The new investment landscape: Equity crowdfunding

Equity crowdfunding has emerged as a new landscape for financing ideas and innovations. While a number of countries has come a long way and developed equity crowdfunding platforms, a number of countries is taking it more slowly. This paper reviews how equity crowdfunding platforms function, the regulatory approaches around the world and academic contributions on signaling, success factors and social financing at equity crowdfunding platforms. The review suggests that further research may dive deeper into the socio-economic significance of equity crowdfunding and whether equity crowdfunding complements or substitutes traditional equity financing. Research contributions on the dynamics of equity crowdfunding in different geographical regions, motivations of funders, matching of funders and entrepreneurs, effects of regulations and evolution of potential campaign success factors are very critical for the development of the field. Despite debates about risks, equity crowdfunding seems to be a promising venue for financing entrepreneurs, democratizing demand and supply side of investments and contributing to economic growth.