Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding [ kɹaʊdfʌndiŋ ] or rare swarm financing is a type of financing. With this method of raising money can be projects, products, implementation of business ideas and much more with equity, mostly in the form of silent partnerships, supply. A so- funded enterprise and their sequence are also referred to as an action. Your lenders are a variety of people - usually consisting of Internet users, as is called for crowdfunding mostly on the World Wide Web.

History

Term

Historically, Crowdfunding a relatively new term which is increasingly being used only in recent years. In the adjacent figure, the number of entries found in Google for the search term Crowdfunding in the years 2000 to 2010 is shown. ( The figure for 2010 is based on a linear extrapolation from the first three months of the year. ) Can clearly be seen that from 2006 greatly increases the use of the term crowdfunding. At the same time, the concept of crowdsourcing was coined by Jeff Howe. A few years later he also developed the first steps towards a definition of crowdfunding, inspired by crowdsourcing.

In the literature, four models of crowdfunding are now generally distinguished:

• Donation -Based Crowdfunding
• Reward -Based Crowdfunding
• Lending -Based Crowdfunding
• Equity -Based Crowdfunding ( called in German also Crowd Investing )

English speaking room

In October 2003, the musician and producer Brian Camelio launched the Internet platform Artistshare in response to developments in the robbery and copying the efforts of the music industry for a digital rights management. The website made ​​it possible for musicians to get the money for the production of an album before it was released. As Sella band started in Europe in August 2006, to reach 50,000 U.S. dollars for musicians and bands with the help of so-called believers to produce an album was. On 2 November 2006, the band Nemesea had together 528 supporters and was able to record their album "In Control". In the past four years there other 50 bands (September 2010) have made ​​it into the recording studio at Sella band.

Indiegogo was founded in 2008. 2009, the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.com was founded in the United States. More than 10,000 projects have been funded over here (as of January 2012) - found their place here ostensibly in the field of art and culture, but also food producers, fashion designers and inventors. A share of profits there is not at Kickstarter. The initiators usually try to convince you with a video of yourself or the project. Following the same model have gone online with Indiegogo and RocketHub other crowdfunding platforms.

Early 2010, with Public Enemy took advantage of an already established band such a crowdfunding platform to make their next album finance together with fans and supporters. The band describes itself on its website: ". In our six months on Sella band, we are proud to have broken ground into a new paradigm of music financing and to have learned so much about the fan funding model with our fans" stood in October 2010 the project at 91 % of $ 75,000. The real target of U.S. $ 250,000 was revised downwards, as the platform in February 2010, filed for bankruptcy. Since the insolvency of the former Dutch company will continue as a limited company with its headquarters in Munich.

In June 2010, the software project Diaspora received media attention: To develop an Internet platform four students have $ 10,000 needed. With the Facebook platform of fighting a counterpart was announced and announced to develop, what better arrangements in the area would meet data protection and decentralized always store the data of its users on your own computer of the user. This took enormous popularity among the population, which has financed the project with 200 641 U.S. dollars. Among the 6,479 donors, there was also Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. In an interview with Wired magazine, Zuckerberg said: " I donated. I think it is a cool idea. "

With the signing of the JOBS Act ( Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act ) in the United States by President Barack Obama a legal basis is established.

Germany

After two successful small projects financed by the end of 2010 can be considered 2011 as the starting year for crowdfunding in Germany the year.

At that launched in 2004 funding of road movies " Sneezy Madame - sorry Monsieur " could be acquired through the purchase of an admission ticket a place in the credits. Larger media attention was first given to crowdfunding, as the film " Hotel Desire " was financed by donations of 175,000 EUR. The largest to date crowdfunding project launched in Germany, the Cologne company Brain Pool in December 2011. Planned for the film of the TV series Stromberg, the company wanted to collect one million euros by March 2012. After two days, the income was already at about 150,000 euros. Within a week, the sum of one million euros could be achieved.

In addition to the national platforms, there are now several regional crowdfunding initiatives. These focus primarily on projects in the corresponding city and the immediate area to give local start-ups a platform to support.

While crowdfunding is thus to be seen rather as a variant for the financing of niche projects with Crowd Investing develops a kind of borrowing for start- ups. These investments can be purchased from companies that represent a claim to a share in company profits and frequently also at Exit or can be sold at a later date. In contrast to financing by business angels or venture capital, the capital to the Crowd Investing, similar to crowdfunding, are distributed to numerous investors to small amounts.

Construction of an action: role model

To graphically represent the individual roles of different (groups of ) the crowdfunding, also a role model was developed ( see figure ). This is an extensible model that can be supplemented by project-specific roles (eg significant supplier or distributor ).

Basically, however, the developed model is based on three different roles that are present in each crowdfunding scenario and by individuals, groups or organizations ( hereinafter referred to as Parties ) for the adoption: ideas, funders and implementers. Each roller is characterized by specific properties.

The ideas, for example, a designer or a band, although has an idea for a product or a project, but he can or do not want to finance it themselves. The donors, however, provides the necessary capital available. According to the definition developed this role takes always and exclusively the anonymous mass of Internet users. The role of the converter is characterized in that the owners of this role in the course of realization of the idea ( eg manufacture of the product or implementation of the project) can make important strategic decisions that affect the success of the realization of the idea significantly. This is explicitly not meant parties that are involved for operational activities during the project (eg technician for a concert ). Any interested party may, in the model assume multiple roles and each role can be split among several parties ( exception is the role of the funding organization ).

In addition to the various roles the role model considers a platform that is considered as a communication tool for the exchange of information between the parties. By definition, platform via the Web must be implemented 2.0. The owner of the platform may be one of the parties who already hold a role or a not otherwise interested party.

The end of an action

An action is characterized by a minimum amount of capital that needs to be leveraged by the mass before the action starts. In relation to the minimum amount of capital each member of the crowd ( Crowd Funder ) makes only a small financial contribution.

For this performance, the crowd Funder receives in return, can take different forms (eg, rights, money, in-kind ), but always has a monetarisierbaren value. In addition, consideration may have an idealistic or altruistic value.

The communication between lenders and borrowers is realized via a platform on the Internet. Usually the borrower published on this platform a largely open tender, which is aimed at all business- enabled Internet users; without restriction or exclusion of potential donors.

Another characteristic feature of crowdfunding is that through crowdfunding are generated funds earmarked to the respective action. In addition, for the process of crowdfunding in Germany so far no specific legal basis exists ( in contrast for example to finance through equity, for which you have a share law are in Germany ). With the signing of the JOBS Act ( Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act ) in the U.S. by Obama, however, a legal basis is established.

Precursor

As a direct precursor of crowdfunding, the subscription or Pränumerationsmodell of 17-18. Century are, with the mainly books were financed. As with current crowdfunding projects incentives for a pre-order and promotion of the project were also created at that time, as the responses of the conveyor on the cover sheet of the printed book.

Also half of the core funding through a " crowdfunding " -like 1885 for the Statue of Liberty applied approach. Joseph Pulitzer came to this with his paper "The World" campaign financing, which mustered the missing $ 102,000 (present value of approximately $ 2.3 million ). The sum came together in five months of 120,000 supporters, with most posts on the order of a dollar were.