A research note on entrepreneurs' financial commitment and crowdfunding success

Established early stage investors decide to invest in new ventures after evaluating the propensity of success and the risk of failure. Consequently, it is of considerable importance that the new business owners have substantial 'skin in the game' and are thus highly committed to business success. Despite its key role in practice, the entrepreneurs' own financial commitment has not yet been discussed in a crowdfunding context. Applying a signaling approach, our empirical findings show that entrepreneurs with comparatively more ex ante financial commitment in their project achieve significantly higher funding success. Moreover, our results suggest that financial commitment is the single most important variable determining funding success.