ALTFINATOR WORKSHOP AT THE CATALONIAN AGENCY FOR BUSINESS COMPETITIVENESS ACCIO

Several cases of successful crowdfunding campaigns were introduced by Ronald Kleverlaan, Managing Director of CrowdfundingHub. It was concluded that, compared to other alternative finance instruments (like Venture Capital), equity crowdfunding presents additional benefits for the firm that is raising funds: it gets not only funding but customers acquisition who act as company ambassadors, and quite often successful large fund-raising companies combine venture capital with equity crowdfunding.

A visible trend in some years from now is that not only start-ups or SMEs will use crowdfunding but also large corporates with strong financial capabilities, like Phillips and other big firms have already done for launching new products, since main crowdfunding platforms have a large international community of investors and enable a detailed market research on new products, based on the support raised in the crowdfunding platform.

Citizens will progressively coinvest (through crowdfunding platforms) with governments in societal challenges like energy transition, social housing, food provision, etc. If you get citizens investing through crowdfunding at the beginning of a social project, then it is easier to get to start such a social project without waiting too long for external investors.

The number of new independent “trusted advisors” that support companies and recommend them to use crowdfunding instruments will increase.

The way to overcome the lack of knowledge about alternative finance among entrepreneurs and SMEs, to change their reasoning and make them think about using crowdfunding instruments goes through education; it is a continuous process that has to be done by governments, by the crowdfunding industry, also showing success cases, and by trusted SME financialadvisors/accountants, business advisors, provided that they are also educated/trained on these alternative finance solutions.

PEDAL is a partner on the AltFinator project.