Venture capitalists (VCs) make only a small number of investments and are more likely to invest in ventures where other VCs have invested previously. As such, valuable opportunities may be forgone if they are not funded by VCs in the first place. We demonstrate how crowdfunding (CF) can remedy this concern. Using a sample of new technology-based ventures, we reveal that ventures initially funded through reward-based CF can be even more likely than those initially backed by VCs in attracting follow-up funds from VCs. This happens when ventures originally funded via reward-based CF complement the certification they derive from CF with patents and a founding team with a track record of success. In those cases, VCs rely on the crowd more than their peers. Overall, the results suggest that signal complementarity can at least equalize the effectiveness of an a priori inferior and an a priori superior signal.

风险资本家（VC）仅进行少量投资，并且更有可能投资于其他VC之前已投资的企业。因此，如果最初没有由风险投资家提供资金，则可能会放弃宝贵的机会。我们演示了众筹（CF）如何解决此问题。通过使用基于新技术的风险投资样本，我们发现，最初通过基于奖励的CF资助的风险投资企业比吸引风险投资者的后续资金更有可能比风险投资者最初支持的风险更高。当最初由基于奖励的CF资助的企业补充了他们从CF获得的专利，拥有成功记录的创始团队的证明时，就会发生这种情况。在这种情况下，风险投资人比其他人更依赖人群。全面的，先验先验和先验先验信号。