Over a year ago, Crowdnetic and UC Berkeley began collaborating on the launch of UC Berkeley’s Program for Innovation in Entrepreneurial and Social Finance, headed by Dr. Richard Swart, who serves as its Director of Research at the Coleman Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership. Through this role, Dr. Swart heads efforts to study policies, best practices and innovation in entrepreneurial finance, including crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending.
Today, Crowdnetic, a provider of technology and market data solutions to the crowdfinance industry, has officially announced its partnership with the program at UC Berkeley by sharing the data that it has collected on companies choosing to publicly solicit for funding through the 506(c) exemption under Title II of the JOBS Act, which was implemented on September 23, 2013. This collaboration hopes to promote UC Berkeley’s position as a top research center and trusted resource for platforms, investors and policy makers.
Dr. Swart stated;
“Crowdnetic has been on the forefront of data technology in the crowdfunding industry since the implementation of Title II. We look forward to utilizing this partnership in our ongoing efforts to examine crowdfunding as it emerges as a competitive alternative to traditional finance.”
Crowdnetic aggregates and normalizes data from leading equity crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending platforms, which it has been incorporating into data research reports since January of this year. The data shared with UC Berkeley will enable researchers to better understand and describe various data points including geographic distribution, business sectors, industries, age, race and gender as well as how the data 
changes over time.
“We are beyond thrilled about this partnership with UC Berkeley,” says Crowdnetic CEO and co-founder, Luan Cox. “We have followed Dr. Swart’s work and have seen him emerge as a crowdfunding expert in academia. We are excited to contribute to his research and could not be more pleased about the opportunity to work with him.”
