Our research reveals that there is a viable potential for crowdfunding as a complementary financing tool for cleantech startups. 

Cleantech startups often find it difficult to attract investments due to their long horizon development, need for large upfront capital investment, and high technological risks among other reasons. Krishnan, Purevsuren, Taniguchi and Duriaux explore what opportunities crowdfunding platforms provide for financing cleantech startups.

They find that the biggest advantage of crowdfunding platforms is the introduction of non-financial motivation factors into the purely finance-based investment decision-making model. This makes it more likely for cleantech with environmental impact motivations to get funded. 

However, crowdfunding appears to be more suited for specific types of business models. Startups with business-to-consumers (B2C) models may find it easier to attract individual investors than startups with business-to-business (B2B) models.

The research reveals that there is potential for using crowdfunding as a complementary financing tool and lay out recommendations for governments on how to maximize the potential of crowdfunding into the cleantech startup sector. 

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Interdisciplinary Master's students, Sarayu Krishnan, Khaliun Purevsuren, Ryota Taniguchi and Florian Duriaux, conducted a Capstone Applied Research Project as part of the SNF-NRP73 research project "Financing Investments in Clean Technologies", led and supervised by Prof Joëlle Noailly.