Entrepreneurs are increasingly choosing to enter digital crowdfunding platforms as one of the first steps toward establishing new ventures. In this paper, I study how that decision is affected by the presence of high-performance outliers—that is prior projects that raised substantial amounts of capital. I look at the early period of rewards-based crowdfunding, where there were two predominant platforms, Kickstarter and Indiegogo. I find that regardless of which platform an outlier appears on, subsequent entry is relatively higher on Indiegogo. This relative increase is stronger for low-quality entrepreneurs. The results suggest that the impact of high-performance outliers depends on the differentiated features of the two platforms. I discuss implications for understanding entrepreneurial entry and crowdfunding platform competition and governance
