Success Factors in Reward based and Equity based Crowdfunding in Finland

8.2.2. Interviews 
As a qualitative method, interviews were held with different entrepreneurs that have 
succeeded in crowdfunding. Interviewing successful crowdfunding initiatives was 
important for finding more insight into which factors affect the success of an initia-
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Master’s Thesis 
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tive. Additionally, the author chose to interview Finnish entrepreneurs, because 
crowdfunding research concerning Finnish ventures is limited (
Lasrado and Lugmayr, 
2013)
. 
Since donation-based crowdfunding is restricted to only non-profit organizations in 
Finland, the author chose to exclude donation-model initiatives from the study. This 
was due to two reasons. First, the results of such crowdfunding initiatives would not 
be very generalizable due to the legal restrictions on practicing donation-based crowd-
funding. Second, due to these restrictions, donation-based crowdfundings are very 
sparse, thus making them difficult to interview. 
The author has also decided to exclude lending-based crowdfunding initiatives from 
the study. Even though the total volumes of lending in Finland are impressive, there 
are not many facilitators for this kind of crowdfunding. Fixura, a Finnish crowdfund-
ing platform, deals in lending-based crowdfunding, but does not let funders and entre-
preneurs interact. Funders invest money that Fixura then distributes to entrepreneurs – 
the typical interaction between parties is not present in Fixura’s business model.
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This kind of business resembles sophisticated lending practices more than crowdfund-
ing. Thus the author believes researching it will not produce meaningful results con-
sidering the topic of the thesis. 
Due to the above reasons the author has decided to focus on reward-based and equity 
crowdfunding in the study. Five different entrepreneurs were interviewed for the pur-
pose of this study. Three of the entrepreneurs were individuals that had initiated a 
reward-based crowdfunding project. Two were entrepreneurs that had initiated an 
equity crowdfunding project. The author believed it best to interview entrepreneurs 
from differing industries, because crowdfunding is a practice that can be and is partic-
ipated in by different ventures. One of the interviews was held in person and the four 
others via telephone. The interviews lasted a total of 25-60 minutes. The interviews 
were conducted in the style of an open interview, which resulting in variations in the 
discussed aspects of the topic at hand (Eskola and Suoranta, 1998).