COULD ACCELERATORS AND EQUITY CROWDFUNDING COMBINE TO IMPROVE ACCESS TO FINANCE FOR EARLY STAGE STARTUPS?

Abstract

The main goal of this article is to explore possible concepts of combining the acceleration program and equity crowdfunding. Both are venture capital instruments that finance businesses at the very early stages of their life cycle. The equity crowdfunding and the acceleration programs can be used to raise capital for business creation, first production and product distribution. In addition to the capital, they provide start-ups with additional benefits such as mentoring, networking, feedback from the crowd and a pool of experts. The authors of the paper believe that a combination of these two tools can even increase their positive impacts. In this article the authors of the paper search the first providers combining accelerator programs and equity crowdfunding. Afterwards based on those examples and their common features there are classified different concepts of how to combine acceleration programs and equity crowdfunding. Moreover, short characteristics are added for each concept and brief description of the process of each identified concept.

Keywords

• financing
• venture capital
• startups
• entrepreneurship
• technological companies