2022 – Equity crowdfunding continued to grow
While Venture Capital deals were trending down, equity crowdfunding was trending up in 2022.
2022 was a challenging year for venture-back companies. Supply chain issues, soaring inflation, skyrocketing gas prices, geopolitical crises, and market volatility sent us on a wild ride. But there were many silver linings for Investment Crowdfunding.
Tokeportal.com, 2023.03.22.
Author: Kiss Péter
North America
The North American market still makes up half of the global crowdfunding market. Q4 Venture Monitor First Look, released by PitchBook, summarizes the deals of the American market:
Source:Pitchbook
While they show Angel and Seed deals declining in 2022, Investment Crowdfunding saw the most deals funded in history. Also, this trendline continues to show an increase in funded deals. As more issuers find it challenging to access capital in 2023, they might turn online for capital.
When it comes to platforms, the Canadian platform DealMaker last year was named the third fastest growing company in Canada, with a YoY growth of 500%. In 2022, it made possible 492 million USD worth of investments, and they managed to enter the US market though they are not a significant player in that market yet.
The most comprehensive report on the US investment crowdfunding market is the 2022 Investment Crowdfunding Annual report by Crowdfund Capital Advisors (CCA). According to the report, Wefunder was the online investment platform leader by deals, number of investments made, and capital. Wefunder helped deliverf $164.1 million in investments. StartEngine came in second for investments, $73.9M, and deals, 298, but was in third for the number of investors, 42.2K.
This is not the only impressive achievement by Wefunder: it also became the first Funding Portal to cross the Atlantic, when it was approved in the Netherlands by the AFM (Autoriteit Financiële Markten) on December 27, 2022. They also created their Wefunder EU, their European website.
Source: Wefunder
Europe
Crunchbase has revealed the biggest investors and trends of European start-ups, and although PitchBooks’s data shows, that venture capital activity was down year-over year, 2022 was still the second-biggest year for Europe’s VC market.
UK-based investment crowdfunding platform Crowdcube topped the list of biggest seed stage investors with more than 80 seed investments throughout the year. This was still considerably lower than its 2021 seed funding count of more than 200 investments.
This year’s issue of the Barometer of Crowdfunding in France, published by Mazars and the French Crowdfunding Association (Financement Participatif France, FPF) shows that crowdfunding reached a new high in 2022. More than €2.3 billion was collected, a 25% increase versus year prior.
Crowdlending experienced a significant increase in 2022, passing the €2 billion mark in inflows, against €1.6 billion last year. The bulk of the loans is going to small- and medium-sized businesses.
Real estate crowdfunding remains the main driving force. Growing at a 40% rate year on year, it represents 2/3 of the overall funding, followed by the environment and renewable energies.
According to CrowdfundingBuzz, Italian startups and SMEs raised € 72.34 million through equity crowdfunding in 2022, which is 20% less than in 2021. This is the first time the Italian equity crowdfunding market experienced a slowdown since it’s existence (2014). The average minimum funding target was a more ambitious €246k compared to 236k in 2021. On the other hand, overfunding, i.e. the share of funds raised over the minimum target, decreased to € 267k from € 294k in 2021.
When it comes to platforms, the first two platforms (Mamacrowd with € 31.2 million and Crowdfundme with € 22.5 million) represented 74% of the total market, compared to 55% in 2021.
In terms of performance, Crowdfundme grew the most (+€ 6.1 million, or 37% growth), followed by WeAreStarting (+€ 1.1 million, or 74% growth) and Starsup (+€ 0.9 million, which had no successful campaigns in 2021).
Sources:
ICYMI: Wefunder Was Approved To Provide Crowdfunding Services In Europe | Crowdfund Insider
These were Europe’s leading seed and early-stage investors in 2022 (siliconrepublic.com)
French Crowdfunding Passes The €2 Billion Mark | Crowdfund Insider
https://scaleupitaly.com/equity-crowdfunding-italian-startups-and-smes-2022/
