Crowdfunding platforms have exhibited explosive growth over the past decade. In this paper, we map out what we know about crowdfunding, and chart directions for future work. We argue the crowdfunding literature simultaneously experiences the ‘problem of riches’ and the ‘dearth of evidence’. The ‘problem of riches’ is a consequence of the popularity of crowdfunding research across scholarly disciplines: keen insights sit in disciplinary silos. Scholars may be ignorant of work published beyond their disciplinary journals and may overlook or replicate extant findings due to divergent terminologies and frameworks. The second problem, the ‘dearth of evidence’, has to do with a unique feature of knowledge production in the crowdfunding literature. In particular, most of the studies analyse funding patterns using data from a single platform. Hence, we know little whether extant work can be replicated to other platforms. We bridge the disciplinary divide such that we can take stock of the crowdfunding literatures, and advance a productive guide for future research efforts in the context of entrepreneurial finance. We draw on key themes in the literature to organize our review of existing crowdfunding studies. The contributions of the chapter are threefold. First, we document crowdfunding patterns; second, we highlight areas of agreement as well as inconsistencies; third, we connect the aforementioned findings to the broader entrepreneurial finance literature.
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