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More than half (54%) of Americans surveyed said they were confident their favorite brand would succeed when they first discovered it.
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56% said they would have invested in their favorite brand if they had the chance when they first became a fan.
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Among people whose favorite brand is publicly traded, fewer than half (43%) have ever owned its stock, with access and cost, not conviction, holding them back.
DealMaker – America’s leading investment technology platform that lets retail investors invest directly in private companies – published its latest wave of survey research , showing that 77% of Americans believe customers and brand advocates should be better rewarded for the role they play in growing a brand. DealMaker’s national research surveyed more than 2,000 U.S. adults in a study conducted by independent research firm Propeller Insights.
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Asked to think back to when they first encountered their favorite brand, 54% of respondents said they were confident at the time that it would become a successful company, including 23% who were very confident.
“We’re shifting from an attention economy to an ownership economy, from a world where brands rent attention to one where loyalty is the edge. Customer acquisition costs are skyrocketing, but the people who buy into a brand’s mission early stay loyal and tell their friends. Turning those customers into owners is a powerful enterprise asset,” said Rebecca Kacaba, co-founder and CEO of DealMaker. “Customers love their favorite brands. They believe in them. But a lot of the value they create doesn’t come back to them. Every day at DealMaker we see that the companies that take this ownership mindset have something their competitors can’t buy: their most loyal customers as owners, with a personal stake in the brand’s success.”
Consumers spot winners early. Asked to think back to when they first encountered their favorite brand, 54% of respondents said they were confident at the time that it would become a successful company, including 23% who were very confident. Only 6% said they were not confident. Long before an IPO or an earnings report validates a company, its customers are doing their own due diligence at the checkout counter and in the group chat, and their loyalty, repeat purchases and word of mouth help build the reputation that later success depends on.
Brand loyalty and investment appetite are the same impulse. When asked whether they would have invested in their favorite brand had they been able to when they first became familiar with it, 56% said yes, compared with 24% who said no. The brands people live with every day are the ones they most wish they had owned: 64% said they would have invested in Amazon before its IPO, followed by DoorDash (47%), Uber (47%), Airbnb (42%), Chime (41%) and Tesla (40%). Among DealMaker’s own customers, many of the highest-performing verticals are ones that capture customers’ imaginations, like clean tech, retail, robotics and new media.
Most fans have never been able to turn belief into ownership. Only 43% of respondents said their favorite brand is publicly traded, while 41% said they didn’t know whether it was. Even among those whose favorite brand is public, just 43% have ever owned its shares. Among people who have never owned their favorite brand’s stock, more than a quarter (27%) said they didn’t have enough money to invest in the stock market, while 19% said they didn’t invest in the stock market at all.
Where people have become owners, it can deepen the relationship: nearly three in ten of all survey respondents said investing in a company made them a more loyal customer. This reinforces DealMaker’s own research, which shows that among companies that use DealMaker for capital raises, more than half of customer-investors invest for a second time and refer 2x more customers than those who aren’t invested.
Customers want a say in the brands they helped build. A slim majority (51%) said it is unfair that customers help build brands while investors capture the gains from their growth. But when the question turned to what should happen next, the verdict was clear: 77% said customers and brand advocates should be better rewarded for helping a brand grow.
“Every time a beloved brand gets sold, changes direction or loses what made it special, its most loyal customers find out they never had a seat at the table. They felt a sense of ownership, but they didn’t really have it,” said Kacaba. “It’s time to change that with actual ownership. When customers are shareholders, they have a stake in keeping the brand true to what they fell in love with, and the company gets a built-in community of advocates who want it to win. That’s not a marketing program. That’s a capital strategy.”
This survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults was fielded July 11–20, 2026, by Propeller Insights on behalf of DealMaker. It is the final installment of a three-part research series from DealMaker, following its findings on American attitudes toward AI wealth and inequality and on access to high-growth private investments. The findings highlight the customer belief behind brands and the investment opportunities it can unlock, amid a surge in demand for DealMaker’s end-to-end fundraising technology, with capital raised up 40% in the last 12 months and the platform approaching $3 billion in total capital raised since its founding.
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