While prior research in traditional equity financing shows that male founders are preferred, emerging evidence in low-stakes crowdfunding (e.g., rewards-based crowdfunding) indicates that female entrepreneurs may have an advantage, particularly with female investors. We seek to examine whether...

The digital context of equity crowdfunding broadens and diversifies the pool of potential investors and is thus touted as a means to democratize access to capital for non-traditional innovators. It is unclear whether such democratization also applies to user entrepreneurs. User innovators are...