Micheal
Frustrated
I have invested in several StartEngine companies. My investment sizes have ranged from $500 to $20k in these companies. I was excited earlier this year when 2 of these investments IPO’d (Virtuix and 20/20 Biolabs). Both stocks opened with valuations that should have offered nice profits. However, after the IPO I had to transfer my shares from holding companies to my personal account to sell them. This process took a couple weeks and one of the holding companies (Vstock Transfer) included very high fees to carry out the transfer process. By the time I finally got the shares settled in my personal brokerage account my investments were both in negative territory. What puzzles me is who the sellers were of both of these companies in the early days after their IPO’s? Investors like myself at the mercy of the holding companies are clearly at a disadvantage! 😖
Response from StartEngineJun 15, 2026
Hi Micheal, thank you for being a long-time StartEngine investor and for sharing this. We understand how frustrating it is when a company goes public and moving shares into a personal brokerage account takes time. Once a company IPOs, its transfer agent — not StartEngine — handles the share transfer and any related fees, and timelines vary by agent. Your experience matters to us, and we'd like to look into it directly. Please reach out at [email protected] and our team will follow up.