Success Factors in Reward based and Equity based Crowdfunding in Finland

Master’s Thesis 
61 
held by the creators at the time of the crowdfunding project. Suojanen from EkoRent 
on the other hand holds a Master’s diploma and an MBA. Both he and his business 
partner have had a long career at Nokia – which albeit impressive, does not seem very 
diverse. Overall it seems the reward-based crowdfunding interviewees represent a 
mixed set of higher and lower level education backgrounds. Additionally, the entre-
preneurs in some ventures seem more heterogeneous than in others. Thus, the impact 
of diversity and education level is inconclusive. 
As for the equity-based crowdfunding interviewees, both Bjors from Juuri and Pere 
from Pyynikin Käsityöläispanimo hold Bachelor’s diplomas from Universities of Ap-
plied Sciences. This means neither have the higher-level educations implied by Ahlers 
et al. (2015), but both have been successful in their crowdfunding. This would imply 
that level of education might not be as crucial for crowdfunding success as thought by 
earlier research. 
According to Belleflamme et al. (2013) the age of the organization does not affect 
crowdfunding success or amounts in independently facilitated crowdfunding. But Ah-
lers et al. (2015) state that the older the organization, the faster they are able to attract 
their funding. Out of the five interviewed ventures, Ambronite was the fastest in 
reaching their target. However, Ambronite was a budding company at the time, unlike 
companies such as Juuri. Pyynikin Käsityöläispanimo on the other hand was a young 
company at the time of their crowdfunding projects, but took a significant amount of 
time to reach the funding target. These results seem to contradict Ahlers et al. (2015) 
or at least seem inconclusive regarding earlier findings. 
9.2.6. Social Network Ties 
9.2.6.1. Social Network of the Entrepreneur 
According to earlier research the goodwill available to entrepreneurs impacts their 
crowdfunding success positively (
Giudici et al., 2013). This goodwill can be in 
amount of interest people show in the entrepreneurs’ activities. The interviewees had 
existing networks that provided afore mentioned goodwill to the entrepreneurs when 
launching their crowdfunding projects. Ambronite had “hundreds of people, ready to 
fund and share the crowdfunding project”, Autolla Nepaliin had 11 to 12 thousand 

---