Crowdinvesting-an alternative financing for German start-up enterprises?

Creation of young and innovational ventures is becoming more and more attrac-tive for potential business founders, due to beneficial political and economic frame conditions. Nevertheless, the issue of funding the project is concerning most of entrepreneurs: Because relatively weak own financial backings seldom suffice until profitability stage, founders are depending on external financial support in order to cover an arising equity gap. Here, established traditional forms of financing can often hardly be taken into consideration, because a business start-up’s risky nature is discouraging potential investors. For a couple of years, Crowdinvesting is extending the range of offer in terms of start-up financing. If this type of financing has potential to ease the challenge of equity gap closing and to be established as serious financing alternative, was examined in this thesis. For this purpose, a theoretical basis was developed by aid of literature sources, studies and online material: Five main traditional financing possibilities were pre-sented at the beginning and examined regarding early stage financing. Afterwards, Crowdinvesting’s main benefits in comparison to previous financing types were highlighted, but also negative aspects shown, represented by Principal-Agent problems. Furthermore, legal framework of Crowdinvesting was studied. By aid of surveys with start-up enterprises and an interview, conducted with a founder from the FinTech industry, theoretical assumptions were proven in practice. Here, method of analysis was created symmetrically. Aim was to get answers to the defined research questions from the introduction part of the thesis. It turned out that Crowdinvesting appears attractive for a specific industry and may also have advantages apart from its pure role of financing. Generally, it represents a niche financing product and is mainly characterized through capital support