دانلود رایگان مقاله محرک موفقیت تساوی حقوق آنلاین مبارزات تراکم سرمایه گذاری

Abstract

While equity crowdfunding provides ventures with an opportunity to collect funding from a large base of investors, many campaigns tend to remain unsuccessful. We draw from two fields of financing adjacent to equity crowdfunding, venture capital (VC) and angel investing, as well as rewards-based crowdfunding, to develop an understanding of the drivers of investment decisions in equity crowdfunding. Using data from a leading equity crowdfunding platform in Northern Europe, we explore factors that drive the number of investors and amount of funding attracted by equity crowdfunding campaigns. The results suggest that the investment decision criteria traditionally used by VCs or business angels are not of prime importance for success in equity crowdfunding. Instead, success is related to pre-selected crowdfunding campaign characteristics and the utilization of private and public networks. The findings are relevant for the decision making of entrepreneurs and crowdfunding platforms, as both parties benefit from campaign success.

7. Conclusions

This paper is one of the first to identify and assess the success factors of equity crowdfunding campaigns targeted mostly to unaccredited investors, or the “crowds”. We have provided suggestive evidence that the investment decision criteria of unaccredited equity crowdfunding investors are more similar to those of providers of other types of crowdfunding than to those of more traditional providers of early-stage financing. We find that the criteria typically used by angel or VC investors are not relevant for equity crowdfunding investors, whose investment decisions depend rather on easily observable features of crowdfunding campaigns, network utilization, and understandability of the target's products. Campaign success is associated with several campaign characteristics, the most important of which include early funding collected from private networks, social media networks, and the size of the minimum allowed investment. In addition, success drivers related to the number of investors include the funding target, campaign duration, the provision of financial information in the pitch, and a B2C orientation of the company's offering. Conversely, a thorough assessment of the company in terms of team, markets, concept, scalability, stage, and deal terms do not seem to predict success in equity crowdfunding. Our overall conclusion is in line with a speculation made by Frydrych et al. [20,21]. They note that emotional and social criteria may be more important to equity crowdfunders than financials. The observation leading them to this speculation is that the contracts prevalent in equity crowdfunding are typically not very attractive from the perspective of financial investors, with long-term durations and without dividends or voting rights.