Organizational Barriers and Bridges to Crowd Openness in Equity Crowdfunding

Entrepreneurs can leverage investor networks generated in the course of equity-based crowdfunding campaigns to obtain extra financial resources. While much is known about how the resources that improve venture success are configured, less attention has been paid to the organisational challenges involved in their utilisation and how to overcome them. These challenges represent an impediment to crowd openness for new ventures. Through an in-depth qualitative study of 60 European equity crowdfunded ventures, we identify the organisational barriers—resource gap, trust gap and information gap—to crowd openness. We also identify specific bridges—coordination technology, crowd stratification, mapping investors’ expertise and network and direct and proactive communication—that reduce these barriers and facilitate engagement with external actors.