Success Factors in Reward based and Equity based Crowdfunding in Finland

Master’s Thesis 
64 
oheimo from Ambronite stressed the importance of getting “closest” funders to invest 
in the project in the very beginning – “getting funders in the first 24 hours, results in 
random people daring to fund as well”. This agrees with research by 
Ward & Rama-
chandran (2010) claiming funders use the actions of other funders as a source of rele-
vant information.
Moreover, Frydrych et al. (2014) state social dynamics are more 
important to crowdfunders than to professional investors. This is due to the “unpro-
fessional” nature of crowdfunding. 
Some of the interviewees noted that information sharing was especially important in 
social media. Leppänen from Autolla Nepaliin stated, “it was very important that sup-
porters shared the project on their own social media accounts”. Bjors from Juuri also 
said “people need to be involved if a project is to spread through social media”. Su-
ojanen from EkoRent mentioned that bloggers wrote about EkoRent after they were 
asked to share information about the project. Clearly, social media activity was some-
thing that interviewees felt was central. This is also in accordance with Frydrych et al. 
(2014). 
In addition to social media publicity, some interviewees believed traditional media 
publicity to be highly important to their crowdfunding success. Finnish public figures 
Arman Alizad and Madventures shared the Autolla Nepaliin story, which Leppänen 
believed was crucial to the project’s success due to the celebrities’ “credibility reach”. 
Autolla Nepaliin was also featured in Aamulehti, a Finnish newspaper. Suojanen from 
EkoRent also noted the importance of having media representatives make features 
about them in Helsingin Sanomat, a nation wide newspaper, and YLE, a Finnish news 
broadcaster, by saying he is “pleased about all the publicity we got”. Ambronite was 
also featured in global news outlets such as Forbes, TIME, Wired and CNN, and Su-
oheimo felt these aided in the success of their crowdfunding project. 
Overall the effects of the social network affects as well as any sort of publicity seem 
to affects all different crowdfunding projects in the same way. The more a project is 
shared and publicized, the more people are reached. This in turn results in more po-
tential funders. Herding behavior of funders does not seem to differ between crowd-
funding models either. Herding is present in all crowdfunding due to the “unprofes-
sional” nature of it, and it does not seem to depend on the type of project. Thus, re-

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