The Problems In Creating And Developing A Crowdfunding Platform: A Study on how a Company can Create a New Financial Platform in Finnish Real Estate Industry

Abstract

As an new method of financing crowdfunding is seen to be beneficial for the parties involved, but on the other hand it is understood that even though crowdfunding is seen as future method in financing it also has some issues. Much of studies in the field focus on the benefit side but only recently the issues with it have been under discovery. This thesis is single case study using a Finnish Crowdfunding company to study the issues that the company has in improving its operations and becoming a well functioning financial platform. With the use of theoretical framework of actor network theory (ANT), framing and overflowing, and program and anti-program this paper sets to analyze where the issues come from and how the network must constantly adapt to the ever-changing environment that various entities inside and outside the network require. The application of these theories with the research used in the paper enable an inductive approach to answering the research question. The purpose is to understand why the case company was created in the first place and how they attempt to grow and what are the reasons that prevent the growth. Through qualitative research the paper analyzes first the reasons why there is need for the existence of crowdfunding companies and then analyzes problems in the development of the method of financing. The data is gathered mostly from the employees of the case company as they are seen to have a more comprehensive image of the company operations and are able to shed light on the issues that the company faces with the various entities. Additionally to this an external interview is used in order to gain valuable insights on what could be the issues in crowdfunding and how the company could be developed. The analysis reveals that issues largely exist in the entrepreneur side of crowdfunding and companies are reluctant to participate due to its public nature and high cost of capital as well as the negative perception that persists with crowdfunding. The outcome of the study is of course relative to the specific to the company and industry it operates in but it confirms many of the obstacles and issues that crowdfunding is seen to have based existing research in the field. This research should be used as a preliminary work for studying additional industries to verify the issues in larger scale and to understand how the method of financing could be developed in bigger picture.