Entrepreneurship, gender and entrepreneurial fundraising through crowdfunding

Resumen

This doctoral dissertation, entitled “Entrepreneurship, gender and entrepreneurial fundraising through crowdfunding”, addresses the overall objective of understanding in greater depth the process of business creation and fundraising by the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This objective is articulated, from a theoretical and practical angle, through three layers of analysis: first, the environment and its relationship with business creation; second, the personal characteristics and social circumstances of entrepreneurs and their influence on business creation; and third, the process of information disclosure in crowdfunding campaigns and fundraising success. The general objective is broken down into five specific objectives that seek to further study (i) the role of the easiness to access credit, as an institutional factor, in the creation of new businesses, both in advanced and developing socioeconomic environments; (ii) the gender dimension in the personal characteristics and circumstances of women entrepreneurs when creating new businesses out of necessity; (iii) the process of information disclosure in reward-based crowdfunding to signal the quality of an entrepreneurial project seeking funding, thus reducing existing information asymmetries between entrepreneurs and potential backers and achieving overfunding; (iv) the process of information disclosure on an anchor investor’s endorsement in syndicated equity crowdfunding, as an agent with a high financial and reputational commitment, and the awakening of rational herding behavior, an imitation process based on observational learning, with which to achieve crowdfunding success and overfunding in syndicated crowdfunding campaigns; and (v) the extent to which a large investment can trigger rational herding behavior and ensure the success of an equity crowdfunding campaign, estimating the specific impact of this investment on the volume of subsequent investments.