Global crowdfunding is growing at a dramatic pace. The Crowd Data Center has just released their first report, targeting Q1 2014 numbers and their data indicates exponential growth. According to the report all aspects of crowdfunding is doubling every two months as the global disruptive shift in capital formation takes hold around the world.
For the United Kingdom, February and March indicated a growth rate of 350% with more money being pledged in March than both January and February combined.
Some interesting data points from the report include:
- More than 4m backers pledged more than $351m and raised more than $291m
- A new crowdfunding project is created every 3 minutes, with around 500 new projects created every day.
- Global crowdfunding is growing steadily, more than doubling every 60 days.
- There are between 18,000 and 22,000 projects open and funding at any one time.
- All or Nothing campaigns tend to raise more: the average amount projects have raised successfully across platforms is $7,145.01, but that figure drops to $4,516.46 when you include flexible funding projects.
- People invest more on equity crowdfunding platforms. The average Kickstarter campaign raises $19,000 from 253 people, whereas the average Crowdcube campaign raises $311,000 from 117 people.
Barry James, founder of The Crowd Data Center, explained:
“We are now providing an online living-map, a kind of Google Earth for crowdfunding, that is able to give you hard data and answer the specific questions that really matter when planning a campaign, running a platform, thinking about investment strategies or making regulation and legislation.”
The report is drawn from a new resource for crowdfunding which aims to become the ‘Oracle’ of crowdfunding, able to answer specific and detailed questions for governments and regulators as well as crowdfunders and all those who advise and support them. It has already collected data from more than 75,000 crowdfunded projects worldwide and grows by thousands more every week.
Jason Best, co-founder at Crowdfund Capital Advisors and co-architect of the JOBS Act, commented on the announcement:
“Data is critical in driving the development of any industry and none more than crowdfunding. The ability to document money invested, jobs created, sales growth, new company starts, etc. are all vital to demonstrate to regulators and investors that this market is the modern finance market and one that should be embraced.”
His thoughts are echoed by Dr Richard Swart, Global Crowdfunding and Alternative Finance Researcher at University of California, Berkeley, who said:
“This report is a crucial development for our field. With such a fast moving market, growing exponentially, it is extremely important that policy makers, educators and professionals have a resource to track funding patterns. The Crowd Data Center has laid the foundation for a data set that can change the industry.”
The inaugural report tracks and quantifies growth through the first quarter of 2014 providing new insights into the nature as well as the size of crowdfunding in the USA, UK and worldwide.
“We are at the point in time where Big Data meets crowdfunding, whose open-by-default nature lends itself well to that, having already captured around 3 million snapshots and adding more than 22,000 every day,” James confirmed.
Professor Alan Barrell, Entrepreneur in Residence at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School, commented:
“This is the first report of its kind and is immensely valuable in providing a mass of real data from more than 75,000 crowdfunds since January 2014 – a feat of a great magnitude in itself.”
“While this landmark report is especially important at this time since it answers – from the data – so many of the questions people ask when the word ‘crowdfunding’ is mentioned, it is more than that. The Crowd Data Center itself is now providing an ongoing online resource that can answer pressing questions and keep the world up to speed on what some of us have felt for some time is an unstoppable phenomenon in the making.”
The Crowd Data Center captured almost 3 million daily project status snapshots in the first quarter of since 2014 (1,915,306).
Additional Q1 stats include:
- Total Pledges: 4,047,856
- Total Pledged: $351,174,819.50
- Total Raised (Fully funded): $261,538,013.51
- Total Raised Amount (Fully funded plus flex): $291,398,557.55