on 19-Jul-2018 (Thu)

Initial data suggests that participating on a crowdfunding platform can support creators and causes by confirming values. An informant noted: “It feels like you’re creating value and getting something in return.

A serial funder on Kickstarter who tends to fund tech projects because he likes the idea and because he wants to support people who are seeking alternative ways of raising funds to maintain creative control commented: “I fund an idea that I think is really neat, but I also really like the idea of people being able to get off the ground without needing to buy into a big giant corporate structure, and I like the way that people put the ideas they want out instead of having to compromise those ideas in order to get their product out.

Consistent with prior marketing research, identity influences what actions people take and why they give [27]. People support efforts that are consistent with their identity – in this case the identity of helping others and supporting causes. In this way, crowdfunding influences the type of ideas that are realized, allowing for smaller niche markets.

Funder: Engage and Contribute to a Trusting and Creative Community Initial evidence suggests that funders participate in crowdfunding to engage in a community. A contributor to a Kickstarter campaign noted: “From an emotional standpoint, my goal is to be a part of this community of creatives.

Creators are motivated to participate to raise funds, receive validation, connect with others, replicate successful experiences of others, and expand awareness of work through social media.

Funders are motivated to participate in order to seek rewards, support creators and causes, and strengthen connections with people in their social networks.

Expectations for effective communication may increase over time as funders become more sophisticated and less forgiving of a creator’s novice business skills. Additionally, with more participation, new models of sorting and prioritizing opportunities for funders may help to direct individuals with different identities, defined as traits, characteristics, and goals

Our informants are restricted to participating in one of three crowdfunding platforms. We chose these platforms because they are the three most popular platforms for “creative work”. However, there are additional crowdfunding platforms. It is possible that people who participate on other smaller platforms have different interests and expertise and therefore are motivated to participate in these platforms for different reasons.

Importantly, participation may have a significant effect on the economy by encouraging a more diverse set of people to start small entrepreneurial ventures, influencing the type of ideas that are introduced into the world, and the use disposable income to support these ventures.

The fact is that the majority of our thoughts and actions are on autopilot. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. Our habits, routines, impulses, and reactions carry us through our lives so we don’t have to stop and think about it every time we wipe our ass or start a car.

Creator Incentives
Creators may choose to raise capital through crowdfunding rather than a traditional channel due to two primary incentives: 1) a lower cost of capital, and 2) access to more information

1st factor on why crowdfunding platforms have lower cost of capital
Better matches: Creators match with those individuals who have the highest will- ingness to pay for equity in their venture (or for early access to their new product, etc.) where the search for such matches occurs across a global rather than local pool of potential funders. Thus, as opposed to traditional offline mechanisms for financing early-stage creative ventures, access to capital is not so strongly influenced by the cre- ator’s location. Indeed, in Agrawal, Catalini, and Goldfarb (2011), we report that on Sellaband, more than 86% of the funds came from individuals who were more than 60 miles away from the creator, and the average distance between creators and funders was approximately 3,000 miles.

Bundling makes capital cost less: Non-equity-based crowdfunding demonstrates that under certain condi- tions funders value early access to products, recognition for discovering innovations, participating in a new venture’s community of supporters, and other non-pecuniary re- wards in return for financial backing. To the extent that platforms facilitate a hybrid approach and allow creators to bundle the sale of equity with other rewards they wish to offer (e.g., early access to products, limited-edition products, recognition), creators may be able to lower their cost of capital by “selling” goods that are otherwise difficult to trade in traditional markets for early-stage capital

Information provided through crowdfunding can lower cost of capital: To the extent that crowdfunding generates more information than tra- ditional sources of early-stage capital (e.g., interest from other investors, ideas for prod- uct modifications and extensions from potential users), this information may increase funders’ willingness to pay, thus lowering the cost of capital. For example, despite the negative reaction Pebble creator Eric Migicovsky received from traditional early-stage investors, the information conveyed via the crowdfunding community’s strong response to his product validated his hypothesis that a wearable device with that particular de- sign and set of features would have broad appeal. This information likely lowered his cost of capital. However, in principle, the same effect could be achieved without crowd-funding by pre-selling the invention and then presenting the sales information when raising capital through traditional channels. Furthermore, if the additional information is negative relative to expectations, then this may work in the opposite direction and increase the cost of capital

3.1.2 More information In addition to the effect that more information may have on the cost of capital, it may also have other benefits for creators. For example, in the hybrid context where funders are also able to obtain early access to the product, crowdfunding serves as a particularly informative type of marketing research, which is often modeled as reducing the variance of post-launch demand (Lauga and Ofek, 2009). Like marketing research, crowdfunding that allows pre-buying provides an informative signal of post-launch demand. Unlike most marketing research, crowdfunding can include advanced selling, which provides incentive- compatible demand signals, thereby substantially increasing the quality of the signal (Ding, 2007). Thus, crowdfunding reduces the noise associated with assessing demand prior to the launch of a fundamentally new product. This can lead to an increase in the number of products launched and to a higher rate of success among launched products (Lauga and Ofek, 2009)

In addition to a market signal concerning the demand for a product (either real de- mand as reflected through pre-sales or predicted demand as reflected through equity sales), crowdfunding provides creators a mechanism through which they may receive input on their product or business plan from users and investors. This may facilitate the early development of an ecosystem around the product.

lthough the benefits of user-driven innovation are well documented (von Hippel, 1998; Baldwin, Hienerth, and von Hippel, 2006; Chatterji and Fabrizio, 2011), crowdfunding plat- forms allow creators to engage potential users in the ideation and design of a product even before it has been produced. However, although this information may be valuable to the creators since it may help them develop products that better match the needs of future users, it is an open question whether the feedback from funders is informative about the wider market

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.”

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

Early access to new products: To the extent that hybrid crowdfunding models enable creators to bundle equity with early access, pre-buying may play an even greater role in the crowdfunding process. Non-equity crowdfunding demonstrates a perhaps surprising level of demand for early access to new products by unknown creators. The Pebble watch is again illustrative. There may be benefits to enabling product enthusiasts to be early shareholders since this would align their incentives with their means to enhance the value of the company

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

Community participation: For many funders, investing on a crowdfunding platform is an inherently social activity, and they commit capital partly to obtain preferential access to the creator (e.g., updates, direct communication), which they value. They also derive consumption value from the feeling of being part of the entrepreneurial initiative (Schwienbacher and Larralde, 2010) and among a select group of early adopters. 14 Relatedly, some funders seem motivated to provide funding in return for recognition from the creator within the community

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

Support for a product, service, or idea: Philanthropy plays a surprisingly signif- icant role on the major crowdfunding platforms (e.g., Kickstarter, Indiegogo). Some funders support projects, including for-profit projects, without receiving a tangible re- ward and also do not participate in the associated online community. It is an open question whether this behavior will persist in the equity crowdfunding setting, but given the focus on new ventures with new products, it may

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

Formalization of contracts: As in other settings, early investors on crowdfunding platforms are often family and friends who invest to support the entrepreneur (Agrawal, Catalini, and Goldfarb, 2011). Crowdfunding platforms act as an intermediary and formalize what would otherwise be informal finance. In this way, they improve on the financial contracts between family and friends by balancing the benefits and costs of social relationships (Lee and Persson, 2012). Whereas family and friends can use social pressure to incentivize the entrepreneur, their presence also discourages ex-ante risk- taking in the absence of a formal contract, since failure could also negatively impact the social relationship.

Crowdfunding platforms are predominantly for-profit businesses. Most employ a revenue model based on a transaction fee for successful projects, typically 4-5% of the total funding amount. As such, their objective is to maximize the number and size of successful projects. This requires attracting a large community of funders and creators as well as designing the market to attract high-quality projects, reduce fraud, and facilitate efficient matching between ideas and capital (e.g., by increasing the degree of disclosure by the entrepreneurs and allowing for effective search on the side of the funders)

Although the incentives to use crowdfunding are compelling for some creators, crowdfunding also presents certain challenges. Perhaps the greatest of these is the disclosure requirement. Other sources of funding, like home-equity loans, friends and family members, and angel investors, allow creators to keep their innovation secret from the general public, including competitors, prior to selling their product or service. However, crowdfunding requires cre- ators to disclose their innovations in a public forum. The disincentive is strongest for those creators who are most worried about imitation, especially during the period between raising capital and launching their product, when the difference between crowdfunding and other sources of capital in terms of disclosure risk is most severe

The requirement for disclosure may have negative repercussions on intellectual property protection (patentability) and on bargaining with potential suppliers. For example: “Quest did not have contracts already in place before he went on Kickstarter - a novice mistake. Once the Hanfree was funded, Quest says, he began contracting with accessories manufacturers in China, Singapore, and Los Angeles. But be- cause those manufacturers were able to see precisely how much money Quest had raised on Kickstarter, Quest says they gained too much leverage in negotiations, chipping away at the product’s margins. It soon became too expensive to create the product with the funds raised.” (Markowitz, 2013)

F-heaps support arbitrary deletion from an n-item heap in qlogn) amortized time and all other standard heap operations in o( 1) amortized time.

A heap-ordered tree is a rooted tree containing a set of items, one item in each node, with the items arranged in heap order: If x is any node, then the key of the item in x is no less than the key of the item in its parent p(x), provided x has a parent.

Dillenberger were roomm

Brásidas foi um brilhante general espartano, que se distinguiu durante a primeira década da Guerra do Peloponeso.

Cléon foi um demagogo, político e estratego (general) ateniense, protagonista da Guerra do Peloponeso.

Em 422 a.C., na Batalha de Anfípolis, Brásidas colheu uma expressiva vitória sobre os atenienses, que nela perderam seu comandante, Cleón. Porém, ele também foi mortalmente ferido durante o combate.