Crowdfunding as a Fast-Expanding Market for the Creation of Capital and Shared Value

This article explores the fast-expanding market of crowdfunding − a market that will have created over $62 billion in new capital, primarily for entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized business enterprises (SMEs), by the end of this year. We will look at the history of crowdfunding, the main drivers of the current market, the various platforms and business models, and the rapid and exponential growth of the market. We will discuss the importance of the concept of “shared value” in the development and evolution of this market, and look more closely at the United States’ current economy and how the mechanism of access to capital has been disrupted since the financial crisis. We will examine the premise that crowdfunding is the “crowd's” (anyone other than the top 1%) way of responding to this disruption and creating new capital. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.