Acceleration of a Social Entrepreneurship through Federation of Equity-Based Crowdfunding

Equity-based crowdfunding, featuring globally-spread internet use, small amount of investment from each backer and the public involvement, has a potential for raising a big amount of money from a long-term perspective. Many countries including Japan, aiming for economic growth by promoting entrepreneurship, reformed regulations to allow equity-based crowdfunding, open calls on the internet. Leveraging Internet of Things to create a new social infrastructure needs a large investment, which is revealed in the GE Industry Internet. For addressing social issues such as energy, environments and longevity using IoT technologies, this paper proposes a federated crowdfunding structure where complementary campaigns operate cooperatively by using a common IoT platform. Also, this paper analyses application of this proposal to previous renewable energy projects. It is concluded that a federated and IT-augmented equity-based crowdfunding platform could contribute to keeping a startup that aims to solve social problems going.