First Evidence on Crowd Investing in Germany

Abstract

Crowd investing has recently become an interesting possibility for young entrepreneurs to finance the start-up of new firms. This paper analyses the impact of education and gender of young entrepreneurs who finance their start-ups using a crowd investing platform. We analyse the crowd investing projects financed through the Companisto and Seedmatch platforms, which are the main crowd investing platforms in Germany. The study confirms that the majority of founders of crowd investing start-ups completed a university education. However, we find a surprisingly low-rate of female founders in crowd investing, although the gender structure do not influence the amount of crowd investing. Thus, the crowd investing does not facilitate the access to finance for new groups of entrepreneurs, but it rather facilitates the financing conditions for founders, who could also obtain a credit from the bank.