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Dan Novaes grew up between Indiana and South America, buying gaming consoles in the U.S. and reselling them in Brazil for a profit before he was old enough to drive. He understood early that the same asset could be worth different things depending on who held it, and who got to extract value from it. By the time he was building mobile apps in the mid-2010s, he kept running into the same version of that problem at scale.
Seven billion people were spending four trillion hours a year on smartphones. The phone manufacturers were collecting. The app stores were collecting. The ad networks were collecting. The people actually doing the engaging — watching, playing, scrolling, charging — were collecting nothing. The smartphone was the world’s most ubiquitous income-generating asset, and almost none of that income was reaching the people holding it.
Raised (crowdfunding)
$72M+
From approximately 60,000 investors
Registered users
$40M+
Across 170+ countries
Earned & saved by users
$325M+
Since inception
Company valuation
$300M+
At time of most recent raise
Dan Novaes and co-founder Kiran Panesar had been building mobile products together for over a decade before Mode Mobile existed. Their previous company, MobileX Labs, created applications that reached tens of millions of users. They understood how mobile advertising worked at the mechanism level: brands paid for attention, platforms...
Mode Mobile’s path to $50 million in revenue on the back of a few million dollars in early seed funding, and no institutional capital at scale, is not a story about a company that couldn’t raise. It is a story about who the product was built for, and why that made it the wrong fit for how most tech investors think.
The consumer app space is brutal for VC-backed companies. Retention curves fall off fast, ad-dependent revenue gets repriced at scale, and the user acquisition economics that look good at launch tend to deteriorate as competition increases. Mode’s model inverted most of those dynamics: users earned money for staying, which made retention structurally different from every app competing for the same screen time.
But the revenue per user was small. The users themselves were budget-conscious consumers in emerging markets, not the high-LTV demographics venture funds tend to find attractive. The business was profitable at the unit level and growing fast, but it was not building toward the outcome most VC funds needed on their ten-year clock.
Years of operating history and $50M+ in cumulative advertiser revenue. A user base of 40 million accounts across 170 countries. A proven retention advantage from its reward model. A co-founding team with over a decade of mobile product experience and a previous company that had reached tens of millions of users.
Mode’s users already understood the product from the inside. They had earned money from it. They had a direct stake in whether it grew. Retail equity crowdfunding let Mode turn that familiarity into capital, and that capital into a shareholder base that was also its most engaged user community. The product and the fundraise solved the same problem.
Between 2023 and 2026, Mode raised across multiple Reg CF and Reg A+ offerings, each one building on the last. The company started with a Reg CF round, hit its initial target 20 days early, and extended as investor demand continued. Each subsequent offering came in at a higher valuation, backed by more users, more revenue, and more proof that the model scaled.
| Round | Date | Type | Amount | Investors | Key evidence at time of raise |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Round 1 | 2023 | Reg CF | $1.235M (extended to $5M) | 11,000 | $50M+ cumulative revenue; target hit 20 days early |
| Round 2 | 2024 | Reg A+ | $45M+ | 29,000+ | 62% revenue growth, 91% gross profit increase H1 2024 |
| Round 3 | 2025 | Reg A+ | $53.5M | ~60,000 total | EBITDA profitability achieved; third-largest raise on DealMaker for 2025 |
The company went from 11,000 investors in its first round to approximately 60,000 across all rounds. The people choosing to invest were not passive observers of Mode’s growth. Most of them were users. They had already earned money on the platform. They understood what they were buying in a way that no institutional due diligence process could replicate. They were not betting on a product. They were investing in something they had already experienced.
Mode Mobile did not run equity crowdfunding campaigns the way most companies run fundraising rounds: quietly, with capital as the sole objective. It ran them the way it ran its product. Users of the Mode Earn app received in-app notifications about investment opportunities. People who earned money on the platform were offered a direct path to own a piece of the business generating that money. In some cases, users could redeem earned credits for company shares. The line between the product and the cap table was deliberately thin.
This approach required a consistent, honest narrative across every round. Mode’s core pitch did not change between 2023 and 2025. The framing was always the same: the smartphone is the world’s most accessible income-generating asset, and almost none of that income reaches the person holding the phone. What changed across rounds was the evidence — from 11,000 shareholders to 60,000, from $50 million in cumulative revenue to a company projecting $103 million in revenue for 2026, from a promising product to a business that hit EBITDA profitability in 2025.
The company also had to survive a near-collapse before any of that was possible. In 2022, two of Mode’s largest advertising partners, FTX and Voyager, failed within months of each other. The revenue that had been funding the company’s growth disappeared almost simultaneously. Novaes rebuilt around diversified ad revenue, hardware, and the Mode Earn Club subscription product. The decision to go directly to users for capital made it community-owned.
Each new milestone existed because the previous round’s capital funded the work to produce it. The users who invested at $0.16 per share in 2023 helped build the product that delivered 62% revenue growth in 2024. That growth justified the $200 million valuation in the Reg A round.
Aug 2023
Mode Mobile launches its first Reg CF community round. The company hits its initial $1.235 million target 20 days ahead of schedule, extends to $5 million, and closes with 11,000 shareholders. It is the company’s first direct transaction with its own users as investors.
REG CF LAUNCH
Mode Mobile launches its first Reg CF community round. The company hits its initial $1.235 million target 20 days ahead of schedule, extends to $5 million, and closes with 11,000 shareholders. It is the company’s first direct transaction with its own users as investors.
2024
Mode raises over $45 million through a Reg A+ offering, becoming one of the largest equity crowdfunding campaigns of the year. At the midpoint of 2024, the company reports 62% revenue growth and a 91% increase in gross profit compared to the same period in 2023. Investor count crosses 29,000. The NASDAQ ticker $MODE is reserved.
REG A+ ROUND
Mode raises over $45 million through a Reg A+ offering, becoming one of the largest equity crowdfunding campaigns of the year. At the midpoint of 2024, the company reports 62% revenue growth and a 91% increase in gross profit compared to the same period in 2023. Investor count crosses 29,000. The NASDAQ ticker $MODE is reserved.
2025
Mode Mobile achieves EBITDA profitability with a pro-forma EBITDA of $11.8 million. The company projects $103 million in revenue for 2026 and $200 million for 2027. A Reg A+ offering raised $53.5 million in 2025, making it the third-largest raise on the platform for the year.
EBITDA PROFITABILITY
Mode Mobile achieves EBITDA profitability with a pro-forma EBITDA of $11.8 million. The company projects $103 million in revenue for 2026 and $200 million for 2027. A Reg A+ offering raised $53.5 million in 2025, making it the third-largest raise on the platform for the year.
2025-2026
Total crowdfunding capital reaches $72 million from approximately 60,000 investors. The company remains private and is progressing toward a NASDAQ listing under ticker $MODE. Its investor FAQ confirms the IPO is a stated objective, though no date has been announced.
60,000 SHAREHOLDERS
Total crowdfunding capital reaches $72 million from approximately 60,000 investors. The company remains private and is progressing toward a NASDAQ listing under ticker $MODE. Its investor FAQ confirms the IPO is a stated objective, though no date has been announced.
Mode Mobile’s path is not a story about a company that had no other options. It is a story about a company that recognized its users as its most aligned investors and built its capital strategy around that recognition. The result, over three years, was $72 million raised from 60,000 people, a product that paid users $325 million in earnings and savings, and a business that reached EBITDA profitability without ever taking institutional money.
The company nearly failed before any of that happened. The 2022 crypto collapse wiped out two of its largest advertising partners, FTX and Voyager. What came after was a deliberate rebuild: diversified revenue, a hardware product, a subscription layer, and a decision to fund the next phase of growth directly from the community the product had already built.
Mode’s crowdfunding campaigns did not require the company to construct a narrative for a new audience. Its users already understood the product, because they had earned money from it. The first Reg CF round attracted 11,000 investors within 30 days — not because the pitch was polished, but because the audience already had firsthand evidence of the product working.
Planet Wealth works with founders to structure raises that attract real capital from aligned investors.
The initial Reg CF capital helped build the product improvements that drove 62% revenue growth in 2024. That growth justified the $200 million valuation in the Reg A round. The $45 million from that round funded the operations that produced EBITDA profitability in 2025. The chain is visible and traceable.
Over 2 million 5-star Google reviews from a user base that also holds equity are not a coincidence. Users with financial stakes refer friends, stay on the platform longer, and evangelize in ways that no paid acquisition channel can replicate. Mode’s user acquisition economics and its capital formation strategy were running on the same engine.
$50 million in revenue, 40 million users, and a product growing at 48% year over year was not enough for institutional capital, because the user demographic and exit timeline did not fit the model. That is not a flaw in Mode’s business. It is a description of how venture capital actually works. The founders who understand that distinction are the ones who find the capital structure that fits, rather than reshaping their business to fit the capital.
