Giving Neurotic Entrepreneurs Money to Save the World? An Analysis of U.S. Equity Crowdfunding Projects

A key challenge faced by entrepreneurs is financing the venture for which equity crowdfunding presents an alternative with relatively low entry barriers. While it has recently been shown that perceived personality traits of the entrepreneur can impact crowdfunding success, so far, little is known about which perceived personality traits drive funding success in the context of sustainable ventures, which this study explores. To answer this question, through the lens of asymmetric information, we use quantitative regression analysis of U.S.-based equity crowdfunding projects. Overall, our preliminary results suggest an interaction between sustainability and the negatively perceived personality trait (neuroticism) on equity crowdfunding funding success. Further, we replicate recent findings on the role of negatively perceived personality traits in crowdfunding. This study contributes to our knowledge of the role of the entrepreneur\u27s perceived personality and communication in successfully financing sustainable ventures via equity crowdfunding, bringing us closer to co-creating sustainable digital futures

It\u27s all in the (Sub-)title? Expanding Signal Evaluation in Crowdfunding Research

Research on crowdfunding success that incorporates CATA (computer-aided text analysis) is quickly advancing to the big leagues (e.g., Parhankangas and Renko, 2017; Anglin et al., 2018; Moss et al., 2018) and is often theoretically based on information asymmetry, social capital, signaling or a combination thereof. Yet, current papers that explore crowdfunding success criteria fail to take advantage of the full breadth of signals available and only very few such papers examine technology projects. In this paper, we compare and contrast the strength of the entrepreneur\u27s textual success signals to project backers within this category. Based on a random sample of 1,049 technology projects collected from Kickstarter, we evaluate textual information not only from project titles and descriptions but also from video subtitles. We find that incorporating subtitle information increases the variance explained by the respective models and therefore their predictive capability for funding success. By expanding the information landscape, our work advances the field and paves the way for more fine-grained studies of success signals in crowdfunding and therefore for an improved understanding of investor decision-making in the crowd

Implicit Personality and Big Five Traits in Equity Crowdfunding

Implicit personality representations play a crucial role in shaping how investors perceive entrepreneurs and subsequently invest in their projects. We investigate the relationship between perceived Big Five personality signals and funding success utilizing a sample of 709 US-based equity crowdfunding campaigns. We find that higher conscientiousness, lower neuroticism, extraversion, and openness serve as funding success signals, significantly affecting both the funding level and number of investors attracted. This study extends the literature on the relationship between perceived personality signals and entrepreneurial finance by demonstrating the context-dependence of personality signals. The results fuel arguments that equity crowdfunding gears towards classical venture financing and is less comparable to reward-based crowdfunding

Institutional Legitimacy and New Market Emergence: the Case of Bitcoin Trading

Research has shown that cognitive, normative, and regulative legitimacy are important for new market emergence. Little known, however, are the conditions and dynamics under which these three forms of legitimacy interact over time and in different institutional settings. In this study, we investigate the emergence and development of the new market for cryptocurrencies (i.e., Bitcoin) using a comprehensive dataset on trading in 49 countries between 2010 and 2020. Our study reveals that all three forms of legitimacy drive Bitcoin trading. Surprisingly, we also found increases in trading volume when Bitcoin was declared illegal and when normative support preceded, rather than followed, regulative legitimacy. Our results shed light on the relationship between cognitive, normative, and regulative legitimacy and their interactions in the emergence and development of a new contested market over time

The Star Citizen Phenomenon & the “Ultimate Dream Management” Technique in Crowdfunding

Developing and keeping a community motivated is critical for success, particularly in self-hosted crowdfunding. Existing research has identified social capital as an important driver of such endeavors. However, the process of how social capital can be developed, managed, and targeted towards a common goal in digital settings is mostly unknown. Applying social exchange theory and a mixed-methods approach, we leverage a large dataset of one of the world’s most-funded crowdfunding projects – Star Citizen – to zoom in on the process of social capital development as a success factor. We depict how repeated social exchange and reciprocity norms foster the emergence of a cohesive and supportive community from a crowd of strangers. Moreover, we explain how this is used by Start Citizen within five themes of a novel and IS-enabled managerial technique focusing on dreams. Our insights generalize to contexts beyond crowdfunding that require the engagement of crowds for joint value creation

Circular Economy Initiatives: Strategic Implications, Resource Management, and Entrepreneurial Innovation in a Brazilian Craft Beer Ecosystem during the COVID Era

A new brewery is founded in Brazil every two days. Yet with climate change, drinking water is increasingly scarce. Previous studies have begun exploring the brewing industry, but an examination of circular economy initiatives in Latin America is lacking, particularly during the COVID era. This study analyzes strategic implications of circular economy initiatives, together with their role in the coevolution of the craft beer sociotechnical system in Brazil from a resource perspective during the COVID pandemic. Using a qualitative methodology based on analytic induction, 11 in-depth semi-structured interviews were carried out with key actors from the craft beer sociotechnical system in Guarapuava. For the content analysis, we triangulated the interviews with an analysis of 74 related documents. We found evidence of circular economy practices and sociotechnical transitions with the simultaneous coevolution of the system actors. Increasing rejection of the linear take–make–waste economy was observed as subject organizations largely adopted a regenerative model reducing operational waste. Hence, entrepreneurial innovation was apparently crucial for resource allocation during the COVID era. This work contributes to further understanding resource configurations in the circular economy, with practical implications for integrating sustainability into strategy, business models, and production