Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Date: 31-01-2018
Name: Jesper Stok
Student number: 10666133
Supervisor: Drs. P.V. Trietsch
Study program: Economics and Finance
Track: Finance
Number of credits thesis: 12
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Statement of Originality
This document is written by Jesper Stok who declares to take full responsibility for the
contents of this document. I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is
original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have
been used in creating it. The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the
supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
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Abstract
This paper analyses the factors that contribute to a successful lending-based crowdfunding
campaign in The Netherlands. Data from 1398 projects from Collin Crowdfund was
analysed and a negative relation between the Euro amount of the funding goal and the
success of a lending-based crowdfunding campaign was found. The funding goal is the
target for the particular campaign. Also a positive relation between the Dun & Bradstreet
credit score and success was found. Since firms care about the speed at which the funds are
collected, a second regression shows the factors that influence the duration of the campaign.
The same two variables were found to have a significant effect on the duration of the
campaign.
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Table of content
1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 5
1.1 Introduction and problem definition ............................................................................. 5
1.2 Central question ............................................................................................................ 5
1.3 Existing literature .......................................................................................................... 5
1.4 Sub questions ................................................................................................................ 6
1.5 Data ............................................................................................................................... 6
1.6 Method .......................................................................................................................... 6
1.7 Structure ........................................................................................................................ 6
2. Literature review ................................................................................................................. 7
2.1 Why firms choose crowdfunding to finance their business........................................... 7
2.2 What forms of crowdfunding exist................................................................................ 8
2.3 What is success of a crowdfunding campaign............................................................... 8
2.4 The factors that lead to a successful crowdfunding campaign ...................................... 9
2.4.1 Funding goal........................................................................................................... 9
2.4.2 Time to maturity ................................................................................................... 10
2.4.3 Social media ......................................................................................................... 10
2.4.4 Campaign video ................................................................................................... 10
2.4.5 Number of reward levels ...................................................................................... 11
2.4.6 Platform quality .................................................................................................... 11
3 Dataset description ............................................................................................................. 12
4. Results ............................................................................................................................... 13
4.1 Correlations ................................................................................................................. 13
4.2 Omitted variables ........................................................................................................ 13
4.3 Regression analysis ..................................................................................................... 13
5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 15
6. Limitations and recommendations .................................................................................... 16
Bibliography.......................................................................................................................... 17
Appendix ............................................................................................................................... 19
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1. Introduction
5
1.4 Sub questions
To form an answer to the central question, the following sub questions should be answered:
- Why do firms choose crowdfunding as the most appropriate form of financing?
- What forms of crowdfunding exist?
- How can the success of a crowdfunding campaign be measured?
- What are factors that lead to a successful crowdfunding campaign?
1.5 Data
Data from 1398 loan requests of Collin Crowdfund will be analysed of which 430 are
successfully funded. They are a Dutch based platform providing lending-based
crowdfunding with a total investment of just over €89 million. Their success rate is 99.4%
providing an average of 7.55% interest to investors (Collin Crowdfund, 2017). The data will
be analysed on success, duration, funding goal, time to maturity of the investment, interest
rate, credit score and Dun & Bradstreet credit score. The data consists of projects that
finished between May 2014 till November 2017.
Other factors may influence success significantly. Social aspects like the number of
Facebook friends the owner of the business has, are found to have a significant effect on
success (Calic & Mosakowski, 2016). This social aspect will not be included in this research
because the database used is not provided with private information of the firms.
1.6 Method
The dataset will be used to determine the variables that influence success of a lending-based
crowdfunding campaign. To come to the desired results, a logistic regression analysis will
be performed using success as dependent variable and funding goal and Dun & Bradstreet
credit score as independent variables. Thereafter a second regression shows the factors that
influence the duration of the campaign using duration as dependent variable and funding
goal, time to maturity of the investment, interest rate, credit score and Dun & Bradstreet
credit score as independent variables.
1.7 Structure
In section 2.1 is explained why firms choose crowdfunding to finance their business. In 2.2
all forms of crowdfunding are mentioned. Chapter 2.3 explains when a crowdfunding
campaign is considered successful and 2.4 addresses all factors that lead to a successful
crowdfunding campaign. Chapter 3 is about data and explains all variables used in the
regression. Using the regression results of chapter 4 combined with existing literature forms
a conclusion in section 5. Lastly in section 6 are some limitations and recommendations
discussed.
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2. Literature review
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2.2 What forms of crowdfunding exist
Four forms of crowdfunding exist: donation, reward-based, equity and lending-based
crowdfunding. Donation crowdfunding means that an investor is not expecting a return for
his investment (Mollick, 2014). Money is donated in mostly small amounts for charity
purpose. This is the cheapest way of financing because hardly no costs are incurred for the
firm (Belleflame et al., 2014).
Reward-based crowdfunding is a form of pre-ordering the product or service. This
form is used mostly by starting entrepreneurs providing a product or service which is
distributed to the investor at a later stadium (Calic & Mosakowski, 2016). According to
Mollick (2014), investors in reward-based crowdfunding are threaded as early consumers,
allowing them early access or receiving discount to the product. In 2014, $3.26 billion were
transferred through this form of crowdfunding worldwide (Belleflame, Omrani, & Peitz,
2015).
Equity crowdfunding involves bond-like shares of the company that is invested in
and provides dividends and gains in share price as rewards. (Ahlers et al., 2015). Rights of
ownership varies among platforms. Crowdcube offers direct ownership to investors
(Crowdcube, n.d.), Seedrs holds the shares as nominees (Seedrs, n.d.) and WeFunder is a
proxy holder who holds the voting rights (Wefunder, n.d.). This form of crowdfunding is
still small due to high levels of regulation (Mollick, 2015).
Lastly lending-based crowdfunding. This type of crowdfunding is included with
interest paid to the investor in return for their investment. The loan is paid back at maturity
as a whole, or in peaces during the holding period of the loan (Belleflame, et al, 2014).
Dutch platforms like DuurzaamInvesteren and Collin Crowdfund are lending-based. They
set entry requirements for loan requests and have a minimum investment of €500
(DuurzaanInvesteren, n.d.; Collin statistieken, n.d.). In 2016, €130 million were collected
through this form of crowdfunding in The Netherlands, corresponding to 77% of the total
amount collected (Douw & Koren, 2017). Also worldwide this is the most used form of
crowdfunding, contributing to $11.08 billion or 68.4% of the total crowdfunding volume in
2014 (Belleflame et al., 2015).
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will most certainly increase (Valencine & Jegeleviciute, 2013). Lastly potential press
attention can be beneficial to firms (Mollick, 2014). Thus, besides funding, crowdfunding
offers multiple factors that can potentially be beneficial to firms.
Crowdfunding platforms are independent profit companies that need to make a
certain profit in order to exist (Belleflame et al., 2015). The gain that crowdfunding
platforms make depends of the crowdfunding form that they offer and whether they pay out
when a campaign is not fully fulfilled within the time limit.
Donation based crowdfunding platforms are profit organisations that take a cut of
the campaign (Belleflame et al., 2015). For example GoFundMe, which collected more than
$5 billion by December 2017. Their fee in The Netherlands is 8.55% plus €0.30 per
donation. Their US fee is 2.9% plus $0.30 per investment. If the campaign is not fully
fulfilled, all collected donations will still proceed to the campaign organizer and the
platform will take its share (Gofundme, n.d.).
Equity-based crowdfunding platforms take a cut only when the funding is
completely full (Belleflame et al., 2015). For example Crowdcube, a UK based platform
charges 7.5% to 9.9%. They report a funding success rate of 60% for 2015. For the
remaining 40%, the platform will not make revenue (Crowdcube, n.d.).
Reward-based crowdfunding platforms also take a cut only when the funding is
completely full (Belleflame et al., 2015). For example Kickstarter, the biggest reward-based
platform charges 8% plus $0.20 per investment. They report a success rate of 35.9% as of
31-12-2017 out of a total of 382.020 projects (Creator Questions, n.d.).
However, lending-based crowdfunding platforms report a success rate of close to
100% (DuurzaanInvesteren, n.d.; Collin statistieken, n.d.). So they take a share out of almost
all projects that start their campaign. Fee structures differ among platforms.
The success for the investor depends on the needs and wants of the investor. If
invested in donation-based crowdfunding, an investor is not expecting a return for its
donation (Mollick, 2014). So success will be reached when its donations are being accepted
by the fund raiser. If invested in any other form of crowdfunding, the crowd can be seen as
investors who make investment decisions based on their expectations of success (Mollick,
2014). So crowdfunding success for the investor is reached when the campaign is fulfilled
and the investor receives its product, share of the firm or interest on the loan.
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terms of project quality, he used the video as an indicator for a high quality project and 86%
of the sample has a video (Mollick, 2014).
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3 Dataset description
Data from 1398 loan requests from Collin Crowdfund will be analysed of which 412 were
successfully funded. In terms of money invested, Collin Crowdfund is the biggest lending-
based crowdfunding platform in the Netherlands with a total investment of just over €89
million providing an average of 7.55% interest to investors (Collin statistieken, n.d.). The
database consists of roughly 21% of all crowdfunding campaigns organised in The
Netherlands in 2016 and 16% in 2015 (Douw & Koren, 2017; Collin statistieken, n.d.).
Dun & Bradstreet score 1-100 915 34.46 26.00 24.99 1.00 100.00
The variables used are success, duration, funding goal, time to maturity, interest
rate, credit score and Dun & Bradstreet score. Success indicates whether the loan request is
successfully funded or not. This variable is either 0, indicating that the loan request is
rejected by the platform or not fulfilled within the available time, or 1, indicating a loan
request that is fulfilled within the time available. The time available is 30 days.
The duration measures the number of days until the campaign is fulfilled. As seen in
table 1, only 431 campaigns feature a duration because the other part was rejected before the
start of the campaign.
The funding goal is the Euro goal for the particular loan request. If the funding goal
is not reached within the time available, the funds are transferred back to the investors and
the firm gets no funding.
Time to maturity is the time from the start of the loan towards the maturity of the
loan, measured in months. Interest is what investors receive in return for their investment
and usually varies with the amount of risk involved in the investment (Maier, 2016).
Two credit scores are assigned to each loan request, one internal and one from
outside. The internal credit score is created by the platform itself and the external one is
comes from Dun & Bradstreet, an independent credit rating agency. They are licensed as
leading indicator to predict company risk and to evaluate possible future liquidity problems
(Kredietbeoordeling, n.d.). Both scores indicate the potential risk included with the
investment and range between 1 and 100. A low score might indicate a liquidity problem
and therefore should lead to a higher interest to compensate for the increased risk.
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4. Results
4.1 Correlations
To ensure validity and reliability of the results, the variables should be tested on high
correlations that might lead to multicollinearity. As seen in table 3, the highest absolute
correlation is -0.55 between interest and credit score. This correlation is below 0.7, but is
still quite high and might be disrupting the reliability of the results.
Table 2: correlations
Dun &
Success Duration Funding goal Time to maturity Interest Credit score Bradstreet score
Success 1
Duration -0.01 1
Funding goal -0.10 0.12 1
Time to maturity -0.04 -0.07 0.06 1
Interest -0.09 -0.03 -0.21 -0.04 1
Credit score 0.04 -0.02 0.20 0.01 -0.55 1
Dun & Bradstreet
0.10 -0.08 0.02 0.07 -0.20 0.20 1
score
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Table 3: logistic regression output using success as dependent variable
Both the funding goal and Dun & Bradstreet score appear to have a significant effect on
predicting the success of a campaign. The funding goal is significant with 0.02 and on
average, a €100.000 increase in the funding goal decreases the chances of success with
7.15%.
Also the Dun & Bradstreet score appears to be significant with 0.00 in predicting
the success of a campaign. On a scale of 1 to 100, a 1 unit increase of this score increases
the chance of success with 8.3%.
In the next analysis the variable duration is used as dependent variable and funding
goal, time to maturity, interest, credit score and Dun & Bradstreet score are the independent
variables. Now the data consists of 430 successful projects to determine the factors that lead
to fast fulfilment of the campaign.
Unstandardized Standardized
t Sig.
Coefficients Coefficients
B Std. Error Beta
(Constant) 13.91 7.32 1.90 0.06
Funding goal 6.04 e-06 0.00 0.14 2.88 0.00
Time to maturity -0.04 0.02 -0.08 -1.69 0.09
Interest -0.91 0.81 -0.07 -1.12 0.26
Credit score -0.03 0.03 -0.06 -1.06 0.29
Dun & Bradstreet
-0.03 0.02 -0.10 -2.01 0.05
score
As seen in table 4, the funding goal appears to be the most significant variable in predicting
the amount of days a campaign needs to reach the funding goal. So increasing the funding
goal leads to a longer campaign duration. In particular, a €100.000 increase in funding goal
leads on average to a 0.6 days longer campaign duration.
Also the Dun & Bradstreet score appears to be significant with 0.05 in predicting
the duration. On a scale of 1 to 100, a 1 unit increase of this score decreases duration by
0.03 days.
The regression does not show any evidence that the interest has a significant effect
on the duration of the campaign. Although the regression output shows a negative relation
with duration, this relation is significant with 0.26. The same is found for credit score, there
is no significant relation between credit score and the duration of the campaign.
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5. Conclusion
In this research a connection between the success of crowdfunding and the lending-based
form of crowdfunding was made. To repeat, the central question was the following:
What are the factors that contribute to a successful lending-based crowdfunding campaign
in The Netherlands?
In the literature review was found that a crowdfunding campaign is successful when the
funding goal is reached within the predetermined time. The success of the firm, platform
and investor depends on the form of crowdfunding used and the terms and conditions of the
platform.
A negative relation between the funding goal in dollars and funding success was
found (Calic & Mosakowski, 2016; Mollick, 2014). Also social media was found to be
important to the success of crowdfunding campaigns. Both Calic and Mosakowski (2016)
and Mollick (2014) found a positive relation between funding success and the number of
Facebook friends the founder of the project has. Dey et al. (2017) found that campaign
videos of different project categories should apply category specific strategies for making
videos to improve success. Mollick (2014) supported this and found that not including a
video decreases success by 26%. Lastly the platforms themselves could consider several
things to improve chances of success. The speed at which the funds are collected are found
to be important to firms performing crowdfunding as well as the simplicity and transparency
(Maier, 2016). Being open about the success rate of the platform or limiting the
administrative aspects increases chances of success. Being flexible and innovative towards
investors might lead to the same result.
To form an answer to the central question, data from 1398 loan requests from May
2014 till November 2017 was analysed. A logistic regression analysis was performed and
found a negative relation between the Euro amount of the funding goal and funding success
for a lending-based crowdfunding campaign. On average, a €100.000 increase in funding
goal decreases chances of success with 7.15%. This negative relation was also found in
other research that focussed on the success of reward-based crowdfunding campaigns (Calic
& Mosakowski, 2016; Mollick, 2014). A positive relation between the Dun & Bradstreet
score and success was found. A 1 unit increase of this score increases the chance of success
with 8.3%. No research this far has shown the existence of this relation. The reason that this
relations was not yet shown is that most databases in other research contain data from
reward-based platforms where no credit scores exist.
Time to maturity, interest and credit score were not found to be statistically
significant and do not certainly contribute to success of a lending-based crowdfunding
campaign in The Netherlands.
In the literature review was found that firms care about the speed at which the funds
are collected (Maier, 2016). Therefore the second regression was used to determine the
factors that lead to fast fulfilment of a lending-based crowdfunding campaign. We found
that the funding goal is the most significant variable in predicting the amount of days a
campaign need to get fulfilled. A €100.000 increase in funding goal leads on average to a
0.6 days longer campaign. Also the Dun & Bradstreet credit score was found to be effective
in predicting the duration. On a scale of 1 to 100, a 1 unit increase of this score decreases
duration by 0.03 days.
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6. Limitations and recommendations
Although many factors were inserted in this research, some limitations are present. Other
factors like social media or the segment in which the firm operates might influence the
success of campaigns. Those were not included in the dataset. Further research is needed to
include those variables and to extend towards a more dynamic model, including all aspects
that contribute to the success of a lending-based crowdfunding campaign. Also this paper
only addresses lending-based crowdfunding and one platform. Further research should
include other forms of crowdfunding and multiple platforms as well.
Several recommendations to all parties involved with crowdfunding follow from
this research. Firstly, firms should consider what form of financing is the most appropriate
for them. Instruments like the finance decision tree can help them to find the right form of
financing. Secondly, platforms should try to insert the needs and wants of both potential
investors and firms. They should simplify the administrative aspects and they should be
transparent to satisfy firms willing to perform crowdfunding. They also should be flexible
and innovative towards investors. Including a mobile application or increasing the amount
of investment possibilities are examples they should consider. Lastly, the investor should
consider the form of crowdfunding that he or she is investing in. Returns vary among
different forms of crowdfunding and so do chances of default.
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Appendix:
Table A1:
Case Processing Summary
Unweighted Casesa N Percent
a. If weight is in effect, see classification table for the total number of cases.
Table A2:
Omnibus Tests of Model Coefficients
Chi-square df Sig.
Table A3:
Variables in the Equation
95% C.I.for EXP(B)
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