Crowdfunding: The New Frontier for Financing Entrepreneurship?

Abstract

This paper aims to take stock of the extant knowledge on an emerging practice in the entrepreneurial finance landscape: crowdfunding, which seems to play an increasing important role for the seed financing of entrepreneurial projects. We provide a systematization of what it is known on this theme, which can be useful to scholars, practitioners, and policymakers interested in the phenomenon from different angles.

Adopting a phenomenon-based approach, which is deemed to be appropriate when investigating new and rather unexplored phenomena, we first review the emergent literature on the theme to single out the aspects that so far have attracted the bulk of scholarly interest. Then, we compare the crowdfunding with other forms of entrepreneurial finance. Finally, we offer a first survey on Italian crowdfunding platforms.

Keywords: Crowdfunding, Internet, Innovation financing, Venture capital

JEL Classification: G32, G32