The development of an application to manage investor involvement during and after and online crowdfunding project for starting companies.

The development of an application to manage investor involvement during and after and online crowdfunding project for starting companies.

Stots, F.

Schoormans, J.P.L. (mentor)
Van Mourik, F. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

Design for Interaction & Strategic Product Design

2011-06-17

This graduation project is conducted for the Seeds crowdfunding platform, a project of ABN AMRO Dialogues Incubator. The platform is one of the first crowdfunding platforms for starting companies within the Netherlands. The starting companies present themselves on the online platform and interested visitors (the crowd) can become investors by investing (funding) in this company. Investments start from 10 Euro. The goal of this project was to gain insight in the investor involvement during an online crowdfunding project for a starting company. Currently only information is available about investor involvement for charity or creative crowdfunding projects. Investing in a starting company differs from other crowdfunding initiatives since this is a real type of investment with a possible return on investment instead of only an in-kind reward. Involvement is the main motivation to participate in a crowdfunding project and therefore it is important to gain insight in the investors involvement for crowdfunding projects for starting companies. In order to gain insight in the involvement and motivations for this group of investors different research methods were used. Various interviews were held with crowdfunding experts and different types of investors; informal investors, mini angel investors and crowdfunding investors of charity and creative projects. The results of the interviews were used to develop a questionnaire study. Which was conducted with potential crowdfunding investors for a starting company. The goal of the questionnaire study was to gain insight in the importance of the different properties of a crowdfunding proposition for starting companies. The goal was to develop an application to help the entrepreneurs to communicate with the crowd. But also to keep the investors involved and informed. The application should fulfill the needs of the target group of the Seeds crowdfunding platform and help the entrepreneur to easily stay in touch with their crowd. Apart from the informative function the application also has the goal to make the entrepreneur profit from the involvement of their crowd an enable the investors to contribute to the company. The main focus of the application is the information need of the investors and their willingness to contribute to the company. The application offers the investors structured information. The information is solely available for the crowdfunding investors and is written by the entrepreneurs of the company. The information about the company does also contain pictures and movies. The investors can stay up to date about the progress and news of the company, notifications can be created to stay up to update about specific topics. Investors can also contribute to the company, the application makes this easy by standardized templates. The templates are not only useful for the investors, but also for the entrepreneurs. Information sent by the investors is manageable and is easier to handle for the entrepreneurs. Investors can contribute with their knowledge, network, skills, and evaluations and have the option to ask questions to the company. In this way the entrepreneur can easily collect investor insights with the application. The application also offers investors the opportunity to comment on news items and pictures. Investors can also react on each other’s comments. Users test with the Seeds application gave useful insights about the application. Although the overall structure of the company was clear, the participants had some difficulties with the manner of how the different companies are displayed on the home screen. Sometimes there where some misunderstandings because of the limited content available for some of the screens of the prototype. But overall the participants where enthusiastic about the application and saw it as an addition to their investment and would really use the application to stay informed and involved with their investment in a starting company.

Crowdfunding
Starting company
iPhone application
Involvement
Interaction
Investment

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:2287784c-60f2-4750-9848-4f5cba5cf9be

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2011 Stots, F.