Document Type

Closed Project

Publication Date

Fall 2012

Instructor

Dundar Kocaoglu

Course Title

Management of Engineering and Technology

Course Number

ETM 520

Subjects

New business enterprises -- Management, New business enterprises -- Funding, Crowd funding -- Evaluation, Social media, Kickstarter.com

Abstract

This paper looks into the emerging realm of social media and crowd funding as a viable option for start-up funding. A literature review revealed a key gap area where traditional funding methods are ill-suited (between personal/private funding and more commercial investors seeking a profit) but showed a relative lack of published information on crowd funding, likely because the concept is only a few years old. Five interviews were given with the leads of several start-up projects: three who used crowd funding through Kickstarter, a successful online start-up itself, and two who used traditional methods. These interviews were used to analyze what makes a project appropriate for crowd funding, the strengths and limitations of the platform, and what side benefits like market research and customer engagement entrepreneurs can expect to gain by using this method. Future work could include a quantitative decision model to choose the best funding method for any given project.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Comments

This project is only available to students, staff, and faculty of Portland State University

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/21702

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