How to foster the development of Crowdfunding in Belgium

Details

Supervisors

Petitjean , Mikael

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de gestion

Abstract

Since the global economic crisis of 2008, there has been a growing interest for the mechanism of Crowdfunding. Indeed, the amplitude of this phenomenon has more than doubled yearly, all over the world. If we look more specifically at Europe, just in 2014, the volume raised by Crowdfunding reached a total of 2.957 billion euros, which represents a substantial growth of 144% compared to the previous year. If you pay a closer look to Belgium, even if it has been following an optimistic growth, it appears that it is lagging behind compared to its neighbouring countries. The goal of this thesis is to find possible ways to promote the growth of the Crowdfunding mechanism in Belgium so that it can catch up its delay compared to its neighbours. To do so, the aim is to first understand the reasons behind Belgium‘s delay and to find ways to turn things around. Secondly, I aim to determine the key success drivers of a Crowdfunding campaign in Belgium platforms in order to provide valuable recommendations to Belgium entrepreneurs who wish to try to raise funds using this mechanism. In a first chapter; I found that it was important to have a good understanding of the concept. That is why I have dedicated an entire first chapter to explain what Crowdfunding is, where and when it appeared, who are the actors involved and what are the risks and benefits of this new financial system. After having built a review about the phenomenon of Crowdfunding, I dedicated a second chapter to draw a picture of the current situation about Crowdfunding in a global scale and aim to understand where this phenomenon is heading. In a third Chapter, I focus my attention on the current situation of Crowdfunding in Europe. By building a clear picture of the European market, I considered that my forthcoming analysis on the Belgium situation would be more relevant. In my 4th and 5th chapters I conducted analysis. In both chapters, I formulated hypothesis and I used a qualitative approach to test them. How? By combining past empirical studies with a series of interviews I conducted with different important stakeholders of the Belgium Crowdfunding sector. In the first chapter of my practical research I try to understand why Belgium has been lagging behind its neighbours in terms Crowdinvesting and than suggested possible solutions to overcome this problem .In the second chapter, I focus my analysis in the Belgium Crowdfunding platform MyMicroInvest, and aim to determine the key success drivers for a Crowdfunding campaign, in order to be able to provide valuable recommendations to Belgium entrepreneurs when trying to raise funds with this mechanism.