Equity Crowdfunding: Anything to Celebrate?

The development of equity crowdfunding over the last 10 years has been accompanied by many successes and achievements, but also failures. At the same time, it still faces many challenges if it wants to become mainstream in entrepreneurial finance. These challenges are particularly severe in Continental Europe. This article reviews achievements made the last 10 years and discusses important challenges that remain to be solved such as delivering appropriate risk-adjusted returns to investors, enhancing platforms’ own profitability and enabling exit of investors from startups.