Crowdfunded and then? The role of Entrepreneurial Quality in the growth of equity-crowdfunded companies: an empirical analysis of the Italian context

This paper aims to investigate whether and to what extent equity-crowdfunding is able to build enduring businesses. In order to achieve the above aim, we provide a theoretical framework that includes entrepreneurial attributes - i.e. the construct of Entrepreneurial Quality - as independent variables and company growth, meant as sales and employment growth, as dependent variable. We use hand-collected data on 51 successful equity-crowdfunded projects listed on seven Italian platforms. We find that three variables (prior industry experience, product innovation and equity offered) are significant and positively related to the growth of equity-crowdfunded companies. In particular, prior industry experience positively influences sales growth; product innovation positively influences employment growth. Equity offered, instead, has a strong positive impact on both sales and employment growth. Put simply, companies that offer a larger percentage of equity during the campaign disclose higher probabilities of growth. These results shed some light on the nascent research field related to post-campaign scenarios of equity-crowdfunded companies.