What Makes Successful Entrepreneurs in Online Crowdfunding: Unraveling the Role of Professional and Educational Backgrounds

Crowdfunding is a new way of engaging in entrepreneurship and investment activities by taking advantage of digitization. However, prior studies on crowdfunding mainly focused on project-related characteristics, and their effects on crowdfunding performance. Limited research attention has been paid to how founder-related background information influences crowdfunding outcomes. In this study, we examine how founders' professional and educational backgrounds affect their crowdfunding performance. Drawing on human and social capital theories, we propose that technical experience from small firms and domain experience from large firms positively influence crowdfunding outcomes, and that the level of education rather than the prestige of educational institutions positively affect crowdfunding performance. With empirical data from the leading crowdfunding platform and professional networking platform, our findings support our proposed hypotheses. Our study adds to crowdfunding and entrepreneurship literature by identifying the role of various founder backgrounds in crowdfunding.