Compared to their male peers, female entrepreneurs tend to face greater obstacles in raising venture funding from business angels, venture capitalists, and financial institutions. In this paper, we investigate whether this gender gap also exists in equity crowdfunding. Based on data from the German equity crowdfunding market, we find that ventures with and without female managing directors are equally successful in raising capital when launching their first equity crowdfunding campaign. In contrast, the former are significantly less successful than their peers in seasoned equity crowdfunding campaigns, and this disparity cannot be fully explained by differences in other venture-related or entrepreneur-related characteristics. However, we also find that the gender gap in seasoned offerings narrows if female entrepreneurs set more ambitious funding thresholds. Overall, our results indicate that pitching their equity crowdfunding campaigns in a more promotion-oriented way is a sensible strategy for female entrepreneurs to improve funding success.

与男性同龄人相比，女性企业家在从天使投资人、风险资本家和金融机构筹集风险资金方面往往面临更大的障碍。在本文中，我们调查了这种性别差距是否也存在于股权众筹中。根据德国股权众筹市场的数据，我们发现有和没有女性董事总经理的企业在发起首次股权众筹活动时在筹集资金方面同样成功。相比之下，前者在经验丰富的股权众筹活动中明显不如同行成功，这种差异不能完全用其他风险相关或企业家相关特征的差异来解释。然而，我们还发现，如果女性企业家设定的资金门槛更高，经验丰富的产品中的性别差距就会缩小。总体而言，我们的结果表明，以更以促销为导向的方式开展股权众筹活动是女性企业家提高融资成功率的明智策略。