We investigate gender-specific local biases among investors in the German equity crowdfunding market. Based on data from the crowdfunding platform Companisto, we find that domestic investors favour ventures that are geographically closer to their own place of residence and that they are biased...

One significant challenge for the founders of a new company is obtaining the funding that will be required to bring the company’s initial product or service to the marketplace. At the very beginning the founder will typically be seeking a relatively modest amount of initial capital, so-called...

We quantify financial returns to backers in reward-based crowdfunding projects on Kickstarter and show that such investments provide profitable opportunities in addition to non-monetary benefits. The average unconditional annualized return is 11.5% and the average return on successful projects...

The present study investigates whether local bias exists in individual investments in equity crowdfunding and, if it does exist, whether intangible distance, measured by disparity in regional socioeconomic development, plays a part in forming these distance-biased investment decisions. Using...

In this present paper, we investigate gender-related differences in the survival of ventures financed through equity crowdfunding. Based on a study of 220 enterprises that pursued equity crowdfunding in Germany between January 2011 and November 2017, we find that the presence of females in the...

Initial coin offerings (ICO) rely on crypto expert ratings to overcome asymmetric information in fundraising, though experts can provide optimistic ratings to promote ICO fundraising due to their opportunities to act as advisors in subsequent ICOs. Using ratings on ICOBench.com, we find that...

Start-up subsidies play an important role in supporting start-up innovation and performance. However, what characteristics help and hinder start-ups to seek start-up subsidies remains unclear. We study whether and how founder personality, as captured by the big five personality traits and...

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Private Equity is a major reference work which covers more than 250 topics related to private markets, entrepreneurial finance, and alternative investments. It takes an interdisciplinary perspective and brings together contributions from the fields of finance,...