opinions expressed above are of the interviewee only, and do not/are not intended to reflect the views of EisnerAmper.