A common assumption is that entrepreneurs retain more control of their venture when opting for crowdinvesting rather than venture capital. In this article, we investigate the relevance of cash-flow, control, and exit rights awarded to crowd investors in Germany, where more flexible contracts are offered than in many other jurisdictions. In Germany, many of the rights used in venture capital investment contracts are also prevalent in crowdinvesting contracts. We find that crowd investors are asked to pay higher prices if they receive more cash-flow and exit rights, consistent with the view that these rights are valuable to the crowd. However, we find no evidence that these rights affect campaign outcome, the likelihood of securing follow-on funding, or the insolvency likelihood of the venture. We interpret this as evidence that the redemption rights stipulated in the contract make other types of control rights less relevant or investors' actions are ineffective. Furthermore, crowd investors neither trigger insolvency proceedings nor mention the enforcement of their contractual rights in investor communication blogs or popular media.

一个普遍的假设是，企业家在选择众筹而不是风险投资时，对他们的企业保留了更多的控制权。在本文中，我们调查了授予德国众筹投资者的现金流、控制权和退出权的相关性，德国提供的合同比许多其他司法管辖区更灵活。在德国，风险投资合同中使用的许多权利在众筹合同中也很普遍。我们发现，如果众筹投资者获得更多现金流和退出权，他们会被要求支付更高的价格，这与这些权利对众筹有价值的观点一致。然而，我们没有发现任何证据表明这些权利会影响竞选结果、获得后续资金的可能性或企业破产的可能性。我们将此解读为合同规定的赎回权使其他类型的控制权相关性降低或投资者行为无效的证据。此外，众筹投资者既不会触发破产程序，也不会在投资者交流博客或大众媒体中提及其合同权利的执行。