University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School Announces 18-Month Crowdfunding Research Study that Will Explore How and Why Investors Decided to Invest in Successful Equity Crowdfunding Campaigns

 

Kauffman Foundation and Nesta Grants, Nir Vulkan, Associate Professor of Business Economics at Saïd Business School, funding explore the business of successful equity crowdfunding

By Robert Hoskins

Oxford, United Kingdom – The equity crowdfunding market is worth over £50 million a year in the UK, doubling in size last year as an increasing number of individuals look for an alternative place to invest their capital. Despite its size however, there is very little research into market dynamics, the success of campaigns to attract funding and the associated risks.

Seedrs makes it simple to buy into the businesses you believe in and share in their success

Nir Vulkan, Associate Professor of Business Economics at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, has been granted funding from the Kauffman Foundation and Nesta to explore the business of equity crowdfunding. Working with Thomas Åstebro from HEC Paris, the 18 month project will explore the criteria for success for crowdfunders and how investors make decisions on what projects to back.

“We are looking to find out how investors react when presented with different information about an investment,” said Nir Vulkan. “Do they respond more strongly to information about the founding team, to company milestones, existing investors, or previous sales made? We will be able to understand what generates success and what leads to failure, and this will have important implications for companies looking for investment of money and community expertise. More broadly our findings will be of great importance for regulators and governments both in the UK and internationally looking at the benefits and risks associated with the crowdfunding sector.”

The study is being conducted on Seedrs, one of Europe’s leading equity crowdfunding platforms. Seedrs matches investors with businesses seeking capital, conduct due diligence on the businesses, executes the investment transactions and acts as nominee on behalf of investors to protect their rights.

Seedrs was founded by Oxford MBA alumni Jeff Lynn and Carlos Silva, who worked on the idea for the company as part of their Entrepreneurship Project at Oxford Saïd, mentored by Vulkan, before it was launched in July 2012. On average, over £2 million is invested through Seedrs per month, and in 2013 it became the first crowdfunding platform for equity investments to allow cross-border fundraising rounds across the EU. Seedrs has made over 2.5 years of historical data, on an anonymized basis, available to Vulkan and Åstebro for the project.

Jeff Lynn, CEO and co-founder of Seedrs, said, “It’s a great honor to work with my former Oxford tutor, Nir Vulkan, along with Thomas Åstebro on this project. Equity crowdfunding is only in its infancy, and I expect their research to prove highly valuable for practitioners and observers alike as the space continues to grow rapidly in coming years.”

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Leading Crowdfunding Research Industry Analyst Firm Forecasts $34.4 Billion Global Industry Growth in 2015

Massolution crowdfunding research reports that crowdfunding portals raised $16.2 billion in 2014, a 167% increase over the $6.1 billion raised in 2013

 By Robert Hoskins

Los Angeles, California – Crowdfunding is accelerating at an unprecedented rate and impacting government policy, informing enterprise innovation, and changing the role of financial institutions around the world. Massolution, the leading research firm in world that specializes in reporting on the growing crowdfunding industry, released its annual 2015CF – Crowdfunding Industry Report. 

2015 Crowdfunding Industry Report Covering the United States, Europe, Asia, South America, Oceania and Africa

After collecting data on 1,250 active crowdfunding platforms (CFPs) worldwide and undertaking significant further research, the results reveal that CFPs raised $16.2 billion in 2014, a 167% increase over the $6.1 billion raised in 2013.

North America still accounts for the largest market but 2014 saw Asia overtake Europe, by a small margin. With exponential growth in Asia, Massolution forecasts this lead will increase significantly in 2015 with the delta between Asia and Europe increasing to over $4 Billion.

The report predicts that Europe’s 20.1% of market share in 2014 will decline slightly in 2015 when Europe will account for 18.8% of the worldwide market.

“In April 2013 we predicted that total crowdfunding volume by the end of 2013 would nearly double from 2012’s $2.7 billion but in fact the market reached $6.1 billion, largely due to faster growth than anticipated in Asia. Acceleration continued in 2014 achieving an impressive $16.2 billion in funding volume and we are forecasting that worldwide crowdfunding volumes will more than double again in 2015, to reach $34.4,” said Carl Esposti, Massolution’s CEO.  “Surprises materializing from this year’s research included GoFundMe topping Kickstarter as the largest donation/reward based CFP and astounding growth in the P2P lending market in Asia, stemming largely from the Chinese market. Further, the top 5 CFPs in North America increased wallet share during the period 2011-14 while in Europe the top 5 lost 30% of their market share, indicating that the markets in North America and Europe are shaping up very differently.”

Growth Rates By Region in 2014
North America retained its market lead in 2014 but Asia topped Europe to become the second largest region by funding volume.

• North America: crowdfunding volumes grew 145% to $9.46 billion
• Asia: crowdfunding volumes grew 320% to $3.4 billion
• Europe: crowdfunding volumes grew 141% to $3.26 billion
• South America, Oceania and Africa grew 167%, 59% and 101%, respectively

Growth Rates By Models in 2014
The growth in funding volumes continued to be primarily driven by lending-based crowdfunding, but significant annual growth in equity-based crowdfunding and increased adoption of newer hybrid and royalty-based models indicates that the allocation of funding volume across different models will be more highly distributed over the coming years.

• Lending-based crowdfunding grew 223% to $11.08 billion
• Equity-based crowdfunding grew 182% to $1.1 billion
• Hybrid-based crowdfunding grew 290% to $487 million
• Royalty-based crowdfunding grew 336% to $273 million
• Donation- and Reward-based crowdfunding grew 45% and 84% respectively

Most Active Categories in 2014
Crowdfunding’s popularity as a way to fund creative, philanthropic, and social endeavors still prevails but crowdfunding’s application for entrepreneurial ventures began to gain significant traction over the last few years. Business and Entrepreneurship had become the lead category by 2012 at 27.4% of total crowdfunding volume and in 2014 had increased in importance, accounting for over 40% of worldwide funding volume. In 2014, the lead categories share of funding volume was:

• Business & Entrepreneurship at 41.3% / $6.7bn
• Social Causes 18.9% / $3.06bn
• Films & Performing Arts 12.13% / $1.97bn
• Real Estate 6.25% / $1.01bn
• Music and Recording Arts 4.54%/ $736m

Further insights in the 2015 Crowdfunding Research Report include:

• Historical comparison of crowdfunding’s growth 2011 through 2014
• Breakdown of Regional funding volume by model and model by region
• Top 11 performing crowdfunding categories
• Average deal size for each crowdfunding model
• Crowdfunding outlook trends: 15 major developments
• CFP leaderboards worldwide, by region and by model
• Growth in CFP numbers and worldwide distribution
• Market predictions for 2015 by region and model

Research Methodology
The 2015 – Crowdfunding Industry Report is a research report that provides a unique and in-depth analysis of crowdfunding market size, composition, trends and composition. The Crowdfunding Industry Survey, to which Massolution received 463 high-quality responses, was conducted during late 2014 and early 2015 and resulted in the most comprehensive data collection on the worldwide crowdfunding market to date. Massolution has conducted significant follow-up research via other reliable channels to complete the profiling of the global crowdfunding industry.

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