Abstract

Crowdfunding allows the crowd to donate small amounts of money to entrepreneurs through online platforms. Comparing with traditional financial institutions, this new method facilitates the financing process through direct and easy online contact between initiators and investors. Based on the data obtained from Kickstarter, the largest crowdfunding platform, I investigated 27,117 crowdfunding projects from Jan 1st 2015 to Jun 30th 2015, and I find that a crowd funding campaign with a realistic funding goal, a suitable funding period, and more updates and interactions with investors, is much likely to be successfully funded. In addition, the different types of founders are very influential in crowdfunding outcomes. For example, females tend to collect funds more successfully than males do. Founders in the form of teams, companies or a specific project are also beneficial to funding outcomes.