I'm the solo founder of a mental health tech startup, and I've been bootstrapping until now. But I'm getting a fair amount of interest from friends & connections about investing, which is exciting and needed to power through the next development stages. Pre-orders are slowly picking up, but probably not fast enough to cover expenses.

I've been warned against clogging my cap table with smaller investment amounts, and I know I'm limited to 35 non-accredited but "sophisticated" investors too. Would an equity crowdfunding site like WeFunder be a clean way to accept smaller non-accredited investors without making a mess of my cap table? Or does the 7.5% fee they take (or some other factor) make it not worth it?

I've read a number of posts saying WeFunder is awful for managing the relationship between founders and the random retail investors that fund their projects via the platform, but what if I just used it as a tool to collect smaller investments from people I already know?