Crowdfunding that is the combination word of crowdsourcing and funding makes people can start a business easily. Legislating JOBS act in US played a major role in removing restricted barriers of crowdfunding on public offerings of fence and private funds for small business. The growth speed of crowdfunding takes some beating. Through Kickstarter that is a popular crowdfunding platform and being considered the typical case of crowdfunding, 480 million dollars and more than half a billion dollars were invested in about 19 thousand and 22 projects for 2013 and 2014 respectively. But in spite of the rapid growth, the successful rate of projects at large is decreasing because of imprudent project launching. People just imagine a success story of some triumphant projects without any kind of preparedness when they launch a project. Up to now most of papers researched based on Kickstarter platform because it is the biggest crowdfunding site. But there is no research paper studying with the entire data yet. So, we gathered all the project's main pages in Kickstarter that are finished whether a project is funded or not from its launched date on 2009 to September, 2014. And we also collected all users' profile pages including initiators and backers. The goal of this research project is to analyze evolution of projects and users, investigate techniques and predict successfully funded projects and expected pledged funding levels, and providing intelligent search and discovery based on time series patterns of projects. To successfully achieve the goal, we propose to analyze all projects and users in Kickstarter toward understanding evolution of them over time and thus develop statistical models to automatically predict successfully funded projects and expected funding level. We used as many features as possible such as features being obtainable from text (project main, reward and biography description). Our result will be very helpful for people especially a person preparing a crowdfunding project to fulfill a dream.

This dissertation thesis deals with crowdfunding campaigns in terms of their structure and important elements of successful crowdfunding projects. The main aim of this thesis is to create a set of recommendations for the creation of successful crowdfunding projects. In order to achieve this task, the statistical method of binary logistic regression analysis is used to determine the effect of the utilization of the introductory video, the number of updates during the duration of the project, the number of imagines, the number of words in the project description, the duration of the project and the project category on the probability of success of the project. The first part of this thesis is composed of the description of different concepts of crowdfunding including their historical context, the crowdfunding business models and the project typology, chosen platforms and the principals of their operation, chosen successful campaigns and their structure. In the analytical part I deal with the impact of the above mentioned variables on the probability of success.

Denna kvalitativa studie behandlar ämnet Internetbaserad crowdfunding, enfinansieringsmetod där ett stort antal människor ger en liten summa pengar vardera till ettprojekt via en crowdfundingplattform på Internet. Studiens fokus är engagemang: vad somskapar engagemang för crowdfunding och vad som kan stärka engagemanget. Studienundersöker också om enbart kommunikation via Internet är tillräckligt för att skapa stortengagemang för crowdfunding. Syftet med studien är att bidra till kunskapsutvecklingen inomforskningsområdet crowdfunding så att skapare av crowdfundingkampanjer, i utvecklandet avsina kampanjer, kan öka engagemanget hos de personer som stöttar eller funderar på att stöttaen crowdfundingkampanj. De problemformuleringar som ska bidra till att nå upp till syftet ärföljande: varför engagerar sig människor i crowdfunding? Hur kan interaktionen mellanstöttare och kampanjskapare förbättras? Hur kan ansikte-mot-ansikte-kommunikation, genomevent, öka engagemanget för crowdfundingkampanjer? För att besvara studiensproblemformuleringar och därmed nå upp till syftet genomfördes semistrukturerade intervjuermed sju personer som stöttat crowdfundingkampanjer. Resultatet av undersökningen visar attdet finns flera motiv till varför människor engagerar sig i crowdfundingkampanjer. De motivsom representerades av flest respondenter var att hjälpa en vän och viljan att ett projekt skafinnas. Andra motiv som delades av flera respondenter var att stötta kampanjer där förtroendeoch tillit finns till kampanjskaparna, för att få belöningar för sitt engagemang, för att bli en delav gemenskapen och för att idén med crowdfunding gillas. Undersökningens resultat visaräven tre förbättringsmöjligheter i interaktionen mellan kampanjskapare och stöttare: 1) mervarierande statusuppdateringar på kampanjsidan på crowdfundingplattformen med fokus påannat än enbart det finansiella, 2) mer uppdateringar även efter kampanjens slut och 3) attkampanjskapare bör visa upp sina projekt i en livestream. Studiens resultat visar också attansikte-mot-ansikte-kommunikation, genom event, kan öka engagemanget förcrowdfundingkampanjer. Detta då stöttare får möta personerna bakomcrowdfundingkampanjen samt får se resultatet av kampanjen de stöttat på riktigt, inte enbartvia Internet. I studiens anges hur skapare av crowdfundingkampanjer praktiskt kan tillämpadenna studies resultat för att öka engagemanget hos stöttare samt potentiella stöttare. / This qualitative study addresses Internet-based crowdfunding, which is a financing methodwhere a large number of people give small amounts of money to a project via a crowdfundingplatform on the Internet. The focus of the study is engagement: what creates engagement incrowdfunding and what can increase the engagement. The study also examines ifcommunication only via the Internet is enough to create great engagement. The purpose of thestudy is to contribute to the knowledge development in the research area of crowdfunding. Bydoing that, it will also increase the knowledge among creators of crowdfunding campaignsand enable them to increase the engagement among backers and potential backers in thedevelopment of their campaigns. The research questions that will help achieve the purpose ofthe study are: why do people engage in crowdfunding? How can the interaction betweenbacker and creator of campaigns improve? How can face-to-face communication, throughevents, increase engagement in crowdfunding campaigns? To address these questions andachieve the purpose seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with people who hadbacked crowdfunding campaigns. The result of the study shows that there are differentmotives to why people engage in crowdfunding campaigns. The motives that was mostrepresented by the respondents was in order to help a friend and wanting to realize a certainproject. Other motives that were represented by several respondents were to back campaignsbecause they had confidence and trust in the creators of the campaigns, to receive rewards fortheir engagement, be a part of the community and to back a campaign because they like theidea of crowdfunding. The result of the study also shows three improvement possibilities inthe interaction between creator of the campaigns and the backers: 1) more dynamic updates onthe crowdfunding platform with focus on other than the financial aspect, 2) more updates afterthe end of the campaign and 3) that creators of the campaigns could show their projects in alivestream. The result of the study also shows that face-to-face communication, throughevents, can increase the engagement in crowdfunding campaigns. This is because backers canmeet the persons behind the crowdfunding campaign and see the result of the campaign in reallife and not just via Internet. How creators of crowdfunding campaigns can use the result ofthis study is indicated in the study. The language of the study is Swedish.

群眾募資成為近年廣被討論和使用的新興籌資方式，線上募資平台普遍被認為具提供資金、市場驗證及行銷曝光的功能，學術圈和實務界有許多如何成功募資的研究，但卻鮮少討論群眾募資帶來的影響與挑戰，因此本研究欲探討從產品開發到出貨，群眾募資在完整的專案歷程中代表的意涵，供未來提案者參考。 本研究採個案研究法，選擇「Stair-Rover八輪滑板」、「Voltset智能電表」、「ATOM 3D印表機」和「器研所New Urban Bike」做為研究個案。首先，了解提案者募資動機以及了解募資平台扮演的角色；其次，以新產品開發的觀點分析個案，討論群眾募資如何影響募資專案；最後，從專案管理的角度討論群眾募資帶給提案者什麼正面效益，以及需留意的風險。 研究結果發現，資金不一定是提案者使用群眾募資的主要動機，市場驗證及行銷曝光的功能仍為提案者所看重。除此之外，也有提案者將募資平台視為產品通路、或是建立社群的管道，群眾募資的意義與團隊所欠缺的資源有關，因而對其產生不同的定義。 此外，群眾募資改變了一般循序式的新產品開發流程，不同階段可能同時發生，且加速市場的反應，但並沒有因群眾募資而省略任一開發流程，這樣的改變更加考驗提案者同時處理技術端和市場端的能力。 最後，從專案管理看群眾募資，「成本」可視為產品發展時所需的經費、「時間」則是指募資結束後產品商品化的速度、「品質」代表社群互動和客戶服務。提案者必須謹慎拿捏，找到三者的平衡，包括建立群眾參與感、準時出貨和產品與專案內容描述一致，達到最終「贊助者滿意」，才算是一個成功的募資專案。

The current thesis explores a relatively new academic topic – equity-based crowdfunding. The purpose is to examine which quality signals, used by the entrepreneurs in their fundraising process, tend to increase the probability of closing an equity-based crowdfunding campaign successfully. The findings in this thesis serve as an additional contribution to a relatively unexplored topic of signaling in equity crowdfunding. Besides a theoretical contribution, it provides practical insights that may help entrepreneurs and crowdfunding platforms to increase the probability of successful campaign closure. The data for this study was collected from an international crowdfunding platform Fundedbyme.com. The explanatory variables, both continuous and binary, were divided into several thematic groups, while the dependent variable was defined by either successful or unsuccessful outcome of the campaign. The effect of the explanatory variables on the outcome of the campaign was tested with the help of the logistic regression (logit) model. The results showed that crowd investors in the network of Fundedbyme.com use particular quality signals to distinguish between the projects, in fact, both financial signals and more qualitative signals. Increases in the financial signals such as funding goal and price per share affect the probability of success negatively, while the presence of the qualitative signals (received awards and the indication of the non-executive board) contribute to a higher probability of success. Secondly, the results imply some similarities between the selecting mechanism in traditional funding, reward-based and the equity-based crowdfunding. As a third point, this research shows that the presence of a specific selecting mechanism in crowdfunding helps to some extent decrease the information asymmetry and adverse selection in the market of crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding challenges century long boundaries between the public, the industry andinnovation. In that respect the phenomenon holds the potential to decentralize and democratizethe way ventures are financed and realized. Crowdfunding has seen a lot of exitingdevelopments during the last few years, partly because of new crowdfunding platformsemerging on the internet, and partly because of new ground-breaking technology being used forfunding purposes. Meanwhile research has not quite catched up with the recent developments ofdifferent models for crowdfunding. This study’s aim is therefor to give an comprehensiveoverview of the different models of crowdfunding that are being utilized by crowdfundingplatforms on the internet today. A deductive content analysis has been made of 67 currentcrowdfunding platforms. The platforms have been analysed in order to determine what model ofcrowdfunding they utilize. The result has, apart from partly confirming prior studies, alsoproduced new exiting findings on what mechanisms constitute some of the crowdfundingmodels we see today. A new taxonomy of crowdfunding models is discussed and proposed. Theconclusion is that the need for a updated taxonomy, like the one this study provides, was wellneeded in order to understand the field. One important finding is that blockchain technology hasproduced a new form of crowdfunding through cryptocurrency: Initial coin offering. Thatparticular area will likely develop and continue to decentralize and democratise the economicalhuman interaction when it comes to financing.