Responsabilidad penal y personalidad de la pena

Andersen and Mauritzen (2016) have reported that it is sometimes better for companies to choose online crowdfunding rather than traditional financing when domestic interest rates are high. Interest rates can be quite volatile, differing from bank to bank and depending on the country’s economy. In the United States, interest rates have been kept low since the economic collapse because those in charge of fiscal policy have been operating on the belief that low interest rates will encourage economic growth. This has, in turn, led to the greater availability of credit at reasonable rates. For this reason, the United States has not seen crowdfunding become quite as popular as in Germany. As Andersen and Mauritzen (2016) have explained, the rising interest rates in many Germany countries have led company founders to opt not to seek a bank loan; that option might drain money out of the company without providing the boost that comes from having an investor pushing the firm. This means that motivation differs on a case by case basis; firms consider the numbers, the interest rates, and the alternatives that could allow them to better position themselves to move forward (Lehner 2013).

At least some studies (Cholakova and Clarysse 2015; Mauritzen 2016) have demonstrated that one of the primary reasons companies seek crowdfunding is the desire to protect their equity. It bears mentioning at this point that the literature does not claim that all forms of crowdfunding are created equally. Some ventures provide equity to investors. Others provide incentives or rewards (Mauritzen 2016). For those ventures that raise small amounts of money from many different people, it is often not ownership in the company that is provided, but a place on an advisory board, a special

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experience not available to the general public, or even a basic prize (Cholakova and Clarysse 2015; Mauritzen 2016). Certain companies, for instance, provide naming opportunities. Restaurants have offered people a chance to name an item on their menu. Other SMEs have offered investors the opportunity to name a room in their building. Cholakova and Clarysse (2015) have reported that even though a number of crowdfunding campaigns offer equity, the majority are still reward based. Business founders rely on this approach to obtain the cash they need while still retaining equity (Cholakova and Clarysse 2015; Mauritzen 2016).

For many business founders, maintaining equity is sacrosanct (Cholakova and Clarysse 2015; Mauritzen 2016). They want to keep as much ownership in the company as possible because, throughout Germany, the main reason people start businesses is their desire to later sell the business and earn a profit from that sale. If they begin to give away equity, they will quickly find themselves in a position where selling the company would not lead to the desired profit (Lehner 2013).

While debt financing is also a way to obtain business funding without having to give up equity, it entails certain conditions, including the fact that in many cases, the bank effectively owns the company and can encumber it in myriad ways if things go wrong Hervé et al. (2016).

Banks do not provide the boost that investors do, and moreover, they can drain money out of a growing company that needs to keep its cash flow high when just starting out. Crowdfunding can be a way for company founders to obtain the cash and boost they need without the need to face the significant problems associated with traditional investing. Namely, they get to keep all the valuable equity that they have built up in the company (Hervé et al. 2016).

Hervé et al. (2016) have noted that one of the top motivations of people who invest in these campaigns is the desire to feel involved in something larger than themselves. With this in mind, the motivation for the business owners is to give these investors what they want while keeping that which is most important in their own eyes, namely, the stake in the company. A venture capitalist or bank would have other concerns and considerations not aligned with the founder’s ultimate interest in keeping firm control

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of the company’s value in the hopes of profiting later (Cholakova and Clarysse 2015; Herve et al. 2016; Mauritzen 2016).

The foregoing discussion of the importance of crowdfunding can be considered in light of the first research question of the study, which is as follows: What is the percentage of crowdfunding in the overall funding of SMEs? Although the importance of crowdfunding to SMEs has been discussed from numerous conceptual perspectives, there do not appear to be previous studies in which the percentage of crowdfunding among SMEs has been quantified for a large (n > 100) sample of companies.

Conceptually, one of the common themes in the literature on the importance of crowdfunding to SMEs is that of cooperative game theory. Given that companies have a vested interest in maintaining equity (Cholakova and Clarysse 2015; Mauritzen 2016), the importance of crowdfunding to SMEs can be described in terms of retaining equity. Because crowdfunding depends on numerous, small investments, no single investor has the ability to apply competitive game-theory dynamics in order to demand equity in return for investment (Andersen & Mauritzen, 2016). Thus, crowdfunding is particularly attractive to SMEs, but the importance of crowdfunding has not been quantified in terms of how much SME funding actually comes from crowdfunding.