Funding profile · Science funding infrastructure

Experiment

A Y Combinator company that has never filed a Form D of its own. The only Regulation D notice attached to it came from a Wefunder vehicle in 2015 and totalled $75,000. The nonprofit beside it now files the clearest public accounting of the money.

$75,000Sold in the only Form D naming this company, a Wefunder vehicle (May 2015)
27Accredited investors in that vehicle · about $2,778 each
$1.2MRaised off the Y Combinator demo day pitch, as reported in 2015
$479,840Contributions to the Experiment Foundation, FY2024 Form 990

Data as of September 22, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
Apr 2012 Founding as Microryza, Seattle Not disclosed Cindy Wu and Denny Luan Independent
Winter 2013 Y Combinator Not disclosed Y Combinator YC directory
Mar 2013 Post demo day seed $1.2M reported Not itemised in any source found Independent
By Feb 2014 Seed backers named Not disclosed Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz Independent
Undated AngelList triple syndicate Not disclosed Jude Gomila, Dave Morin, Joshua Schachter Company-stated
May 2015 Wefunder vehicle $75,000 of $75,000 27 accredited investors Form D
2016 onward Any later priced round None found None found Not found

What the filings show

Experiment I Fund, a series of Wefunds LLC · Form D · filed May 27, 2015

First sale
May 27, 2015
Type
Pooled investment fund, venture capital fund, Delaware LLC formed 2015
Offered
$75,000
Sold
$75,000 · $0 remaining
Investors
27, all accredited · average about $2,778 · minimum accepted $1,000
Exemption
Rule 506(b)
Commissions
Sales commissions $0 · finders fees $0
Related persons
Michael Norman, promoter, managing member of Wefunds LLC
Filing
SEC EDGAR, CIK 0001641887

Experiment Foundation · IRS Form 990 · filed May 13, 2025

Entity
501(c)(3), Berkeley, California · EIN 99-0758904
Fiscal year
Ending December 2024
Contributions
$479,840, 100 percent of revenue
Investment income
$6
Salaries and wages
$5,207, 55.3 percent of total expenses
Executive pay
$0
Assets
$470,435 · liabilities $0
Officers
David Lang, president · Rachel Kropa, treasurer · Paul Keolu Fox, secretary
Filing
IRS, via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer

Reading the filings

  1. The operating company has never filed a Form D.An EDGAR search for filers named Experiment returns four entities: Experiment Engine, Inc. of Texas, Experiment Fund, LLC of Massachusetts, Experiment I Fund, a series of Wefunds LLC, and Experiments in Dining, LLC. Only the third relates to this company, and it is an investor vehicle, not the issuer. Companies raising under Section 4(a)(2) file no Form D, so silence does not mean no money moved. It does mean the capital structure is unobservable.
  2. The one filed round was a retail crowd, not a fund.$75,000 across 27 accredited investors is about $2,778 each, against a $1,000 minimum. That is a Wefunder syndicate, roughly one hundredth the average check in a normal seed Form D.
  3. Announced capital and filed capital do not line up at all.Reported financing includes $1.2 million off the 2013 demo day pitch, seed backing from Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz named in February 2014, and an AngelList triple syndicate the company says was led by Jude Gomila, Dave Morin and Joshua Schachter. None of it appears in any Form D. The $75,000 vehicle is the entire Regulation D footprint.
  4. A round the company flagged never showed up.Answering an investor question on Wefunder, the company wrote: “There may be another funding round in 2017. We don’t know if or when.” No Form D and no reported round has appeared in the nine years since.
  5. The nonprofit is now the only auditable ledger.The FY2024 Form 990 shows $479,840 in, $470,435 of assets, no liabilities, $5,207 of wages and three unpaid officers. That is a grant conduit on almost no payroll, not an operating business. Its site claims more than $2.2 million granted across more than 300 projects, cumulative figures that one digitised filing year cannot confirm.
  6. Platform economics are small and mostly knowable.The company reports $12,718,617 pledged over fourteen years at an 8 percent platform fee. If every pledged dollar were a funded dollar, cumulative platform fees come to about $1.02 million, or roughly $73,000 a year. Whatever sustains the business, it is not the take rate on crowdfunding.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Take rate 8 percent platform fee plus roughly 3 to 5 percent payment processing, charged only when a project is funded. Company-stated
Gross volume $12,718,617 pledged, 1,433 funded projects, average project $3,372, as of Sep 2026. Company-stated
Conversion 48.03 percent success rate reported by the company. An independent coding of all 725 campaigns to Aug 2015 measured 48 percent, against 36 percent on Kickstarter. Public record
Second revenue line Managed grant programs for outside funders including FootPrint Coalition, Homeworld Collective and Range Media Partners. More than seventy challenge grants listed since 2016. Pricing not disclosed. Partner-stated
Break even Forecast for May 2017 in an investor answer on Wefunder. No confirmation found either way. Company-stated
Output 126 Europe PMC records whose funding acknowledgment names Experiment.com, and 181 full text mentions, as of Sep 24, 2026. Public record
Audience figures The FAQ claims over 1,879,000 members, the home page says 1M plus users, and the start page says 40,000 individual backers. The three are not reconciled anywhere on the site. Internally inconsistent

What to watch

  • A first Form D from Experiment Inc. Fourteen years without one is the single most informative fact on this page.
  • The FY2025 Form 990 for the Experiment Foundation, the only recurring public number attached to this business.
  • Whether grant program fees overtake platform fees, making the foundation the centre of gravity.
  • Any disclosure of who now runs the for profit entity. Both founders have moved on to a new venture.

The Experiment story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • Science Exchange: Shared investor: Andreessen Horowitz. A marketplace for ordering experiments that became procurement software for big pharma, and that sourced the laboratories for the largest public test of whether
  • CrowdMed: Shared investor: Andreessen Horowitz. A marketplace where patients paid a monthly fee to post an undiagnosed case, and a crowd of self selected “medical detectives” ranked the possible answers
  • HealthSherpa: Shared investor: Andreessen Horowitz. A Sacramento company that rebuilt the front end of HealthCare.gov for agents and carriers
  • Medmonk: Shared investor: Andreessen Horowitz. It began as a pharmacist’s spreadsheet for finding money for patients who could not pay for their drugs

Sources

  1. Public recordForm D, Experiment I Fund, a series of Wefunds LLC, CIK 0001641887SEC EDGAR · May 27, 2015
  2. Public recordEDGAR company search for filers named Experiment, four resultsSEC · accessed Sep 24, 2026
  3. Public recordIRS Form 990, Experiment Foundation, EIN 99-0758904, fiscal year 2024ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer · filed May 13, 2025
  4. Public recordCrowdfunding scientific research, 725 campaigns codedPLOS ONE · Jan 4, 2019
  5. Public recordEurope PMC full text and acknowledgment search for Experiment.comEurope PMC · Sep 24, 2026
  6. IndependentExperiment.com is pushing science forward with crowdfundingVentureBeat · Feb 6, 2014
  7. IndependentStartup founder raises $1.2 million in minutesNextShark · Jul 28, 2015
  8. IndependentY Combinator Winter 2013 Demo Day, Batch 1TechCrunch · Mar 26, 2013
  9. CompanyInvestor question and answer thread on the community roundWefunder · archived
  10. CompanyStart a project, FAQ, grants and funders pagesExperiment · accessed Sep 24, 2026
  11. CompanyAbout and home pagesExperiment Foundation · accessed Sep 24, 2026
  12. PartnerAnnouncing the Garden Grants WinnersHomeworld Collective · Mar 11, 2024

Compiled from SEC, IRS and other public records and published reports as of September 22, 2026. Form D notices report offerings under Regulation D; amounts reflect the filing date and may not capture later sales. An absence of Form D filings does not establish an absence of financing, since offerings under Section 4(a)(2) require no such notice. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Experiment. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.