哪种风格的招股书更容易众筹成功？——来自在线众筹平台Seedrs的经验证据

随着数字技术和创新金融服务的发展,众筹平台已迅速发展成为可以替代传统天使投资人和私募机构的创业融资渠道.本文调查了招股书风格对股权众筹成功可能性的影响.通过对2017年和2018年在英国最大的股权众筹平台Seedrs上发起的741次众筹活动的招股书进行文本分析,本文发现招股书字数和用词可以显著影响众筹结果.众筹平台聚集着大量的业余投资爱好者,与专业投资人相比,他们通常更依赖于直觉和情绪做出相对感性的投资决定.篇幅长的招股书不仅不能有效地缓解信息不对称,还会增加潜在投资者快速提取有价值信息并准确理解商业项目的难度,最终削弱了他们的投资热情、降低了众筹成功率.包括更多乐观词汇的招股书不仅可以向外界传递积极的内部信息,还可以正向影响众筹平台用户的情绪、激发其投资热情,从而提高了众筹成功率.

Tone and Length of Pitches and Crowdfunding Performance:Evidence from Seedrs,a UK-Based Online Platform

With the rapid development of digital technology and innovative financial service, online crowdfunding platform has become a vital financing channel that replaces traditional angels and private equity. Existing literature on crowdfunding mainly concentrates on donation-based crowdfunding and microloans (P2P), but largely neglects equity-based crowdfunding. Based on quantitative text analysis of 741 equity-based crowdfunding campaigns launched on Seedrs in 2015 and 2016, this study finds that the length and tone of the pitch have a significant impact on the success rate of crowdfunding. Compared with professional investors, the crowd usually rely more on intuition to make relatively emotional investment decisions. The lengthy pitch not only cannot effectively mitigate information asymmetry, but also increase the difficulty for investors to quickly extract valuable information and accurately understand business plans, which eventually weakens their investment enthusiasm and reduces the success rate of crowdfunding. Pitch in a positive tone can signal positive inside information to potential investors, enhance investor optimism and investment willingness, thereby contributing to successful crowdfunding.