- Trial lecture starts at 10.15
- Public defence starts at 12.00
The title of the trial lecture is:
"What motivates and determines entrepreneurs’ interest in getting equity crowdfunding compared to other sources of equity capital?"
Assessment committee:
- Professor Trond Randøy
- Professor Siri Terjesen, Florida Atlantic University
- Assistant Professor Simon Kleinert, Maastricht University
Supervisors in the doctoral work:
Summary of thesis
Equity crowdfunding is already a vital fundraising mechanism for early-stage entrepreneurial ventures. ECF improves these ventures' likelihood of raising equity by enabling them to access new types of crowd investors who otherwise will not be active within the entrepreneurial finance realm. The overarching goal of this dissertation is to address gaps in the literature regarding ECF investors' decision-making criteria. Understanding the decision-making criteria of investors is crucial for the success of early-stage entrepreneurial ventures in securing equity crowdfunding.
In the first paper, we review, compare, and synthesize the existing knowledge regarding traditional and alternative investors' decision-making criteria, acknowledging that these players interact and collaborate along the ventures' "financing cycle". Here, we show that VC, BA and ECF predominantly exhibit heterogeneous criteria preferences in their investment decision-making. While all players highlight the expected financial rewards, they operationalize different investment strategies and decision-making criteria regarding other factors such as the venture's human capital, product or service innovativeness, and industry characteristics. Here, our findings may become helpful in informing entrepreneurs of the different players' decision-making criteria and assist them in finding the most appropriate finance source based on their development stage and needs.
The second paper follows a recent stream in the literature studying the effect of economic shocks, such as COVID-19, on individual uncertainty and investment behaviours. Here, we show that human capital moderates the effects of uncertainty on investment decisions and that the effect is also evident in market high uncertainty conditions as analyzed both before and after the COVID-19 outbreak.
The third paper extends earlier findings from studies showing that BAs' decision-making criteria differ based on their experience and activity level when examining ECF investors that vary with respect to their experience levels. Such investigation is warranted since recent research has indicated that ECF investors differ in their motivation to invest, respond differently to signals and employ different decision-making criteria. Therefore, ECF investors' decision-making criteria may also differ based on their investment activity level. Our analysis revealed that investors respond differently to signals based on their on-site activity level. We show that costly signals of venture quality significantly predict investors' portfolio size decisions and that the minimum ticket significantly predicts investors' behaviour.
What to do as an online audience member
The disputation is open to the public. To follow the trial lecture and the public defence online, register on Zoom through this link
We ask online audience members to join no earlier than 10 minutes in advance. After these times, you can leave and rejoin the meeting at any time.
Opponent ex auditorio:
Deadline for the public to pose questions is during the break between the two opponents. Questions ex auditorio can be submitted to disputation chair.