Most hardware startups raise money from venture funds and sell products to strangers. MAGFAST, a charging company in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, has done much of both with the same group of people.
The numbers
MAGFAST raises capital through Netcapital, an SEC-registered funding portal, under Regulation Crowdfunding. Reg CF lets private companies sell securities to ordinary investors, not only accredited ones, with disclosure filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In April 2025, Netcapital announced that MAGFAST had raised more than $10 million across multiple offerings on its platform. The announcement cited KingsCrowd data ranking that total as the second largest amount raised under Reg CF in the consumer packaged goods industry. MAGFAST’s SEC filings show Reg CF offerings dating back to 2022, with annual reports and new offering documents filed as recently as 2026.
The company describes its investor base as thousands of customer-investors, and says most of its shareholders also own its products.
Why a company chooses this route
For a consumer brand, crowdfunded equity does two jobs. It raises capital without handing a board seat to a venture fund, and it turns buyers into owners with a financial reason to recommend the products.
MAGFAST leans into the second part. Its offerings have included product credit for investors: the company’s investor page promises $3 of MAGFAST products for every $10 invested. A customer who owns shares and holds product credit has two reasons to stay engaged.
The company says its most loyal buyers purchase many products each, and in a July 2026 announcement it put the average at about a dozen per owner.
The risk that comes with it
The model has a hard edge. Customer-investors feel delays twice, once as buyers waiting for hardware and again as shareholders watching the business.
MAGFAST knows that pressure well. The company launched in 2017 and took more than $600,000 in pre-orders on its first day, by its own account. Building the products proved far harder, and some early customers waited years. A contributed article about the company, published by The Next Web in May 2026, says its redesigned Gen2 product family began reaching customers in late 2025. Complaints about delivery times appear on consumer review sites, and the company’s Better Business Bureau profile lists dozens of complaints over three years.
Founder and CEO Seymour Segnit addressed that criticism in the same piece: “Critics cry ‘scam’ and ‘fraud’ when things go wrong for small, underfunded companies. Sure, we’ve seen bad actors try to make a quick buck. But that’s far from the norm.”
What investors should read first
Anyone considering a Reg CF investment in any company should start with the filings rather than the marketing. The Form C offering statement and the annual Form C-AR contain financial statements, risk factors and use of proceeds. They are free on the SEC’s EDGAR database.
- Read the risk factors. They are written by lawyers to disclose, not to sell.
- Check revenue and cash in the most recent annual report.
- Understand what you are buying. Crowdfunded securities are often illiquid, with no easy way to sell.
- Treat product credit as a perk, not as part of the investment’s value.
A test case for community capital
MAGFAST is an unusually clear example of a company built on the overlap between customers and owners. When the products arrive and delight people, that overlap creates evangelists. When they arrive late, it creates a very public reckoning. Both have happened here, and the company’s next few years will show which one defines it.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.