Not long ago the European Crowdfunding Network (ECN) was just an informal group of Europeans involved in the emerging crowdfunding market. Only in 2013 did it come into legal existence as a formal body. Yesterday, during its second General Assembly in the beautiful city of Lisbon, Portugal, the ECN has taken a new turn in its short history. It is shaping up to weigh in as a representative body and to actively shape the European crowdfunding market.
We caught up with ECN executives at the ECN Crowdcamp, also in Lisbon.
New governance
The General Assembly elected a new board. The resulting new governance makes a much clearer separation between non executive board members and executive staff.
The 9 members of the board are all CEOs, partners or CXOs of crowdfunding platforms. They are representative of the market’s diversity, as they come from 8 different countries and different types of crowdfunding, reward-based, lending and equity – albeit with a bias for equity crowdfunding. The board members will set the directions for the Network while the executive team will carry out the networks operations. Oliver Gajda, the outgoing Chairman who was combining the position of Chairman and Executive Director remains as Executive Director, heading the team of 3 staff of the ECN.
“As the ECN’s Executive Director, I am really pleased to see our organization maturing. I look forward to working with this new board of senior crowdfunding practitioners. Crowdfunding is at a turning point where it is becoming a force in European finance. At this point, if we want crowdfunding to thrive, we need to step up and promote professional standards. We just launched a revised Code of conduct and a Charter of Crowdfunders’ Rights that will help increase transparency and professionalism in European crowdfunding.”
kicking off ECN general Assembly @AlternativaPME @LumoFrance @Oneplanetcrowd @pplcompt @Invesdor pic.twitter.com/8ex5yEZijz
— ECN (@eurocrowd) June 25, 2015
The list of new board members is as follows:
- Alex Raguet, CEO Lumo, France, Chairman,
- Bart Becks, CEO Angel.me, Belgium , Vice-Chairman,
- Paul Massey, General Counsel, Crowdcube, UK,
- Philippe Dardier, Alternativa, France
- Yoann Nesme, CEO PPL, Portugal
- Jens Glaso, Founder, Trustbuddy, Sweden/Norway
- Reinhardt Willfort, CEO 1000×1000, Austria
- Coenrad de Vries,Partner Oneplanetcrowd, The Netherlands
- Tero Weckroth CEO Invesdor, Finland
The executive staff :
- Oliver Gajda, Executive Director
- Adrienne Lotos, Head of Office
- Emilie Tack, Project Manager
- Irene Tordera, Marketing Manager
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Therese Torris is an entrepreneur and consultant in eFinance and eCommerce based in Paris. She has covered crowdfunding and P2P lending since the early days when Zopa was created in the United Kingdom. She was a director of research and consulting at Gartner Group Europe, Senior VP at Forrester Research and Content VP at Twenga. She publishes a French personal finance blog, Le Blog Finance Pratique and curates crowdfunding news on Scoop.It.
