Heterogeneous in their motivations, funders engage in crowdfunding for at least five distinct incentives. These incentives include:

Access to investment opportunities: This applies to equity crowdfunding only. Traditional mechanisms for funding early-stage ventures typically restrict funders to local investment opportunities. Furthermore, regulations have until recently restricted most non-family and friend investment opportunities to accredited investors. Gubler (2013) describes crowdfunding as “giving ordinary investors the opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the next big idea.”