Equity crowdfunding: Harnessing the power of the crowd

Equity crowdfunding has established as an important alternative for financing startup ventures. Through online crowdfunding platforms, capital seeking entrepreneurs present their businesses to collect capital from a larger number of individuals (“the crowd”), where each of individual contributes with a relatively small amount of money. In return, these individuals gain an equity share in the business. For that reason, this form of crowdfunding is often referred to as “crowdinvesting”.