100 members, one global conversation: GECA reaches The First 100
The Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance (GECA) has reached 100 member organisations, completing The First 100: the founding members of the global regulated crowdfunding conversation. Here is where we came from, what this community has built, and the programme now underway to shape the industry's next decade.
What is the Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance?
GECA is the trusted convener for the worldwide regulated crowdfunding community. It is the global room where crowdfunding platforms, regulators, technology providers, industry associations, researchers and academics exchange ideas, share best practice, and advance the industry together through year-round collaboration and coordinated action.
While equity crowdfunding is in our name and at our heart, GECA's community spans the full breadth of regulated crowdfunding: equity, real estate, peer-to-peer lending, debt, bonds and beyond. Wherever everyday investors fund businesses and projects through regulated online platforms, that is our industry, and it is one industry.
Regulated crowdfunding is how thousands of businesses and projects around the world now raise capital from the communities that believe in them. But for most of its history, the industry has been fragmented: national markets solving identical problems in separate rooms, regulators writing rules without hearing what worked elsewhere, and platforms reinventing what a peer on another continent had already perfected. GECA exists to change that.
Where GECA came from
GECA began as a conversation between a handful of believers who shared one conviction: that regulated crowdfunding is a global industry that behaves like a local one, and that it would move faster the moment it started talking to itself.
There was no grand launch budget and no legacy institution behind it. There was a shared belief, a growing network of practitioners willing to show up for each other, and a simple promise: convene the industry, globally, properly, for the long term.
One hundred organisations later, that promise has a membership.
Who are The First 100?
The First 100 are the founding members of GECA, and they span every corner of the industry and the globe: crowdfunding platforms across equity, real estate, lending and debt that have collectively raised billions, national and regional crowdfunding associations, regulatory and policy voices, the technology providers building the industry's infrastructure, data and research specialists, law firms, service providers, and academic institutions studying how community capital works.
Market leaders sit alongside emerging platforms. Voices from the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe sit alongside members from Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Americas. Every one of them now holds permanent Founding Member status, numbered #1 through #100, recognised for as long as GECA exists.
What has GECA achieved so far?
In a remarkably short time, this community has built real convening infrastructure for the industry: a Steering Committee bringing together some of the most respected voices in global crowdfunding, global think tanks convening cross-border conversations, an AI Governance Task Force examining how artificial intelligence changes crowdfunding operations, compliance and investor experience, the Global Pulse briefing tracking regulated crowdfunding developments around the world, the GECA Podcast featuring the people shaping the industry, regular industry newsletters, and a growing presence on the world's stages, from Belgium to Málaga, Los Angeles to Washington DC.
Behind the headlines sits the quieter achievement: week after week of member conversations where a platform in one market learns from an identical problem solved in another, where practitioners compare what actually converts investors, and where the industry's collective knowledge compounds.
What is GECA launching next?
Reaching 100 members isn't the finish line. It's the operating scale GECA was built for, and the programme now underway is the most ambitious in the alliance's history.
Two new task forces. Following the AI Governance Task Force, GECA is launching a PR and Media Task Force to champion the industry's story to the wider world, and an Institutional Funding Opportunities Task Force to explore how institutional capital can participate in regulated crowdfunding at scale, one of the industry's biggest unlock opportunities.
More of what members value most. Regular and timely podcast episodes, the industry bulletin tracking developments worldwide, and GECA Happenings keeping the community connected to everything the alliance is doing.
And one flagship programme to set the industry's agenda:
The Future of Crowdfunding Initiative 2026-2027
GECA is convening the global industry around one question: what will crowdfunding look like in five years? The initiative runs in four stages, culminating in a definitive global report.
Stage 1: Conversations on the Future of Crowdfunding (from August 2026). A roundtable series convening leading voices across three big questions:
- What industries are best suited for equity crowdfunding? Sector performance data, the fastest-growing markets, and what different jurisdictions can learn from each other.
- What makes a successful crowdfunding ecosystem? Comparing markets, regulation, platform models, cross-border investment and secondary markets around the world.
- How do we unlock the next decade of crowdfunding? AI, institutional investment, retail participation, platform collaboration, and what would create 10x growth.
Stage 2: The Global Industry Survey (September-October 2026). A Delphi-style research exercise, GECA's largest primary research to date, drawing on its 100+ members and supporters worldwide. Experts complete an anonymous survey, findings are aggregated and shared back, participants refine their views, and areas of consensus and divergence across regulation, technology, investor behaviour, consolidation, cross-border activity and institutional participation are identified. Participants will be featured and positioned in the final report.
Stage 3: The Findings Webinar (late 2026). A global webinar presenting the results, exploring where the industry agrees, where it diverges, and what it means for the decade ahead. GECA also expects to present emerging findings at in-person industry events in the USA and Germany in October and November 2026.
Stage 4: The Future of Crowdfunding Report (Q1 2027). A flagship global thought leadership report combining the Delphi findings, regional perspectives and expert commentary: the definitive picture of where regulated crowdfunding is heading, built by the industry itself.
No single market can see the whole picture of this industry. One hundred member organisations across every continent and every crowdfunding vertical can. That is precisely what a global convener is for.
Why does 100 members matter?
Because convening only works at scale. A conversation between five platforms is a call. A conversation between 100 organisations spanning platforms, regulators, technologists and researchers on every continent is an industry talking to itself, and an industry that talks to itself gets better, faster, everywhere at once.
It matters for founders and project owners, because a coordinated industry means more capital moving across borders to the businesses that deserve it. It matters for investors, because shared standards and shared learning mean better protection and better opportunities. And it matters for regulators, because they now have one global community to engage rather than a hundred fragmented voices.
Join the next 100
Founding status is closed, but the conversation is wide open. The next 100 members join at the most exciting moment in GECA's history: a seat at the roundtables, a voice in the Global Industry Survey, and a place in the research that will define the Future of Crowdfunding Report. If your organisation builds, regulates, powers, studies or serves regulated crowdfunding anywhere in the world, the room is open.
Join GECA: https://thegeca.org/join
The Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance is the trusted convener for the worldwide regulated crowdfunding community. Learn more at https://thegeca.org, listen to the GECA Podcast at https://thegeca.org/podcast/, and follow GECA on LinkedIn and X.
AI Governance in Crowdfunding: Why GECA Has Launched Its First Task Force
Artificial intelligence is no longer a future conversation for the crowdfunding industry. It is already here.
Equity crowdfunding platforms and alternative finance providers are beginning to use AI to review deals, streamline due diligence, manage compliance workflows, engage investors, and scale their operations. The potential is enormous: faster processes, lower costs, more consistent quality, and better experiences for founders and investors alike. For a sector built on making capital more accessible, these are not small gains.
But alongside the opportunity sit important questions. How do crowdfunding platforms adopt AI without losing accountability? What does human oversight of AI actually look like in practice? How should the industry respond to emerging AI regulation, including the EU AI Act? And how do we make sure that trust, the foundation this entire sector is built on, is strengthened by these tools rather than eroded?
These are the questions the Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance (GECA) believes the industry should be answering together. Which is why we are launching our first official Task Force: the GECA AI Governance Task Force.
What is the GECA AI Governance Task Force?
The GECA AI Governance Task Force is a global industry initiative that brings together expertise from across the crowdfunding ecosystem to develop practical approaches to responsible AI adoption. It is the first official Task Force launched by the Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance, the industry body for equity crowdfunding worldwide.
That word "practical" matters. There is no shortage of theoretical discussion about AI in financial services. What crowdfunding platforms actually need is guidance grounded in real-world experience: what works, what to watch out for, and how organisations of different sizes and jurisdictions can adopt AI tools with confidence.
Rather than prescribing solutions, the Task Force will provide a forum for discussion, knowledge sharing, and the development of practical guidance informed by a broad range of perspectives. It will begin with a focused group of founding participants drawn from different regions, organisations, and disciplines. Over the coming months this group will establish the Task Force's priorities, objectives, and programme of activity, before participation is opened up more broadly across the GECA community.
Who is chairing the Task Force?
The GECA Steering Committee has appointed Neera Patel, Chief Product Officer at Dacxi Chain, to chair the AI Governance Task Force.
Neera brings extensive experience at the intersection of technology, product development, data, and artificial intelligence. She is deeply involved in the practical application of AI in financial services and advocates for ensuring that innovation is accompanied by appropriate governance, transparency, and oversight. Known for combining strategic thinking with hands-on implementation, she champions approaches that help organisations harness the benefits of AI while maintaining trust, accountability, and regulatory awareness.
"I'm excited to be leading the GECA AI Governance Task Force at a time when AI is rapidly evolving how organisations function, remain competitive, and serve their customers," Neera said. "The opportunity ahead is not simply to discuss AI, but to help the industry explore how it can be adopted responsibly, effectively, and in ways that create genuine value. By bringing together expertise from across the crowdfunding ecosystem, we have an opportunity to learn from one another, identify common challenges, and develop practical frameworks and guidance that can benefit the wider community."
Andy Field (MCIM), GECA Steering Committee Lead, sees the Task Force as a milestone in the Alliance's evolution.
"Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming one of the most important topics facing our industry," he said. "It has the potential to transform how crowdfunding platforms operate, optimise their processes, engage with investors, assess opportunities, and scale their businesses. At the same time, there is a clear need for thoughtful discussion around governance, transparency, and best practice. The creation of Task Forces is an important step in GECA's evolution, allowing members and supporters to collaborate on issues that matter to the future of the ecosystem. We are delighted that Neera has agreed to lead this first initiative."
Why does crowdfunding need AI governance now?
The timing is not accidental. AI regulation is moving: the EU AI Act is introducing new expectations around transparency, human oversight, and accountability for AI systems used in financial contexts. Crowdfunding platforms are moving too, with many already experimenting with AI in deal review, due diligence, and compliance operations. The gap between adoption and governance is exactly where risk lives, and closing that gap is a job no single platform can do alone.
An industry that gets AI governance right earns something valuable: the confidence of investors, founders, and regulators that innovation in equity crowdfunding is being handled responsibly. An industry that gets it wrong risks the trust that everything else depends on.
That is the work ahead.
What happens next?
The Task Force will spend its formation period defining priorities and its programme of work. Following that, additional members and supporters will be invited to join, creating a diverse working community of experts from across the global crowdfunding and alternative finance ecosystem.
This is the first of a number of initiatives designed to encourage greater collaboration, knowledge sharing, and industry leadership across the global crowdfunding community. Further details on the Task Force's objectives, membership, and future activities will be announced in the coming months.
If you would like to learn more about the initiative, or register interest in future participation, follow GECA's updates or get in touch through thegeca.org.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is the GECA AI Governance Task Force? The GECA AI Governance Task Force is a global industry initiative launched by the Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance to help the crowdfunding sector adopt artificial intelligence responsibly. It brings together experts from across the industry to share knowledge and develop practical guidance on AI governance, transparency, and human oversight.
What is GECA? GECA is the Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance, the industry body for equity crowdfunding worldwide. It connects crowdfunding platforms, industry experts, and supporters across the globe to encourage collaboration, knowledge sharing, and industry leadership. The AI Governance Task Force is GECA's first official Task Force.
Who chairs the GECA AI Governance Task Force? Neera Patel, Chief Product Officer at Dacxi Chain, has been appointed Chair by the GECA Steering Committee. She brings extensive experience in technology, product development, data, and the practical application of AI in financial services.
Why does the crowdfunding industry need AI governance? Crowdfunding platforms are increasingly using AI for deal review, due diligence, compliance, and investor engagement. Without appropriate governance, transparency, and human oversight, this adoption creates regulatory and trust risks. Emerging regulation such as the EU AI Act is also introducing new obligations for AI used in financial contexts, making industry-level guidance increasingly important.
What will the Task Force actually do? The Task Force will provide a forum for discussion, knowledge sharing, and the development of practical guidance on responsible AI adoption in crowdfunding. It begins with a founding group of participants from different regions and disciplines who will define its priorities and programme of work, rather than prescribing solutions from day one.
How does the EU AI Act affect crowdfunding platforms? The EU AI Act introduces expectations around transparency, human oversight, accountability, and documentation for AI systems, with implications for AI used in financial services. Obligations phase in over time, and platforms using AI in their operations will need to understand which requirements apply to them and when. Exploring practical approaches to this is part of the Task Force's remit.
Can my organisation join the GECA AI Governance Task Force? The Task Force is beginning with a focused founding group. Once its priorities and programme are established, participation will be opened more broadly across the GECA community. Organisations interested in future participation can register interest through thegeca.org Or email Andy Field (MCIM) Andy Field - Andrew@thegega.org
Reg CF at 10 Years: Woodie Neiss on Crowdfinance Indices & Scaling US Crowdfunding | GECA Podcast
Reg CF at 10 Years: Woodie Neiss on Crowdfinance Indices & Scaling US Crowdfunding | GECA Podcast
What if the real key to unlocking US crowdfunding isn’t just regulation – it’s transparent data?
After 10 years, nearly $3 billion raised, and 11,000+ offerings, US investment crowdfunding has proven its potential – but the industry has been flying blind without the benchmarks that mature capital markets take for granted. Sherwood “Woodie” Neiss, one of the pioneers who wrote and passed the US JOBS Act, has spent a decade tracking every Reg CF offering to build the “S&P 500 for private capital formation.” His vision: use data to unlock the next chapter of US crowdfunding – raising caps, enabling liquidity, funding underrepresented founders, and bringing large institutions into the market.
Join Andy Field in conversation with Woodie Neiss, principal at Crowdfund Capital Advisors and creator of the newly launched CCA Crowdfinance Indices, as he shares hard-won lessons from a decade shaping US crowdfunding policy. From the Sand Hill Road negotiations that set the original $1M cap to the case for raising it to $20M today, Woodie breaks down what’s actually working in US Reg CF – and what’s still broken.
Key insights:
- What 11,000+ offerings and nearly $3B raised reveal about investor sentiment and market cycles
- Why dollars are down but investor conviction and average check sizes are UP
- The shift from 65% pre-revenue startups to 65% post-revenue companies today
- Why 40% of Reg CF funding goes to women and minority founders (vs 2% in traditional VC)
- Sector rotation: business services, software/AI, and now healthcare tech emerging
- Why Reg CF is faster than VC (90 days vs 12+ months) – and why that matters
- The $20M cap case: why raising limits with scaled guardrails unlocks the next wave
- Blue sky laws, secondary markets, and the liquidity problem
- How to 10X the industry: bringing in JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and venture funds
- Why US Reg CF needs tax incentives like the UK’s EIS scheme
Data reveals opportunity. Regulation enables scale. Institutions unlock growth.
ALSO AVAILABLE ON
GECA PODCAST – SHERWOOD “WOODIE” NEISS (CROWDFUND CAPITAL ADVISORS)
FORMATTED TRANSCRIPT
Andy Field (Host): Hello, everybody. Welcome to Conversations on the Future of Crowdfunding, the podcast from GECA where we speak with the people shaping the future of crowdfunding and alternative finance across the world.
I’m delighted to be joined today by Sherwood, otherwise known as “Woodie” Neiss. Woodie is widely recognized as one of the pioneers of the modern crowdfunding industry and played a leading role in the development and passage of the US JOBS Act, which paved the way, as most of you will know, for equity crowdfunding in the United States.
Today, as principal at Crowdfund Capital Advisors, he continues to work with governments, regulators, policymakers, and industry leaders around the world, helping to shape the future of entrepreneurial finance. Most recently, Woodie and his team launched the CCA Crowdfinance Indices, the first daily benchmarks tracking activity in the US crowdfunding market. This really gives us new insights into capital formation and investor behavior in the States.
Woodie, it’s a real pleasure to have you with us. Welcome to the podcast.
Woodie Neiss (Guest): Andy, it is great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Andy Field (Host): No problem at all. Our listeners and viewers will probably recognize you—I know you’ve appeared on several of our events before, and we’re truly grateful for that.
So we talked about the fact that Crowdfund Capital Advisors (CCA) recently launched the Crowdfinance Indices. This is a family of daily benchmarks that measure the activity across the US Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF) market. It’s built on your CClear data platform, which essentially captures the entire Reg CF market. Why did you create the Crowdfinance Indices?
Woodie Neiss (Guest): It needed to be done. There was no S&P 500 for private capital formation, particularly when it comes to investment crowdfunding.
For the past eight or ten years, we’ve been tracking all this data—over 11,000 offerings, nearly $3 billion—and everyone’s been looking at the dollars, trying to figure out what the dollars mean. I’ve been constantly saying it’s not just the dollars that measure the outcomes of what’s happening in the marketplace. You’ve got investor sentiment, market health, success rates, valuations, sector rotation.
Until there was enough data, you can’t make an index in year one. You also have to have a baseline year, so you need the industry to develop for a bit. We needed to wait for that evolution to happen. Ten years in, you definitely have that timeframe to create an index. Now we can measure what’s happening in the market on a daily basis.
I think that’s good for so many reasons. First, it’s transparency into what’s happening in the marketplace. Cycles are happening. We’re going through a down cycle right now in the United States. But it creates an actual talking point—not just for us as industry watchers and insiders, but for conversations we want to have with regulators. It gives us a baseline: “Listen, this is what the indices are showing. This is what you need to be paying attention to. These are things we should do to improve things because of these indices.”
Andy Field (Host): So it’s a real tool to help educate the regulators and policymakers as well. My next question was going to be: what insights has this revealed to you now that you’ve perhaps never had before? I know you mentioned it’s cyclical and we’re in a bit of a downturn at the moment. Is that the key thing, or is there anything else?
Woodie Neiss (Guest): No, you know what the coolest thing to come out of it is? COVID led to this massive uptick in people sitting at home in front of their computers and, by default for the industry itself, investing in these online offerings.
We saw the most capital go into investment crowdfunding take place in 2020, 2021. Then there’s been a trailing off since then, partially because we saw the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. VCs have contracted, they’ve moved upstream, and that’s had a trickle-down effect that’s affected investment crowdfunding, where fewer dollars have been coming into these offerings.
But what the indices have shown us—which you wouldn’t have known unless you’re paying attention to this—is even though there have been fewer dollars coming in, the number of investors stepping in has grown or stayed flat. So the indices show there’s more conviction by the people coming into the marketplace today than there was 10 years ago. They are placing bigger bets. They are writing larger checks.
The indices actually show that through investor sentiment: the number of people coming in, the number of people writing checks, the average size of their checks. That was one of the biggest surprises coming out of it, because what it tells me is—I created the lemonade, I drink the lemonade, I’m a firm believer in the lemonade—I get frustrated when people say, “Oh, investment crowdfunding’s not working.” I’m like, “No, you don’t know that.” If you look at the average check size of people coming in, they are more convinced than ever that these are companies they want to back. And because we have these indices, I can point to that now and say, “You’ve got a feeling. I’ve got data.”
Andy Field (Host): Yeah, absolutely. You say that surprises you. Is that probably the biggest surprise, or is it something you personally may have been expecting?
Woodie Neiss (Guest): I see it all the time, so I’ve been talking about this trend that’s been happening. But it’s been hard for me to explain it to people other than through what the data shows. The indices clearly allow me to point to it and let them track it over time.
Everything about the indices shows interesting things. When you drill down into that investor sentiment underlying these bigger checks, the data shows people are consolidating around quality. When the industry launched 10 years ago, more than 65% of the companies were pre-revenue startups. We look at a startup as a company that’s less than three years old. Now, fast-forward today, over 65% of the companies are post-revenue established—meaning they’re over three years old. Investors are gravitating towards these companies that are lower risk, which I can truly appreciate.
The other thing is how the sectors have changed. Leading up to 2020, you saw a lot of business service-related things. Then after 2021, it was software technology, which is still hot. AI has driven everything—we’re seeing a lot of AI, even within this early-stage space.
But one of the fascinating things I’ve seen over the past 12 months is how there’s been a migration of healthcare technology companies within investment crowdfunding. Here in the United States, you’ve probably seen what’s happened with our government pulling grants and everything out. That’s affected healthcare companies primarily. When you’ve got these startups that rely on grants that don’t qualify for them anymore, they’re coming online looking for capital.
What I love about this sector is that we have platforms launching that are healthcare-related investment crowdfunding platforms—not just platforms for issuers in the healthcare industry. Think of the entire community around those startups: doctors, researchers, academics. They understand the problems being addressed through these crowdfunding offerings, and now they’ve created a community where they can actually help fund these startups—not only with capital, but with the brainpower these companies need to get to the next level.
I can go on and on about what’s in the data and how it translates, but I think a lot of people just don’t see this.
Andy Field (Host): You mentioned communities there, and just thinking aloud: good news travels fast among communities. If it’s working well, that snowball effect in particular sectors is going to create its own momentum. Healthcare startups will see what’s happening, see how capital’s being raised via this method, and look to do it themselves. That probably explains some of the reason behind its growth in popularity.
Okay, that’s really interesting. You put out regular updates on the indices, don’t you? So people can have a look at those, and we’ll put a link to make sure people can access that information. Just to move from the data to the bigger picture: you played a really key role in the development and passage of the US JOBS Act. Looking back at the vision behind the JOBS Act—and I’ve asked a couple of people about this before who were also involved—how close do you think we are to achieving that original vision?
Woodie Neiss (Guest): If I’m being honest, I’d say halfway. I had a lot of promise and hope for what the industry would become. I thought it would become the de facto starting place for all startups to raise capital. I thought our government, our regulators, our platforms would have really leaned into investor and issuer education, so that everyone would know this opportunity exists. That hasn’t happened.
I thought the media would’ve been like, “This is gangbusters for startups. Look at the innovation happening here.” I would’ve thought there’d been television shows talking about these startups raising millions of dollars, creating jobs, creating innovation at a pace we’ve never seen before. That hasn’t happened yet.
But what has worked is access. The fact that this is happening in 2,300 cities across the United States is fundamentally amazing. You don’t need to be in San Francisco. You don’t need to be in New York City. You don’t need to be in these capital centers to raise capital. The data shows it’s happening all across the country.
The other thing the data shows is we’ve actually been able to fund people that VCs do not fund—non-VC-able founders. About 40% of the dataset are women and minorities. When you look at what happens in traditional Silicon Valley, about 2% of the companies funded there have women or minority founders. They talk about this, they do the big talk about how we need to get more capital to women and minority founders—and for good reason. Because we have all the data—we track every single offering and their financials and their annual reports—we can see how these companies run by women and minorities are operating year over year.
They run stronger companies. The revenues grow faster. They are more judicious in how they spend money, so they’re leaner in how they run. This has opened the door for them to access capital in a way they couldn’t before, partially because they’re raising money from people who look like them—other women, other minorities. It’s created an opportunity that didn’t really exist before, that nobody considered before, and I love that.
The other thing I would say in terms of the glass half full: we have created an on-ramp for people to access capital with speed and efficiency. We live in this attention deficit disorder society, so these offerings can’t stay up for an extended period of time because people are going to forget about it. You have to hit them quick. You have to get the marketing out there. You have to have the awareness. And you have to go in with a community of people that are ready to fund you.
When you have all those pieces together, what we’ve shown is it’s very fast to get your offering up and running. It’s a very standardized process in terms of the forms you have to complete. These offerings run for about 90 days on average. If you’re going out and raising money from VCs, you’re probably looking at a year or so to get capital, at least here in the United States. We can leapfrog that and get you capital at a much more rapid pace.
If we can do that as an industry—help startups get funded, show them how to raise capital responsibly, show them how to use that capital responsibly—then in fact, when they do qualify for VC funding… And by the way, if you look at the data, when the industry launched, there were no VCs in this industry. They thought this was adverse selection—this misguided thing that only the bad companies would raise money online. When in reality, most of these people just don’t know a VC to raise money from.
Now up to 20% of the offerings on a daily basis have some sort of VC participation. So VCs are not only getting into the deals now, but this is the graduating pool for all future funded companies. I think when we get to where I think we’re going to be, every single unicorn out there will start their fundraising journey through investment crowdfunding.
Andy Field (Host): So two big successes there: speed of access to capital for founders, and access to capital for women and minority groups. That’s been a real success. You mentioned that you thought originally crowdfunding would be the default funding route for startups. Why do you think that hasn’t happened? What’s holding it back?
Woodie Neiss (Guest): A few things. One, when the industry launched, we put this $1 million cap on it as the maximum you could raise. That was a strategy on our end. When we were working on the framework, we had a roundtable in Silicon Valley.
By my background, I had started a healthcare technology company. It was VC-funded. I sold it to a private equity group. So I went to all of my VC friends that I knew, and we had a roundtable on Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto. I asked them, “This is what we’re working on. At what point are we going to be stepping on your toes? I want you to get behind what we’re doing because I think we can create strong companies for you to actually look into investing.”
I was like, “$10 million?” They said, “No, there’s no way you can go out with $10 million.” “$5 million?” Some people said, “Yeah, five.” Other people said, “No, that’s still… we play in that area.” The one thing they all agreed on was, “Woodie, if you go to DC with a $1 million cap, we’re not going to push back on you.” That’s where we put that cap in.
What that cap did is it really cut out a bunch of companies because they were like, “I need to raise more than a million dollars. This doesn’t relate to me.” So we proved that everything was working, then we moved it up to $5 million. That’s where our current cap is.
I’ve really been working hard to increase that cap again because what we’re doing by having these caps is restricting the companies that can find value in going online to raise money from their customers/investors—or as I like to call them, “investomers”—and bring value not just in terms of capital, but in terms of marketing, awareness, branding, and all that.
I think it’s been constrained by the caps. I think it’s been constrained by people who think it’s confusing. I don’t think they’ve taken the time to understand the standardization that’s come in.
The regulators can bring more clarity to the industry. One of my frustrations has been that in the United States, if you raise money through investment crowdfunding and you’re successful, you have to file an annual report within 180 days from your fiscal year end. Compliance with that is historically low because people are like, “What do I need to file? How much detail do I need to go into?”
The SEC hasn’t come out with clear guidance on that. They’re like, “You need to update Form C.” Form C, if you look at it, can be 200 pages long. An entrepreneur that raised $100,000 through investment crowdfunding doesn’t want to go through a 200-page document making sure everything’s still the same.
My whole attitude is guidance should scale based on the size of the offering. It doesn’t do that at all—which is the whole reason we created investment crowdfunding, by the way. But we need clarity. If you’re doing an annual report, the key things investors need are: what material changes have been made? What material things have happened at revenue? What material things have happened at expenses? Have you issued more stock that would affect the cap table? And then here are the financials.
If we had that type of clarity from our regulators, more people would be filing their annual report—which is not only good for investors to see, but the companies that are compliant with their reporting requirements are the ones VCs are going to look at and say, “They raised the money. They’re transparent about what they’re doing. They’re communicative.”
Andy Field (Host): Yeah, that builds a good case. Okay, so that’s something holding it back—simplifying that process, giving more guidance. Is there any investor behavior you think has been holding things back? Maybe because of the awareness side of things. I’m talking about as an industry: there’s almost a PR exercise that needs to be done for the industry. We’ve heard even people talking about giving it a rebrand. I’m not saying we necessarily go that far, but that sort of whole awareness piece that every stakeholder in the industry can get involved with—platforms, media, marketing companies. Is that something you consider quite important?
Woodie Neiss (Guest): It is. Though if you think about it, we sit in front of our computers, and everyone’s focused on what they’re doing in front of them. If you’re investing in the stock market, you might have an E-Trade account here in the United States, or you might use Fidelity. There’s one location where you can go to get information about what’s happening and make your investments. That sort of doesn’t exist for us. We’ve got Wefunder, StartEngine, all these different platforms.
To have that sort of unified space—even if it did exist, I think investors don’t even know where to go for it. It’s not that we need to recreate that. It needs to be that Fidelity, these larger institutions that cover the capital markets, need to carve out marked portions for investment crowdfunding and early-stage finance.
The fact is you can invest in these startups through your retirement account. As long as that’s happening, these larger institutions should have education in there: “Don’t risk more than you can afford to lose. This is the highest-risk area of investing, so be smart about it. But if you want to do it, these are opportunities happening right now in front of you.”
That doesn’t exist. I think the broader institutions need to be brought into the conversation, rather than us trying to create a platform. Think about the marketing engine it takes—a Bloomberg to get the message out there. We integrated with Bloomberg way early on, which allowed us to have some awareness, but the market wasn’t there yet.
Now we’ve got this opportunity to have these conversations with financial institutions: “Hey guys, pay attention to us. We’re small by default, but we can be something that’s a sizable part of the early-stage finance industry.”
The reality is investing in early-stage money, rather than late-stage companies, creates like a 70% better yield. If we can guide not all the money, but a greater part of a smaller percentage, to these early-stage companies, it’s going to benefit them through access to capital, benefit these investors through diversification, and benefit these investors through a yield opportunity they might not have seen before.
There’s a great opportunity—or missed opportunity—right now for these investors in the space because in our dataset we count well over 2 million checks that have been written. 2 million. That’s a lot of people that have pledged conviction to this, and we’re not taking advantage of that.
Andy Field (Host): No, that’s a great way of framing it, actually—”pledging conviction”—because that’s exactly what they’re doing. It’s their hard-earned money, and they’re really putting a lot of faith into it.
Okay, ridiculous scenario: if you were regulator for a day, and your objective wasn’t just to protect investors but to actually maximize entrepreneurship, innovation, and wealth creation while still preventing fraud, what would your crowdfunding framework look like?
Woodie Neiss (Guest): Right off the bat, I’d raise the cap to $20 million. I’d do it with guardrails. I’d make sure that if you’re raising over $5 million, you have an audit. That just makes sense. Those companies raising that kind of money usually have higher revenues and can support the cost of an audit. Under $5 million, the whole point of a review or CEO sign-off is questionable. I’d lean towards a review just because it adds credibility that someone has reviewed the numbers other than the CEO. But if you’re raising $100,000, it doesn’t pay to have that type of review.
So I’d put these guardrails in place. I’d raise it to $20 million.
The second thing I would do is address liquidity. Liquidity is an important part of the conversation everyone talks about, but we need to focus on it. We’re 10 years in. There are companies in here that have gone public. There are companies that have been acquired. We need to have a better structure that allows companies that raised money through investment crowdfunding to actually allow their early-stage investors to exit.
That can be as simple as a VC coming in, offering to buy them out at a price that everyone agrees on where they’re not taken advantage of. Or it can be starting secondary trading platforms that allow these issuers to list their shares—provided there’s a market. Supply and demand will drive everything. But if there is demand for these securities, give them the opportunity to list those shares and provide liquidity for those investors in the marketplace.
But to do that, we’ve got these antiquated laws in the United States called blue sky laws that sort of require issuers to register their securities in each state in which they’re sold. We’ve got exemptions like the manual exemption that says if you file ongoing disclosures in a national securities manual, you do not need to register your securities in all the states. It’s a patchwork thing, but that type of thing needs to be addressed. We can’t have secondary trading if we don’t address blue sky compliance.
As I was telling you before, we need to simplify the disclosure requirements. The SEC, the regulators need clarity when it comes to what people need to disclose, how they need to disclose it, and when they need to disclose it. And it needs to scale depending on the size and complexity of the raise.
I would also open up the door from day one. When we wrote this law, it was really focused: let’s help Main Street businesses and startups raise capital. That’s what we went live with. I wasn’t thinking broad. I was like, “Let’s get an industry going.” And we got an industry going.
We’ve seen very little fraud in this industry because it’s hard to commit fraud through a disclosure regime than outside of it. With that proof point, we can tell people we need to open it up to other groups that can leverage this funding mechanism.
What I mean is early-stage venture funds right now are struggling to raise capital because you’ve got all these Silicon Valley venture funds that are all AI-focused, saying, “We’re going to make you billions of dollars.” All this capital is moving in that direction.
But you’ve got the whole opportunity to fund early-stage startups through venture funds still. What I would like to see the regulators do is open it up so it’s not just a company that can raise money through investment crowdfunding, but a venture fund can leverage this as well. That would really open the door to a lot more capital coming into the space.
Andy Field (Host): Of those, which do you think would have the biggest impact? Would it be raising the cap to $20 million?
Woodie Neiss (Guest): Yeah, absolutely. Without a doubt. A lot of this comes not just from Woodie saying, “Hey, let’s do this.” It comes through conversations we’re having. I get calls all the time from people saying, “I need to raise $20 million. I have thousands of customers who could be really great advocates for me, but I’m not going to do an offering for a million or five million.”
There’s demand for this. These are companies with much higher revenues, lower risk of defaults. That’s where you want people investing—in companies scaling at lower risk, with the potential to be bought, acquired, or go public. It’s a win-win-win for everyone. So $20 million is clearly where I’d put it.
Andy Field (Host): Okay, so let’s change your job from regulator to a different mission. You’ve got a mission to make crowdfunding 10 times larger over the next decade. Where would you start? Obviously you’ve answered raising the limits. What would you then go on to do?
Woodie Neiss (Guest): I really believe this industry isn’t going to scale properly until the larger financial institutions get behind it. Right now, any of these big financial banks—they just can’t scale down and make investments in these small companies. So this industry isn’t going to scale until you’ve got billions of dollars backed by these large institutions coming into it, and that’s where early-stage venture funds can come into the marketplace.
If we wanted to 10X it, open up the door to early-stage funds investing in these investment crowdfunding offerings. They can raise money through crowdfunding to invest in these Reg CF offerings. Now you’ve created a vehicle that financial institutions—typically larger ones like Bear Stearns, JP Morgan—can look at and say, “We now have a pathway to allocate.”
Even if they said a billion dollars, that would 10X it right there. For them, it’s a small amount, but for the industry it’s a huge amount. It would allow us to fund—through the data, we can see what promising startups are scaling the fastest. We’ve created predictive models to look at that and make investments based off it. That’s our whole venture fund.
If you get the JP Morgans into the industry, the Goldman Sachs, and they say, “Here’s a billion dollars,” you’re going to 10X the industry very quickly.
Andy Field (Host): Sure. And it’s in everyone’s interest for that to happen. Should the industry as a whole be coming together a bit more effectively and actually campaigning for this more effectively?
Woodie Neiss (Guest): Yes. I don’t know—I have no control over the industry. I share my voice and my opinions through my own channels. But I share these ideas with the hope that other people are like, “Hey, Woodie’s got a good idea. Let’s get behind this.”
I also know I’m not a whisperer of what I want. Things will happen the way they happen. But I do think if we all sat down—to your question—about what will 10X this industry and forget everything else that’s going on, we’ll come to agreement on things like this.
Andy Field (Host): Interesting. Maybe that’s going to happen. So looking forward, what excites you most about the next five years for the industry? And following on from that, what’s one message you’d leave with the industry, regulators, platforms, entrepreneurs?
Woodie Neiss (Guest): I love the data. I am by any shape and form a data geek. Everything you see on the wall behind me are data reports based on slicing and dicing the data every way you can. So I’m super excited about the data itself—what you can learn from it, what you can tell other people about it, how you can change policy that we talked about at the very beginning.
I think the opportunity for women and minorities is really huge. I really want to focus on that. One of the things we did—there’s this thing in the United States, actually it’s a global thing, called the Startup Genome. They look at ecosystems for startups globally, rank them and all that stuff. I was just like, “I can do that.” So we created the Crowdfunding Genome.
We literally looked at what the Startup Genome is, looked at their signals, and applied it to all our data here. We’ve come up with this ranking for the United States. I think if we start doing stuff like that collectively—collaborating with Europe, Asia, South America, or crowdfunding associations—we can actually show people the importance of supporting these crowdfunding ecosystems.
How it directly relates not only to innovation but to job creation. How that’s an economic stimulus pumping into local economies. That’s what we want to show people. So I’m excited for that type of thing too.
In the United States, the one thing you guys in the UK have done great that we have fallen on our face with is incentives. We don’t have any of the tax incentives that would really help this industry scale. To your point, if we want to 10X it, I think if we had incentives similar to your EIS, that would really de-risk it from an investor perspective and allow more capital to come in. Because people are like, “The government’s going to back it,” or, “They’re going to allow me to write off any losses,” or, “They’ll allow me not to pay taxes on my gains.”
We’ve got certain qualified small business exemptions and all that stuff—it’s a patchwork again. But if we had tax incentives directly tied to investment crowdfunding, that could really help scale this industry. I think it’s a matter of time and the right administration. I think this administration could be one of the ones that would lean into that. It’s just the priorities of what’s happening in DC.
Andy Field (Host): Amazing. Woodie, we’ve run out of time, but that was a fascinating conversation. As we mentioned before, we could have talked about some of these things for hours. I’m sure we’ll record another episode and go into things in a bit more depth.
For now, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Your experience across the platforms, the markets, and data really highlights how far crowdfunding has come and how much potential still remains untapped. Conversations like this are exactly why GECA exists—to bring together diverse global perspectives, challenge fragmented thinking, and help shape a more connected and inclusive equity crowdfunding ecosystem.
Thanks again to Woodie for appearing today, and thanks to our listeners for tuning in. Stay with us for future episodes as we continue to explore the people, policies, and platforms that are unlocking crowdfunding without borders. Don’t forget to follow GECA for more conversations with the people shaping the future of this amazing industry. We’ll see you next time. Thank you very much, Woodie.
Woodie Neiss (Guest): Thank you. Appreciate it. You have me.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
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[End of Transcript]
From Zopa to Abundance to GECA: Bruce Davis Joins the Global Crowdfunding Alliance Steering Committee.
UK Crowdfunding Association Chair and Co-founder of Britain's First Regulated Crowdfunding Platform Brings Two Decades of Retail Investor Advocacy to GECA's Borderless Mission
The Barn in Buckinghamshire
In 2003, while traditional banks treated retail savers as deposit-holders rather than participants, a small group of fintech refugees from egg Bank were meeting weekly in a Buckinghamshire barn. Frustrated with where consumer finance was heading, they began sketching something radical: a market where ordinary people could lend directly to each other, without a bank standing in the middle.
That conversation became Zopa - the world's first peer-to-peer lender. Bruce Davis was one of the people in that barn.
More than two decades later, that same conviction - that retail investors deserve genuine access to investments traditionally reserved for the wealthy - has defined a career spanning Zopa, Abundance Investment, the UK Crowdfunding Association, academic research at Leeds University, and direct policy engagement with HM Treasury and the FCA.
Now, GECA welcomes Bruce Davis as Strategic Advisor for the UK, bringing the regulatory experience, retail investor advocacy, and institutional credibility that few people in global crowdfunding can match.
Building the UK's First Regulated Crowdfunding Platform
In 2009, Bruce and co-founders Karl Harder and Louise Wilson walked through the doors of the Financial Services Authority with an unusual request: they wanted authorisation to launch a brand new regulated retail investment platform. It was the start of a new wave of newly authorized firms who together went on to create the world’s first regulated crowdfunding market.Â
Three years later, in April 2012, Abundance Investment launched as the world's first regulated crowdfunding company. From a ÂŁ5 minimum investment, ordinary people could now lend directly to renewable energy projects, local authorities, and green infrastructure across the UK.
Over the following decade, Abundance raised more than ÂŁ150 million from thousands of retail investors for over 60 sustainable infrastructure projects - including wind, solar, tidal, EV charging networks, sustainable forestry, and green social housing. In 2020, Abundance pioneered Community Municipal Investments, allowing UK councils to issue green bonds directly to their citizens. By March 2026, 20 councils had used the platform to finance net-zero projects, with ÂŁ20 million mobilised from more than 3,000 retail investors for council green bonds alone.
The platform became a B Corp in 2020 and won the Ashden Gold Award in 2014 for "Powering Clean Energy Investment."
The Regulatory Voice
In January 2024, Bruce was appointed Chair of the UK Crowdfunding Association - the trade body he had helped found years earlier as a founding director. Under his chairmanship, the UKCFA has become an increasingly vocal advocate for proportionate regulation in a market that he argues has drifted into over-restriction.
In December 2024, Bruce wrote directly to Tulip Siddiq, then Economic Secretary to the Treasury and City Minister, making the case in unsparing terms:
"The UK is now seen as having one of the most highly regulated markets for this type of investment in the world - overtaking even the US which has long been a laggard on supporting the benefits of crowdfunding. The impact of these changes has been felt in the increase in marketing costs for new issuance of investments, which in some cases have become uneconomic and left platforms reliant on the existing investors."
That diagnosis - that excessive regulation is now choking the very industry the UK pioneered - sits at the heart of why Bruce's GECA appointment matters.
"There are plenty of people who can talk about retail crowdfunding in the abstract. Bruce has actually built it - first at Abundance, and now through his leadership at the UKCFA," said Andy Field, GECA Steering Committee Executive Lead. "He's been inside the regulatory conversation in the UK for longer than most of the global industry has even existed. His December 2024 letter to Treasury was a reminder of why we need voices like his at GECA: people who will speak plainly about what's working, what isn't, and what proportionate regulation looks like in practice. We're delighted to welcome him."
"The UKCFA has been flying the flag for creating a world where more people invest in more of things they care about - and access investments which previously were the preserve of the wealthy and finance institutions," the association has stated under his leadership. "If the UK is going to bridge the productivity gap it needs a diverse and vibrant crowdfunding sector to reach the SMEs that conventional sources of finance cannot reach."
Anthropologist, Author, Academic
Bruce's perspective on money is distinctive because he didn't come up through banking or finance. He read Classics at university and worked as an anthropologist for over 15 years - studying how people use money in everyday life, rather than how finance professionals and economists assume they do.
That research foundation helped shape Zopa's original concept as “an eBay for money”, Abundance's product approach, and his ongoing work as Visiting Research Fellow at the Bauman Institute at Leeds University, where he co-authored Crowdfunding and the Democratisation of Finance (Bristol University Press, 2021) with Professor Mark Davis.Â
He's also responsible - improbably - for inventing Monkey Shoulder whisky and helping to launch Sailor Jerry Rum. The through-line, Bruce has explained, is anthropology: understanding what people truly value in their everyday lives, rather than reducing them to mechanistic consumers of products.
Why This Appointment Matters for GECA
Bruce's appointment lands at a critical moment. The UK pioneered regulated retail crowdfunding in 2012, but the regulatory pendulum has swung. Bruce's UKCFA work targets a re-balancing: keeping investor protections robust while removing the marketing-cost barriers and authorisation complexity that have made new platform entry unattractive and potentially uneconomic.
That re-balancing challenge is precisely what GECA exists to coordinate globally. Fragmented national rules, inconsistent disclosure standards, and incompatible authorisation regimes are the friction points stopping equity crowdfunding from fulfilling its borderless potential.
"GECA's work only progresses if we can connect global coordination ambitions to the real regulatory conversations happening at national level," Field added. "Bruce is one of a small number of people in the world who can bridge those two altitudes - the macro vision of a borderless ecosystem, and the granular detail of FCA rule-making. That's exactly the kind of strategic depth we want around the table."
Looking Ahead
"I'm honoured to join GECA at this point in the industry's evolution," Bruce said. "The case for crowdfunding has always been about giving more people access to investments in the things they care about. That argument doesn't stop at national borders. If we get the regulatory architecture right - proportionate, evidence-based, and harmonised - we can unlock capital flows that conventional finance simply cannot reach."
With Bruce's appointment, GECA gains direct connectivity to the regulatory dialogue shaping one of the world's most influential crowdfunding markets - and a steering committee member whose career has been defined by the conviction that retail investors belong at the centre of capital markets, not at the margins.
GECA Monthly Pulse - May 2026
The state of global equity crowdfunding - May 2026 Pulse
Three developments are reshaping our industry, and the GECA Steering Committee is watching all of them closely.
- The UK rewrote the rulebook in January - and the first trades are now happening.
The FCA's Public Offer Platform regime came into force on 19 January 2026, alongside the broader Public Offers and Admissions to Trading Regulations 2024. Public offers of ÂŁ5M or more to a broad investor base must now be made through an FCA-authorised POP.
In parallel, PISCES went live. JP Jenkins ran the first PISCES trade on 24 February 2026 with QPlay. On 25 March 2026, the London Stock Exchange's Private Securities Market held its inaugural auction - shares in a Luxembourg TPEIC backed by Oxford Science Enterprises (ÂŁ1.3bn). Crowdcube is the Registered Auction Agent providing access for eligible retail investors, alongside sophisticated and institutional participants.
The UK now has live, regulated infrastructure for both primary public offers above ÂŁ5M and intermittent private secondary trading. The EU should be paying attention - particularly anyone advocating for ECSPR Article 45 secondary-market provisions.
- European equity crowdfunding grew while the wider macro picture turned.
The European equity crowdfunding market raised €280M in 2025 across 354 campaigns, involving more than 68,500 investors - a 12.2% increase on 2024. France led with €98.3M across 106 campaigns, equal to 35.2% of the European total.
A standout campaign: Bitstack opened on Crowdcube on 24 March 2026, passed €1M invested within five minutes, hit its $2M target in 20 minutes, and closed above $4.5M within 24 hours with more than 8,000 individual investors - a European record for a Crowdcube campaign opening.
- The EU AI Act compliance question just got more complicated, not less.
The Act's high-risk system obligations are currently scheduled to apply from 2 August 2026. Annex III high-risk classifications include AI systems used for creditworthiness assessment, credit scoring, and insurance risk pricing - directly relevant to crowdfunding platforms doing automated suitability or risk-scoring. Penalties for breaches reach €15M or 3% of global annual turnover, whichever is higher (Article 99).
However, the EU has provisionally agreed to extend the stand-alone high-risk system deadline to 2 December 2027, with formal Parliament and Council adoption expected by July 2026. Until that adoption is confirmed, platforms must continue preparing for an August 2026 effective date - but the policy ground is genuinely moving.
This is one of the reasons GECA announced the formation of an AI Task Force in May 2026. More on the Task Force's remit and membership in due course.
A milestone worth marking: Reg CF turns 10
May 2026 marks ten years since Regulation Crowdfunding went live in the United States. The exemption that began on 16 May 2016 has matured into one of the most important pieces of inclusive capital-formation infrastructure anywhere in the world.
According to research from Crowdfund Capital Advisors, Reg CF has now attracted companies from over 620 industries, with offerings recorded across more than 1,750 US cities and all 50 states - plus Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. Around $7.5 billion in economic stimulus has been generated through business expenditures, with the majority of that spending staying local. Fourteen firms that raised on Reg CF have since pursued IPOs, and 71 have been acquired. 63% of recent issuers are post-revenue and over three years old - a maturing, lower-risk profile of the businesses now choosing the exemption. CCA reports a 69% success rate for funded campaigns, higher than most other forms of early-stage financing.
Sherwood Neiss of Crowdfund Capital Advisors, one of the architects of the original legislation, has observed that Reg CF is "ushering in a new era of liquidity, increased venture participation, and a maturing issuer profile," with "more revenue-generating and less risky companies entering the market." Ten years in, that thesis is being borne out by the data.
Sherwood and the CCA team continue to advocate for the next phase, including a Petition for Rulemaking filed with the SEC in January 2026 to raise the Reg CF cap to $20 million, indexed for inflation.
For GECA, the ten-year US milestone is more than a national anniversary. It is proof that retail-accessible, regulated equity crowdfunding works at scale, across cycles, and across regulatory regimes. The infrastructure being built today in the UK, the EU, APAC, and beyond stands on the shoulders of that ten-year track record.
What this also means for the wider infrastructure picture
On 20 April 2026, the Hong Kong SFC launched a regulated framework for secondary trading of tokenised SFC-authorised investment products on licensed Virtual Asset Trading Platforms, initially scoped to tokenised money market funds.
On 5 May 2026, Republic launched tokenised Animoca Brands equity on Solana, with underlying ordinary shares custodied by BitGo Bank & Trust and secondary trading facilitated via INX Securities (an SEC-registered broker-dealer and ATS operator).
Different regulatory frameworks, same direction of travel: tokenised equity infrastructure moving from concept to live, regulated secondary trading.
For platforms operating across borders, the compliance map keeps expanding - UK POP, ECSPR, US Reg CF / Reg A+, ASIC CSF, and an EU AI Act layer on top. This is why GECA exists.
Sources verified: FCA PS25/10 · Crowdfund Insider · Charles Russell Speechlys · Mishcon de Reya · Reuters · Startupbusiness.it · Bitstack/Roubaud LinkedIn · Crowdcube LinkedIn · EU AI Act official text (Article 99, Annex III) · Latham & Watkins · DLA Piper · SFC Hong Kong · Republic LinkedIn · Tokenizer.estate · Crowdfund Capital Advisors (cumulative Reg CF research) · Sherwood Neiss LinkedIn (SEC Rulemaking Petition, January 2026)
#EquityCrowdfunding #PISCES #ECSPR #EUAIAct #GECA #FinTech #CapitalMarkets #PrivateMarkets
From the Trading Floor to Tokenization: Nora Szeles on Democratizing Capital Markets | GECA Podcast
From the Trading Floor to Tokenization: Nora Szeles on Democratizing Capital Markets | GECA Podcast
What if the real key to unlocking equity crowdfunding isn’t regulation – it’s retail investors?
From open-outcry trading floors at the Budapest Stock Exchange to building one of Europe’s most ambitious cross-border crowdfunding platforms under ECSPR, Nora Szeles has spent her career proving that capital markets work better when ordinary people participate. Her vision: democratize access to funding and investment, disintermediate the banking system, and build an ecosystem where founders and savers benefit – not just institutions.
Join Andy Field in conversation with Nora Szeles, CEO of TokePortal and one of Europe’s most active crowdfunding voices, as she shares hard-won lessons from market crises, regulatory battles, and the operational realities of going cross-border. From relocating from Hungary to Malta for regulatory responsiveness to launching the First Crowd Incubator to make startups “crowdfunding ready,” Nora breaks down what’s actually working in European crowdfunding – and what’s still broken.
Key insights:
- Why retail investors stabilize markets during crises (the lesson from the 1998 Russian crisis)
- How the JOBS Act and ECSPR draft transformed her vision for crowdfunding
- Why TokePortal relocated from Hungary to Malta – and why a license is just the beginning
- The real barriers to borderless crowdfunding: share issuance, secondary trading, costs, tax
- How tokenization and Web3 can solve cross-border friction (when adoption catches up)
- Why financial literacy and alumni-based founder culture matter for ecosystem growth
- The First Crowd Incubator: making startups crowdfunding-ready in Malta
- Why crowdfunding is inclusive – not alternative – to other funding sources
Democratize access. Disintermediate the system. Build the ecosystem from the bottom up.
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Andy Field (Host): Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the GECA Podcast—the voice of global equity crowdfunding. I’m Andy Field, Steering Committee Lead of the Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance, or GECA, where we speak with the leading voices who are shaping the future of capital raising across borders.
Now, as crowdfunding continues to evolve, we’re exploring what it takes to run successful campaigns globally and what founders, platforms, and investors need to know to thrive in this expanding ecosystem.
Today I’m delighted to be joined by Nora Szeles, CEO of crowdfunding platform TokePortal. Nora is one of the most active voices in the European crowdfunding ecosystem. She’s been deeply involved in the evolution of the industry—from building a platform under the ECSPR framework to launching initiatives that support the next generation of startups and investors.
So welcome, Nora. It’s great to have you here.
Nora Szeles (Guest): Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for the invitation, Andy.
Andy Field (Host): No problem at all. It’s always great to talk with you. Perhaps we could start with a little about your journey into crowdfunding and what drew you into the industry in the first place.
Nora Szeles (Guest): Okay. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been in regulated capital markets. I started my career when I was about 20 at the Budapest Stock Exchange, when it was reopened after the communist regime. I was still a student, and I got hooked there immediately. I worked for the stock exchange and we launched derivatives trading a few days later.
After the first stocks were listed, we started to look at derivatives. I knew that all around the world derivatives are being traded. I had a great mentor—a professional and professor of derivatives trading and pricing at Corvinus University of Budapest—who then became a board member of the stock exchange and asked for my assistance to launch the futures and derivatives trading. That was a success against all odds.
I remember that brokers told me on the floor—it was still open outcry—that no one would trade. “Who will trade futures and options here when there are only a few securities?” And I told them, “You guys, you are going to do this job.” And that’s what actually happened.
As a rule of thumb, everything in capital markets works better the more aligned you are with your peers. It’s not about regulation that should divide us. We should be competitive with the product and the pipeline, and these local stories should matter at the end of the day. We shouldn’t deviate in terms of regulation from more developed markets. That’s what I learned.
At that time, there was no internet, nothing, so I had to travel to other marketplaces to see how they work. This is how I was socialised in capital markets. We have to be very good at regulation, and then product development should remain and become competitive locally.
The other important observation came with the first crisis. After I left the stock exchange, I became a broker—a derivatives broker. I was on the floor during the Russian crisis, actually eight months pregnant. At that time we thought that was what crisis meant—that half-year-long Russian crisis when the Hungarian index, called BUX, lost two-thirds of its value within a few months.
I saw many people getting ruined. That completely changed my mindset when I observed that the fall on other markets—like the Polish market, which is supposed to be very much related to the Hungarian, especially from a Western institutional investor’s point of view—the Polish market fell much less. Other markets in the area also fell less than the BUX.
What we came up with as the reason was that the participation of retail investors in the market—as owners of shares—mattered a lot. The retail investor doesn’t release stop-loss orders when everything has to be sold no matter what the price. They sit and wait. Of course, some liquidate positions, but it’s not a coordinated huge sell order to the market that further deepens the crisis.
That was an extremely important recognition for me, because I heard as a broker from other brokerage companies in Hungary that “the London institutional investor is the god.” Because of course, with one single order we earn the revenue for a year. To go into retail is extremely cumbersome, very costly, and very risky—small tickets don’t pay off, et cetera. All brokers at that time focused on institutional investors. And when an institutional investor takes action in a crisis, it’s always a stop-loss order, which ruins everything in the end.
That was the first observation. The second was very local to the Budapest Stock Exchange. Although I do absolutely respect the pioneering work they did in relaunching the first communist-regime stock market—it was actually a relaunch, because there had been a huge, fantastically developed stock market before, earlier than the Second World War. There’s a recent development I would really love to share later about research into the old Budapest commodity and stock exchange.
The second observation was that we all thought—I mean, we as 20-year-old, green-eared newcomers, of course less than very well-respected experts in the leading positions—but everyone thought that issuers would just ring on the door and ask to be admitted to stock trading. As if companies are born big and profitable, and they all stand and queue up begging the stock market operator for access to the trading floor. Actually, the opposite is true.
I always thought: why do you guys think big companies will always be in the pipeline when you don’t have young companies becoming big, and there’s no service available for them? The demand was there from young companies, and they were rejected. The demand on the investor side wasn’t nurtured either—many young retail investors had no appetite because brokerage companies had no appetite for them. So that side was also totally underserved.
I thought that if this continued, there was no real future for the stock markets—and actually, that has become true, though I wish it hadn’t.
I gave up on capital market development on the incumbent side. We started to criticise the stock market strategists, and a few colleagues and I were vocal about it. Then suddenly the Federation of European Stock Exchanges nominated me and my colleague Marosi Gabor for the Young Researcher of the Year Award. That was a long time ago, but even since then, no Hungarian has won that prize. We won because we were right in forecasting that it wasn’t going to continue.
Our third assumption was that there was no cross-border collaboration. It was instead a very primitive jealousy—whether the Polish, Prague, or Belgrade stock exchanges should lead a coalition. This is where it all got stuck. So all three columns—demand side, supply side, and cross-border side—got stuck at that time.
I decided to leave because I wasn’t able to change this. Then the JOBS Act was enacted in the US. I was invited to a “crowdfund university” lecture when one of the fathers of the JOBS Act—successful laws always have several fathers—came to deliver a lecture at the Budapest Stock Exchange. I read the regulation, and I thought it was a good regulation. I understood what it meant: they had lifted the bar for the issuance of early-phase companies.
When you think about it, even retail investors in listed companies isn’t a very old story—it wasn’t until the 1940s when Merrill Lynch roadshowed across the US for retail investors in listed stocks. Before that, it wasn’t even popular, much less regulated. So I thought the JOBS Act was a really historic milestone. I realised it allowed private companies to do small IPOs—IPOs for private companies, which had never been the case before.
Then I heard there was a European initiative already going on, which is why I started to follow it. When the draft of the ECSPR appeared on the European Parliament’s website on the 7th of March 2018, I read the draft and thought it was going to be a good regulation. So we raised a little money to prepare the launch of TokePortal—far too little money. I was too optimistic to launch the business. That’s the story in a nutshell. I hope it made sense.
Andy Field (Host): It did make sense, and it was a great timeline as well. So you started TokePortal in Hungary, and later moved to Malta more recently. What drove that evolution, and what were the strategic reasons behind that move?
Nora Szeles (Guest): Of course. As I detailed earlier, I was always regulated by the National Bank of Hungary—because of the stock exchange, and later as a broker. I also worked as an asset manager, which I didn’t mention. So I never had a problem with the National Bank of Hungary. It was at that time a relatively well-established, knowledgeable institution.
But before crowdfunding, there was a huge brokerage scandal here in Hungary where brokers cheated on retail investors. People actually demonstrated on the street because they lost all their money. The National Bank of Hungary became very cautious—which sounds positive, but really they became very negative around anything involving retail investors. They didn’t reject crowdfunding outright, and nowadays I think they’re much more open to it again. But we simply didn’t get answers for an entire year, although we had a normal relationship.
To be honest—although it’s not private—the reputation of Hungary deteriorated in those times. Since we always wanted to go international with crowdfunding, we thought it was time to look around and consider relocating. We interviewed a few regulators, and I really liked the approach of the Maltese MFSA.
Several Hungarian companies were already established there, as well as companies from other countries. Malta wants to position itself as a financial hub, and it has the resources. I like the size of it—it’s even smaller than Hungary, so I feel comfortable. Of course, it’s not perfect, but it’s relatively supportive, and that’s very important. I don’t mind if it’s a Hungarian, Maltese, Latvian, British, or Swedish license. At a certain point, we had to decide because the regulation enacted a very strict deadline that we were already behind. So we decided—it was a bit speculative—but it’s worked out nicely. We’re getting established there.
However, I have to say it is by far much more than simply obtaining a license. The regulator expects you—and we also wanted to take the opportunity to develop the business in Malta. But you have to learn and employ not only the regulatory side but the entire corporate law, the local ecosystem, company service providers, et cetera. So it’s not at all only a license—it’s a completely new setup. We’re now doing this job “riding on two horses,” as the Hungarians say, which is exhausting—but exhausting at a higher level than I thought.
Fortunately, it looks like now we’re raising funds to build capacities. The way I see ourselves, we are where we should have been two years ago, but we’re finally there. From now on—especially with the help of initiatives like GECA, Eurocrowd, EDFA, and other important international associations—it’s so much fun to detect how much we share the same mission. We don’t only learn from each other; we share originally the same mission.
That’s why it’s also fun, and it’s a huge learning curve. Against all currently existing boundaries, we’ll address it here in this podcast, and we’ll also talk about it at the upcoming conference in Málaga—which you can link in the podcast description. We all want to join forces to conquer these obstacles. Not only legal ones, which still exist despite the cross-border nature of ECSPR, but also mental, cost-related, tax-related, and many others.
Andy Field (Host): Yeah, you’re right. In order to see the benefits of the unified European framework that exists in theory, we’re still some way from unlocking the potential. Some of those complexities we’re coming together to solve. That’s the benefit of meeting people who share common goals—together we’ll create that noise and try to make it happen.
So we move nicely onto the European crowdfunding ecosystem. You’re really active across the European startup and crowdfunding ecosystem—you’ve mentioned some of the organisations you’re involved with. From your vantage point, what really encourages and excites you most about where the industry is heading?
Nora Szeles (Guest): As I said, my absolute mission is to conquer borders, and to nurture and serve demand from the bottom up. I believe that due to digitalisation—every aspect from the simple internet to blockchain and Web3 technologies—we now have all the tools in our hands that can democratise. And it’s not an empty word; it’s a very important mission. To democratise access to funding and also to investments, to enhance financial literacy.
Honestly, I am in a fight all the time with the banking system. I don’t like when intermediaries make more money than the ultimate savers, and that’s actually what I observe. I would like to disintermediate as much as possible—not at the expense of risk management and knowledge, but to decrease costs and leave more money, more knowledge, more profit with the saver.
One of the tools to do this is crowdfunding, which enables an ecosystem to grow from the bottom up because the barriers to entry on both sides of the marketplace are much lower than ever before. You can start investing with as little as €100 to join a story—a prospect of failure in most cases, but sometimes a growth story. And if you’re the founder of a company with three people but you have something already on the market, traction, mission, and the drive to create something, you can raise funds directly to convert your network—to monetise all that traction.
That’s the competition. That’s the kind of mission that drives me since I detected the problems with incumbent capital markets when I was younger.
Andy Field (Host): So making this available to everybody—democratising this type of finance—is obviously a passion.
One of the things that we talk about at GECA is the idea of borderless crowdfunding. From your experience, how close do you think we are to actually making that a reality? Obviously it’s possible, but how do we make it a little bit more mainstream?
Nora Szeles (Guest): Look, everything is connected with everything, and I don’t want to complicate my answer. But of course, the legal framework enables us to offer services across borders. It means we don’t have to obtain further licenses to market our offerings or enable a startup or SME to launch a campaign from another EU country on our website. It just goes through at one single point of entry under our own regulated conditions. That’s the basics.
But this isn’t enough to succeed. It’s very important that the financial literacy and financial ecosystem—the interconnectedness, the alumni-based culture where successful founders and successful crowdfunders start to reinvest in companies that come after them, sharing knowledge, becoming real role models—it is coming. The pattern is strengthening, but not enough. So associations like yours have this mission to build bridges and to communicate, to elevate, to elaborate—to make it visible. Raising awareness for these problems.
What I would like to say: tomorrow I could launch a campaign for a Turkish company and propose it to Maltese investors, for example. The campaign can be successful because tickets are relatively low. Hypothetically it could be as big as €5 million, but in capital market terms that’s still little. The average round is still below €1 million. If you do your job well, you can do this because you know your community. You can also do some manual pairing of investors with founders. One by one, we can absolutely create success stories of cross-border investments.
If, for example, this Turkish company wants to sell its services to Malta, then it’s very obvious they can try to raise funds for that purpose, because a Maltese investor would eventually believe they will have hands-on benefit from the investment—not only financial, but enabling this Turkish company to offer that service in Malta.
The problem comes afterwards. For an equity campaign—which is what GECA is for, and what I myself am for—how do you issue the shares, at what cost? How do you allocate them, at what cost? And if they want to trade these shares—making them not only hypothetically transferable but available on the secondary market as a real option to exit earlier, independently from the founder, which is the original exit strategy of startups in general—there are huge problems already. Costs are extreme, services are hard to access if at all available. Some investors get fed up that they have to wait a long time for their shares. They know they can’t trade them yet—because it’s a startup, not a stock market—but it’s annoying that it’s not easily handled.
Then let’s say this Maltese investor wants to sell shares—let’s say 20, no matter the volume—of this Turkish company to a Swedish investor. That’s a nightmare.
Digitalisation, tokenisation, and Web3-based technologies can all help with this, but the penetration of such services isn’t good enough yet. We have to build capacity to learn and then employ it smartly and compliantly. That’s what has to be implemented. I think that’s one of the biggest problems.
And then taxation, which will never be harmonised, is also another problem. Bigger cheques aren’t written in crowdfunding due to taxation differences and obstacles. That’s another issue to address.
Andy Field (Host): All of these things we’re talking about are certainly on the agenda of discussion points and working groups for GECA, and we’re making a start on addressing them, which is great.
So alongside your work with TokePortal, you’ve launched something quite unique in Europe—an incubator called First Crowd. Can you tell us a little about how that connects with crowdfunding as a pathway for startups?
Nora Szeles (Guest): Yes. We would like to offer it as a very important column of our strategy—the entry point to crowdfunding for very early-phase companies, or for those companies that want to add additional services to their portfolio and get crowdfunded.
The First Crowd Incubator’s main purpose is to be a very inclusive incubator. It has just been incorporated in Malta, so we’re not yet talking about results. We will launch a program. The mission is to put enough focus on pipeline building—not only for TokePortal, but also for crowdfunding at other platforms. We will be helpful for them.
Let’s take the Turkish example. If they want to go back to Turkey and choose a Turkish platform to crowdfund, no problem with that. But we’ll try to get them crowdfundable, investable. That means they’ll get an audit at the beginning very quickly and efficiently. We try to internalise the knowledge that would help them get incubated—meaning they get crowdfunding-ready. That also means they could get any other type of investment.
And on top of that, also crowdfunding. That’s the last word I would really like to emphasise—how inclusive crowdfunding is. We have to advocate for this because many founders think they should choose: either crowdfunding, or if they finally got another investment, they don’t have to “fuss” with crowdfunding. They miss their momentum instead of leveraging what they’ve just received. That’s also a question of education.
So we want to be a crowdfunding hub for all. We will onboard prospective crowdfunders, pair and match them with internal knowledge—not only delegated by TokePortal, but we’d be very open and inclusive. The entire industry is welcome to participate if they see value in it.
We’ll come up with the program over the course of the next months. The incubator won’t be led by myself. I’m focusing on the regulated entity, TokePortal.com. As a partner, we’re the founder of the incubator, but we’d like to decrease our share. We welcome other partners to co-found it in this relatively early phase—not only to raise capital for the incubator, but to enable the incubator later to crowdfund itself once it has created some good traction. That’s what we’d like to achieve relatively quickly. Then it should go crowdfund itself.
As an incubator, we definitely want to have a five-star program. So anybody who survives and becomes an alumnus should be a really investable venture.
Andy Field (Host): The whole concept is a very proactive way of developing the whole crowdfunding ecosystem, so it’s great that you’re looking at that side of things.
We’ve got about five minutes left, and I know you wanted to mention a couple of other things. We may get you back, Nora, to do another podcast because you’ve got so much to say.
I just wanted to briefly touch on the fact that you’re also a connector of people. You’ve been involved with major ecosystem events like the EU Startup Awards and EU Startup Summit. Just a quick summary of what motivated you to take on that role?
Nora Szeles (Guest): I think there might be a misunderstanding. I didn’t really co-organise it. We became partners to a small extent, and we did have a very successful side event there. We’re partners with the EU Startup Summit and try to contribute as much as possible to their success.
The next upcoming event is in Malta, and we have a discount code: PICA20. You can go on the website and obtain a cheaper ticket. Make sure to visit our booth—we’ll be there. That’s a great occasion, another opportunity besides Málaga to catch up.
In Malta, we are the first to launch crowdfunding. We didn’t know that until we received our license—that there was no one else. There was one license already given, but to someone focused on something different. So as of now, we are the only one, and therefore we had to take on the role of creating the market, launching it, and assisting. It’s still very small, but having closed the first Maltese campaign—where the company was incorporated in Malta—we saw it was time. It was a really late-adopter community, very much real-estate focused and fixed income. But I think and hope we’ve already contributed to them becoming more open to this asset class.
Andy Field (Host): Excellent. We’ll put some links to that event into the description of the podcast. There are other things I wanted to talk to you about, but we probably won’t have time. I know you’re looking at running your own crowdfunding campaign in the very near future.
Nora Szeles (Guest): I am.
Andy Field (Host): So let’s touch on that separately and talk about it in a bit more detail.
Just one thing I’d ask: looking ahead five years, what does success look like for crowdfunding in Europe?
Nora Szeles (Guest): Oh, that could take another half an hour.
Andy Field (Host): You’ve got one minute to take it.
Nora Szeles (Guest): Okay. Look, crowdfunding service providers are almost all startups—independent startups—and most of them are in a cash-flow-negative phase, which makes it extremely hard to build the market and grow at the same time without any central grant or scheme or governmental communication. Expectations are high on the legislative side—from the legislator, like the European Union—but the support is much less. This is one fight I’m trying to lead.
In five years’ time, I wish we’d have 100+ platforms—now there are more than 200 in Europe—all cash-flow positive and happily building a market, creating an ecosystem with a much higher level of financial literacy as a result of successful campaigns that will have been completed by then.
Andy Field (Host): Perfect. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us today, Nora. It’s been a fantastic conversation.
I think what comes through from that is just how much potential there is in equity crowdfunding. And when we start thinking beyond national borders and towards a more connected global ecosystem—as you said—at GECA, that’s exactly what we’re trying to encourage. Bringing together platforms, operators, researchers, and policymakers to share knowledge and help move the ecosystem forward.
So thanks again to Nora, and to our listeners, thanks for tuning in. As we continue to explore the people, policies, and platforms that are unlocking crowdfunding without borders, don’t forget to follow GECA for more conversations with the people shaping the future of global equity crowdfunding. Visit thegeca.org to learn more about our mission, our growing supporter base, and how you can get involved.
Nora Szeles (Guest): Thanks a lot.
Andy Field (Host): Thanks, Nora.
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[End of Transcript]
ICAFR Málaga: Are We Transforming Finance or Just Digitising It?
Twenty Years of Crowdfunding Led to a Key Question in Spain
A Provocative Question
"After 20 years of crowdfunding, one question keeps coming back: Are we transforming finance… or just digitising existing models?"
During an expert panel at the 5th International Conference for Alternative Finance Research (ICAFR) in Málaga, Ronald Kleverlaan posed this challenge - and it resonated across three days of discussions between 86 academics, platform leaders, regulators, and technology providers from across Europe and the USA.
The answer, it turns out, is both more interesting and more uncomfortable than the industry might want to admit.
The Mirror We Held Up
ICAFR brought together crowdfunding's pioneers - the people who built the industry from scratch in the mid-2000s - for a rare moment of collective reflection. What they saw wasn't quite what they expected.
Crowdfunding has scaled. Billions in capital raised globally. Established ecosystems across multiple jurisdictions. Professional operations replacing scrappy experimentation. Regulatory frameworks where once there was only uncertainty.
But Kleverlaan's question, raised during the panel discussion "After 20 Years of Crowdfunding, What to Expect in the Next 20 Years to Come," surfaced an uncomfortable truth: crowdfunding has grown by becoming more like traditional finance, not by replacing it.
As he put it: "Crowdfunding has scaled by adopting familiar models - lending structures from banks, equity models from venture capital. This has helped the industry grow. But it may also limit its future potential."
The industry is still largely financing the old economy. Platforms haven't adapted fast enough to support new types of organisations emerging in society - cooperatives, steward-owned businesses, community-owned enterprises, social enterprises. These organisations follow different lifecycles than traditional startups, yet crowdfunding platforms still evaluate them using venture capital logic.
The question Tim Wright posed to the panel cut deep: have we truly transformed finance, or have we simply digitised it?
What's Actually Holding the Market Back
Andy Field, Karsten Wenzlaff, and Konstantin Boyko co-hosted GECA's Platform Leaders Workshop at ICAFR, bringing platforms, technology providers, and ecosystem participants into focused discussions on operational realities.
The core challenges became clear quickly:
Trust and Deal Quality - Platforms still struggle to demonstrate governance and diligence standards in ways that travel across borders. Investors want assurance. Regulators want evidence. Platforms lack the shared infrastructure to provide either at scale.
Platform Economics - As Konstantin Boyko noted: "Raising from the crowd is often even more expensive and time-consuming than traditional methods, making long-term sustainability challenging."
Liquidity - Secondary markets remain theoretical for most platforms. Investors are locked in, exit options are limited, and this fundamentally restricts who can participate and how much capital they'll commit.
Cross-Border Friction - Every jurisdiction operates in isolation. Deals don't travel. Investors can't participate across borders. Platforms duplicate infrastructure rather than coordinate.
These aren't new problems. What was apparent at ICAFR was the industry's willingness to name them directly - and to acknowledge that technology alone won't solve them.
The Community Power Gap
The most provocative insight came from examining what crowdfunding platforms aren't doing.
Ronald Kleverlaan pointed to energy cooperatives across Europe successfully raising capital directly from citizens - without using crowdfunding platforms. "Somehow crowdfunding platforms are not able to offer the right services for them," he observed.
Consider that. The organisations most aligned with crowdfunding's original promise - citizen participation, community ownership, shared value creation - are bypassing the platforms entirely.
Why? Because platforms optimised for transaction efficiency, not community building. They replicated venture capital's deal-by-deal model instead of building ongoing relationships between organisations and their supporters.
As Boyko reflected: "The real innovation would be to build a model where raising from the crowd is easier and more cost-effective. This should include building a community and leveraging its power long-term - not just during a campaign."
Following the event, Barry James added momentum to this thread: "The energy revolution is a whole new canvas with huge potential to co-evolve with crowdfunding here in the UK, and, I suspect, elsewhere. Something worth some focus?"
The opportunity is significant. Climate infrastructure, renewable energy, community ownership models - these are exactly the kinds of projects where crowdfunding's original promise of democratising access, engaging citizens, and distributing benefits should thrive. But platforms are structured for the wrong game.
Technology as Enabler, Not Solution
The Platform Leaders programme at ICAFR featured presentations and discussions on AI, tokenisation, and infrastructure - led by Neera Patel (DacxiChain, on AI governance), Daniel Wernicke (NYALA, on tokenisation and co-listing), Tim J. Sauer (secupay, on payment infrastructure), and others.
The technology discussions were notably practical. Not "AI will revolutionise everything," but "here's how AI creates new governance challenges that platforms aren't ready for." Not "tokenisation solves liquidity," but "here's how tokenised securities enable cross-platform distribution while maintaining investor data protection."
Andy Field's summary captured the room's consensus: "Technology - including AI, tokenisation, and infrastructure - is beginning to provide real solutions, but adoption will rely on practical implementation rather than theory."
The tools exist. Regulatory frameworks are emerging. The missing piece is coordination between platforms willing to build shared infrastructure rather than proprietary moats.
Daniel Wernicke's presentation on NYALA's Co-Listing Network illustrated this precisely. Tokenisation doesn't automatically solve cross-border distribution - but when platforms agree on shared standards, blockchain-based registries can enable "shared fees, unified reporting, and zero investor data sharing between platforms."
The technology enables coordination. But platforms must choose coordination first.
What Comes Next?
If the first 20 years were about proving crowdfunding works, the next 20 years are about deciding what kind of market to build around it.
Several pathways emerged from ICAFR discussions:
Path 1: Professionalization and Integration - Continue the current trajectory. Better integration with traditional finance. Institutional investors. Qualified investor focus. Stricter compliance. Higher barriers to entry. This path delivers scale and stability - but risks losing crowdfunding's original promise entirely.
Path 2: Community-Driven Finance - Fundamentally rethink platform models. Optimise for ongoing community relationships rather than transaction efficiency. Finance new types of organisations - cooperatives, community-owned, steward-owned. Build infrastructure for shared ownership and governance, not just capital allocation. This path is riskier and requires rebuilding core assumptions - but it reconnects with why crowdfunding felt revolutionary in the first place.
Path 3: Hybrid Infrastructure - Provide professional, compliant infrastructure that enables both paths. Tokenisation and digital share management that supports both VC-style equity rounds and community ownership models. AI governance that works for both institutional deals and citizen participation projects.
The Question That Matters
GECA Steering Committee member Florence de Maupeou captured the choice facing the industry during the panel discussion: "The sector has undergone deep transformation: increasing institutionalisation, with the arrival of qualified investors, legal entities, financial advisors, and banking networks… strong professionalisation, driven in particular by demanding regulatory frameworks."
That's Path 1. It's already happening. The question is whether it's the only path.
Ronald Kleverlaan's challenge stands: "To finance innovation in society, we first need to innovate finance."
The real innovation isn't in technology. It's in who we finance and how communities are involved. That was crowdfunding's original promise and added value — and that's exactly where the next phase should emerge, if platforms choose to build it.
What ICAFR Proved
The most valuable outcome of ICAFR was getting the right people in the same room having honest conversations about hard questions.
As Andy Field noted: "This was a great reminder that there is so much value in simply getting the right people in the room and having the right conversations."
Rotem Shneor and Marco Luzi created a space where academics and practitioners could genuinely collaborate - not present past each other, but build shared understanding of the challenges ahead. That collaborative spirit needs to extend beyond conferences.
Platforms competing for deals while duplicating infrastructure isn't sustainable. Regulators working in isolation while platforms struggle with jurisdictional fragmentation isn't scalable. Technology providers building proprietary solutions while standards remain fragmented isn't efficient.
The industry faces a clear choice: keep digitising traditional finance models with slightly better user interfaces, or actually transform finance by building infrastructure for new kinds of organisations, new kinds of ownership, and new kinds of community participation.
The technology exists. The regulatory frameworks are emerging. The question is whether platforms will coordinate to build it - or keep competing to replicate what already exists.
ICAFR Málaga didn't answer that question. But it named it clearly enough that the industry can no longer pretend it doesn't exist.
The next 20 years won't look like the last 20 years - unless we choose to make them that way.
Looking Ahead
ICAFR 2027 will convene in Montpellier, France. By then, we'll know whether the industry took Ronald Kleverlaan's challenge seriously - or whether we're still digitising traditional finance and calling it transformation.
The platforms, technology providers, and ecosystem participants at ICAFR Málaga have the tools, the expertise, and increasingly the regulatory frameworks to build something genuinely different. Whether they choose to is the only question that matters.
About ICAFR: The International Conference for Alternative Finance Research brings together academics, platforms, regulators, and technology providers annually to advance crowdfunding research and practice. Organised by the European Centre for Alternative Finance at Utrecht University and the University of Agder (UiA), ICAFR 2026 was hosted by Universidad de Málaga, April 8–10.
About GECA: The Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance is a neutral, industry-led network fostering dialogue, alignment, and practical pathways for cross-border collaboration in equity crowdfunding. Learn more at thegeca.org
Building a Borderless European Equity Crowdfunding Market - Giancarlo Vergine (Over Ventures) Â | GECA Podcast
Building a Borderless European Equity Crowdfunding Market - Giancarlo Vergine (Over Ventures) Â | GECA Podcast
Europe has the startups, the capital, and the platforms. So why isn’t equity crowdfunding borderless yet?
Over €100 million raised across 200+ campaigns. Thousands of startups tracked. Billions in activity documented. Yet European equity crowdfunding remains fragmented into 27+ national markets while the US operates as one integrated ecosystem. What if coordination—not just regulation—could unlock Europe’s true potential?
Join Andy Field in conversation with Giancarlo Vergine, founder of Over Ventures and creator of the European Community Capital Landscape, as he reveals what actually works in building cross-border crowdfunding markets. From Head of Deal Flow at Crowdfund Me to architecting Italy’s position as Europe’s second-largest equity crowdfunding market, Giancarlo shares the patterns behind successful campaigns and the infrastructure Europe still needs to build.
From proving that crowdfunding isn’t dying (it’s evolving) to demonstrating why venture capital and crowdfunding are complementary forces (not competitors), Giancarlo breaks down why ECSP regulation opened doors but investor experience remains fragmented, how Italy filled an equity gap and became a leader, and why the next phase won’t be driven by isolated platforms—but by shared standards and repeatable systems.
Key insights:
- Why crowdfunding must be treated as a company milestone—not just a fundraising tool
- The winning pattern: six months advance planning + founder skin in the game + community building
- How platform due diligence creates a bi-directional trust layer (protecting investors AND attracting VCs)
- Why Italy leads Europe: filling the equity gap before venture capital matured
- ECSP’s promise vs. reality: regulation enables, but fragmented user experience limits adoption
- The European Community Capital Landscape: proving the market is alive, evolving, and full of potential
- What “borderless” actually means: shared standards, interoperable data, coordinated investor access
- Why Europe needs more exits, repeatable cross-border systems, and VC-crowdfunding collaboration
Regulation enables. Coordination unlocks. Collaboration scales.
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Andy Field (Host): Hi everybody, and welcome back to the GECA Podcast—the voice of global equity crowdfunding. I’m Andy Field, Steering Committee Lead of the Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance, where we speak with the leading voices who are shaping the future of capital raising across borders.
Now, as crowdfunding continues to evolve, we’re exploring what it takes to run successful campaigns globally and what founders, platforms, investors, and experts need to know to really thrive in this expanding ecosystem.
Today I’m delighted to be joined by someone who’s been at the very heart of European equity crowdfunding for more than a decade now. My guest is Giancarlo Vergine, Founder and Managing Partner of Over Ventures and one of the most experienced practitioners in the European crowdfunding ecosystem.
Now, over the years, Giancarlo has worked on more than 200 equity crowdfunding campaigns, helping startups and SMEs raise over €100 million across Italy, the UK, and across wider Europe. He’s also played a pivotal role in shaping the Italian market, including during his time as Head of Deal Flow at Crowdfund Me, helping position Italy as one of Europe’s leading equity crowdfunding jurisdictions and supporting some of the earliest cross-border campaigns following the introduction of the ECSP regulation.
Now, beyond platform operations, Giancarlo is also the creator of the European Equity Crowdfunding Landscape, which is one of the most comprehensive market intelligence initiatives in the sector, tracking thousands of startups and billions of euros in activity across Europe.
Now, at GECA, we talk a lot about the need to move from fragmented national markets to coordinated international frameworks. And Giancarlo’s work really sits nicely exactly at that intersection where regulation, platforms, data, and collaboration can meet.
And in this conversation we’re going to explore what’s working, what still isn’t working, and what needs to change if Europe is really serious about building a truly integrated equity crowdfunding market.
Giancarlo, it’s great to have you with us—not just on this podcast, but as one of the latest members of the GECA Steering Committee. So welcome.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Thank you. Thank you, Andy, for having me here and for having me in the Steering Committee at GECA. I really appreciate this new role. And I like to work with all of you guys from all over the world in this industry that is very interesting—not only for me. And we will see why.
Andy Field (Host): Absolutely. And it’s a pleasure having you on board, actually. And so let’s start you with the most obvious question: You’ve been deeply involved—I mentioned you’ve been deeply involved—in the European equity crowdfunding market and ecosystem for over a decade. How would you describe what it is that you do?
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Sure. So at the simplest level, we help companies raise capital through equity crowdfunding in a very strategic way. So in practice, what we really do is design, plan, and execute community capital and equity crowdfunding raises, starting from the strategies and going through all the implementation.
Over the last decade, as you already mentioned, first with Crowdfund Me and then with Over Ventures, I’ve worked across platforms, jurisdictions, and investor bases in order to help—from one side—founders and entrepreneurs leverage crowdfunding as a means to raise money and at the same time to make their company grow faster. Yeah. On the other end, helping platforms to have great deal flow and to grow the market organically but also in a faster way.
Andy Field (Host): Yep. Okay. Yeah, that all makes sense. But what was it that first pulled you into crowdfunding as very much a long-term focus rather than just a passing trend, a sort of trend where companies were looking to raise money through different measures, if you like? What made you realize that this was a long-term project?
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Yeah, from my perspective, first of all, the access that it can give to companies to retail investors, but also at the same time—where we have community-based companies—also to their customers, to convert them from customers to shareholders. Yeah. So first of all, I think that crowdfunding has the main role to change who gets to participate in innovation—not only the institutional investors, the venture capital, the private equity, but also the retail investor.
Everyone would like to invest small tickets to become part of, to own a piece of a scale-up that would become a unicorn, like for example Revolut in the UK in the past years, or at the same time also other companies that will not become unicorns, but they can become great companies. And for example, there are several people that are very fond of a specific company, and they would like to also own a piece of that company.
And from another perspective, I think that crowdfunding is not a niche infrastructure at the moment. It’s an infrastructure that actually needs a more organic way, a systemic way to be executed, to be managed. And GECA in its role is doing something to improve that because, for example, in the US they are leveraging better this tool at the moment than in Europe.
So I think that this is another perspective: trying to make one systemic capital market that can be a very precious resource for companies that would like to leverage it.
Andy Field (Host): Yeah, that makes sense. And one of the things that GECA is trying to do, you’re absolutely right, is to bring the different jurisdictions together and learn from the experiences that they’ve all had, because there’ll be so many different perspectives and different ways of doing things, and those learnings are really important.
Now, you’ve worked on—I mentioned right at the beginning—you’ve worked on more than 200 campaigns, right? And raising over €100 million for those businesses. So have you seen any patterns that have emerged over time? And I suppose in asking that, I’m saying: what do you think separates campaigns that succeed from those that perhaps struggle a little?
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Yeah. First of all, the entrepreneur has to understand that crowdfunding or a community funding campaign is not properly something very automatic. So “I put the campaign, my proposition on a portal and I receive automatically the money because people would like to invest because I’m very cool and so on.”
Andy Field (Host): Yeah.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): You have to put your face in front, so you have to fundraise. And this is a means to speed up the fundraising time, lead time. And it depends on the ecosystem. But for example, if you’re in the United States, that is a very mature market, probably if you would like to raise money privately, you don’t take a lot of time—a few months. But in the past, if I remember for example the stories of Airbnb, they took more than six, nine months to raise their seed round, and now they are what they are.
I think that the common pattern is two things: Use crowdfunding as the booster of the fundraising. Yes. Not as the only means of the fundraising. And that means that the founders have to put their skin in the game, and they should prepare the fundraising strategy in advance. I suggest six months in advance. So I plan to fundraise, I plan to leverage the crowdfunding, and I plan all the activities before getting in contact with the platforms or with the potential leading investors.
And second of all, I think that they have to understand crowdfunding not as a fundraising project, but a company milestone. So “I would like to bring on board my community.” Yes, that means I raise money, but at the same time I try to reduce the churn rate, to increase the loyalty, to create ambassadors. So the founders that plan the crowdfunding activities and the crowdfunding raises in this way—using the crowdfunding as the booster—they succeeded.
And as another viewpoint, of course, you should have also impact and impact stuff in your proposition. So I’m a company that has impact in my vision. Impact means everything, but for example, impact for the environment, impact for the people that work with us.
Andy Field (Host): Yeah.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Impact in our business proposition and so on.
Andy Field (Host): Yeah. Okay. And actually, just echoing from some of the conversations that I’ve had with other people recently, I guess engaging that crowd, if you like, there’s gonna be a lot of involvement in trying to build that trust layer, making sure the communication is right with the shareholders, with the people who’ve invested and that kind of thing. How important do you think that trust layer is? Just to follow on from other conversations I’ve had, really?
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Yeah. I think that the trust layer—if I understood your question—I think that of course, using crowdfunding as a trust layer for the market, not only for your customers or the new shareholders, but also for the market. Because if, for example, you raise money from angels in a pre-seed round and it is offline, nobody is aware of what you do. Yeah. Just the angels that invested. But if you do it online, publicly on a platform that makes a due diligence—technical and also about your business and so on—so they check all the compliance stuff, of course it’s better for a small investor to invest through crowdfunding than offline with direct investment, with direct relations with the founders.
So the trust, I think the trust layer is bi-directional. From one side is for the due diligence and the selection part that the platform does. And on the other end also because if I raise with crowdfunding and it’s clear my proposition, it’s clear what I would like to do, where I would like to spend the money, what is my pre-money valuation, so in the next rounds for sure also the venture capitalist or other angels, family offices can rely on that information and rely on what you put there.
Andy Field (Host): That’s a great point. That’s a great point. I don’t think we’ve touched on that before. That’s a really interesting way of looking at it.
Okay, so let’s just focus a little bit on Italy, which has obviously been your main—the main sort of mainstay of your career so far. Italy’s probably considered one of Europe’s largest equity crowdfunding markets. I think that would be fair to say. What do you think it got right?
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): I think that Italy, until a few years ago, had not a real venture capital market because there were very few venture capital funds that were investing mostly from Series A up and above. Now the venture capital is growing. There are more venture capital, there are more investors coming into Italy from other countries—for example, UK, US, and Israel and so on—that would like to invest in Italian startups.
But until three, four years ago, crowdfunding was one of the main places where you raised money for pre-seed and seed companies because there was an equity gap—we call it an equity gap. So lack of money in those stages. And so “I go on crowdfunding because I can raise money from more people, small tickets, more tickets from a big amount of people.”
Now the market is evolving. Italy has a venture capital country—one of probably the fastest ecosystems in Europe at the moment. Of course, the numbers are very low if you compare them with the UK or France or Germany because in 2025, in Italy, we raised €1.7 billion for venture capital.
I think that Italy is unique also because it combines strong retail participation with—now there is also an increase of founder skills, entrepreneurial skills. And also there are SMEs that are very typical in Italy that are trying to leverage crowdfunding instead of traditional financial sources. That is another lever that brings Italy as the second, at the moment, second country after France. We are not considering UK because in our report we speak about EU ECSP, but if we consider UK, it’s the third country. So it’s not bad.
Andy Field (Host): Sure. And I suppose since ECSP has come into force, you’ve been involved in some of the first Italian cross-border campaigns. Can you talk a little bit about what worked there and what proved to be a little harder than expected? And then I suppose carrying on from that: Has ECSP delivered what the industry hoped it would in terms of harmonizing the regulatory framework across the EU?
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Yeah. I think that we are still in a transitional part of the process because it started at the end of 2023. 2024 was a year for Italy in Europe and other countries that started at the end of 2023 because, for example, Spain was one of the first countries that started with this regulation and so is in a better position in terms of adoption.
ECSP, I think, is going in the way where all the operators were expecting at the very beginning, but at the moment we have few cross-border deals. But why? Italian retail investors are not very used to investing in platforms outside Italy. That is the point.
Platforms are working a lot. For example, in UK the leaders of the market that are Crowdcube, Republic—that are basically UK but we know they have the license in Europe—they are working a lot to increase education and advocacy on their technology, on their own services, and also on the means for their retail investors, making partnership with club of angels and other entities that would facilitate the adoption of investing in early-stage startups.
And what I can see is that ECSP is very useful, I think, for Europe and is going to be also the main reason why the market can bring bigger players that can operate in all the countries instead of it being very fragmented now.
Andy Field (Host): Yep.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): And so, for example, we have, I don’t know, 10 platforms in Italy, 10 platforms in France, 10 platforms in Spain. And it’s very—if you invest in startups and you would like to—I’m Italian—I would like to invest in a French company, I have to go to another portal. You should make several subscriptions, several—it’s difficult for the investor.
Andy Field (Host): The experience is difficult.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Yeah. The experience at the moment is still very difficult. And the deal flow of the platforms is not yet complete. Yeah. So if you go on Republic or on Crowdcube, okay, you can find European opportunities. But at the moment, for example, there aren’t Italian companies. But in the future, I think that top players—not only these two that I mentioned, but for example, also Invesdor, others that are more vertical on specific topics. For example, Capital Cell that is a very interesting portal in—basically Spain—but operates all over Europe and they are vertical in biotech.
So if you go there, you can find at the moment, for example, a company from UK, a company from Spain, a company from France. For me that I’m an investor, I prefer to have more choices in different countries than just a few countries. I think that now that is the concern about the experience for the investor.
Andy Field (Host): Yeah, so investor choice is really important. They have to be able to invest in a relatively easy manner. It needs to be smooth. And from what you’re saying as well, the education—ECSP allows for this to start happening, but actually there needs to be a certain level of education around investors to encourage them to make those steps and ask for these investment opportunities in other countries.
Okay. That’s really interesting. So you created the European Equity Crowdfunding Landscape. What problems were you trying to solve when you were doing that?
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): First of all, we would like to make aware the venture capital market and the operators of the private markets in general about the size and the potential, the trends and the potentials of the crowdfunding. Because crowdfunding is a market that started more than 10 years ago.
Andy Field (Host): Yeah.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): In the UK probably in 2010—yeah, something like that. So more than 15 years. In Italy started in 2015. So it’s something that worked in these environments. Private markets or private equity and venture capital have heard about it. But equity crowdfunding, as we experience it and we see, in the last years isn’t sexy anymore for that kind of operators because there were some interesting exits, some interesting investments that became millionaires, for example Revolut, Monzo. But a lot of startups, a lot of companies that raised through crowdfunding didn’t succeed. As is normal in the venture capital.
Andy Field (Host): Absolutely.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Yeah. The retail investors are not very used to this way to invest and lose money, this level of risk. So what we decided is to create this pan-European aggregate market research to show all the operators—both entrepreneurs, operators, investors—that this market is alive.
Andy Field (Host): Yes.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Is changing, is evolving, but is not dying. And it has a lot of potential that you can take advantage of, putting some…
Andy Field (Host): Putting numbers behind that potential. We often talk about the potential of the market.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Yeah, yeah. Because for example, if this year Italy is not performing very well, but there is France that is overperforming. Yeah. You can leverage this means, this market because people are not abandoning this way to invest or to raise money. Yeah. They just—they don’t like probably the models, they don’t like the offering. Yeah. But if you find what the investor wants and at the same time you guarantee an experience to entrepreneurs to easily raise money and try to scale without—or with also—the venture capital investors.
So we are trying to put the crowdfunding in the ecosystem, trying to also create collaboration with venture capital. For example, on the 19th—probably we will talk about it later—but on the 19th here in Milan, we will launch the European Community Capital Landscape 2025. And at the moment there are more than 100 people registered and 25% are venture capitalists, for example. And it’s a good way because we are doing it with the Italian Tech Alliance that is the Italian Venture Capital Association because we think that venture capital is not alternative to crowdfunding.
Andy Field (Host): Sure.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): It’s complementary.
Andy Field (Host): Yes.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): So that’s why we are doing this.
Andy Field (Host): Yeah, that again speaks volumes to what we talk about all the time in GECA, which is that collaboration piece. It’s very important that we collaborate across all levels. So really what you’re doing is—going back to my original question—standing up for the industry and proving to the world that this industry is there, it’s alive and well and can prosper and has so much untapped potential. And you’re putting some values across that as well.
And I suppose—have you found so far across the billions of euros worth of deals and the thousands of startups that the European market is thriving? I’m assuming it does give a positive message.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Regarding the comparison between 2024 and 2025, it is growing. Yeah. Not growing double—it is growing double digit, but it’s not growing in an exponential way at the moment. But because the market is changing, there are more private deals that are not public, and so we cannot take the data. Platforms are changing the business model, new players are coming in, are joining the market. So I think that it is a market that would increase the size of deals and also the amount raised.
And it is not very common—probably UK yes, but for example in Italy or in France—that one fund deploys, I don’t know, 50, 60, 70, 80 million in one year. No. Yeah. But with the crowdfunding, if you assume that crowdfunding is a fund that invests in a certain kind of companies, you can see that, for example, France—now we don’t have the final numbers because we have to fine-tune all the calculations—but for example, if I remember, France is almost €100 million deployed just in venture capital equity crowdfunding. So SMEs and startups. We are not considering real estate. We’re not considering lending.
Andy Field (Host): Lending.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Yeah. And so €100 million is not bad.
Andy Field (Host): No, that’s right. Okay. I suppose I should ask you—you are a fairly recent member of the GECA Steering Committee, which we’re very grateful to have you on board, and it’s great that you’re part of an ever-expanding team we’ve got here. What does—’cause we talk about borderless equity crowdfunding—what does that actually mean to you in practical terms? And then again, as a follow-up to that, why did GECA resonate with you so much? And what role do you think GECA can play in Europe and worldwide, actually?
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): I think that it means shared standards, interoperable data, and coordinated investor access.
Andy Field (Host): Yeah.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): I think that means—but at the moment it’s not like that, and so I think it is very needed, the help of GECA, other local associations that work together in synergy also with other entities in venture capital and tech ecosystem in order to facilitate this.
Andy Field (Host): Yes.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Because at the moment, as we already mentioned, for example, in the United States you have one language and you have, okay, one regulation like in Europe. But the cultural barriers are not similar to the European one.
Andy Field (Host): Yeah.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): There are cultural barriers, but they are one single country. Yeah. In Europe, we are 27 countries, with—and plus the United Kingdom, sorry—28. So several languages, several cultural behaviors, and so on and so forth. But if we—now we have the regulation, but we have to start to share the standards, share the data, coordinate—I don’t know—the activities, the process, because okay, there can be, of course, in all the great markets, competition, but on the other end, the best markets live on cooperation.
Andy Field (Host): Collaboration, yeah.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Collaboration. Yeah.
Andy Field (Host): Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Good, I’m glad you said all of that because I completely agree with everything that you’re saying there.
If we move forward five years, what needs to change for Europe to have a genuinely integrated crowdfunding market? I know you’ve touched upon it there with the fact that we need to talk more, we need to share more information, we need to share best practice, we need to come to some kind of way in which the different regulatory regimes can talk to each other, they can understand each other, they can be interoperable as you mentioned earlier. But is there anything else that you think—it might be an attitude—what do you think needs to change for Europe to have a genuine integrated market?
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): I think that we need more exits. But it is in common with the venture capital because in Europe we don’t have the big tech we have in the United States. But I think that we can, if we work together as a European ecosystem, we can work also on all the journey of a startup or all the journey of a small company. So start, be funded, grow, and exit to make the investors happy. So we need more success stories. And to do that, it is needed to have a fertile field and cooperation and collaboration between operators, between countries and so on.
We need also repeatable systems. So what I mean is that we have to find the best way. We are trying to do it working also with platforms.
Andy Field (Host): Yeah.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Because if we find how the machine has to work for cross-border raises, for an investor to invest in multiple countries, and why not receive also tax benefits—not only if they invest in their proper country, but also in other countries. I think that it can be scalable. It can be scaled, sorry, the market and the system, and so we can reach the target of GECA: €1 trillion—1 trillion, yeah—euro, dollar, I don’t remember.
Andy Field (Host): Yeah.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Within the end of 2030, if I remember.
Andy Field (Host): Yes, that’s absolutely right. What do you think the biggest—what do you think the biggest missed opportunity will be if we don’t get the collaboration bit right?
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): The missed opportunity is that at the moment there is a big potential opportunity. Companies are not all bankable. They need money to grow. Yeah. And so there is this need and somebody has to fill and cover this need with the best offer. And if we don’t do it in the right way, we can miss those billions of euros financing the next economy of Europe.
Andy Field (Host): Yeah.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Because crowdfunding is a mirror also of the venture capital because venture capital—okay, the big LPs, limited partners, high net worth individuals, institutions, banks, and so on—invest in venture funds to invest in the real economy, but also as a small retail investor. If we would like to participate in the next big thing in Europe, in the next companies in Europe, we have to invest and to help this economy to move forward because…
Andy Field (Host): Yeah.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): The other continents—but I know GECA is a global association. I, yeah, at the moment I’m in the Europe team because I’m Italian, but I hope also that crowdfunding can become the standard—one of the standards—to raise money and to be accessed by investors all over the world, because it’s the easiest thing. Yeah, you access a portal, you put your proposition, the portal checks you are okay, and small people, small retail investor, everyone can invest in you and it’s amazing. So increase that, increase the liquidity of this…
Andy Field (Host): And that’s the risk that we don’t get that if we don’t get the collaboration right. And that’s actually a really good message for people—platform operators, policymakers, or anyone listening to this—to take away.
Giancarlo, we’re coming to the end of the chat now. It’s been great talking to you. Where could people follow your work or learn more about EECL and Over Ventures, and also about the events that you are holding starting on the 19th of February?
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): I’m a bit active on LinkedIn, so you can follow me and connect with me.
Andy Field (Host): And we’ll put links—we’ll put links in the notes for that.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Yeah. Thank you. And also, I write a newsletter that is at the moment monthly, but it is gonna be more frequent in the next months. It is called The Snowball Effect. That is the effect that usually is the effect that successful crowdfunding campaigns start to trigger when they succeed.
Andy Field (Host): Absolutely. And anyone who’s interested in the European crowdfunding scene should subscribe to that newsletter and again, we’ll put the link in the notes for that.
Giancarlo, thank you so much for such a thoughtful, insightful conversation. Your experience across the platforms, the markets, the data really highlights how far European equity crowdfunding has come and how much potential actually—what we’ve talked about—remains untapped. And what comes through really clearly, I think, is that the next phase of growth won’t be driven by isolated platforms or national success stories, but it’s gonna be collaboration, shared infrastructures, and a willingness to actually think beyond borders.
So thank you again, Giancarlo, for that. That was a really great conversation.
Giancarlo Vergine (Guest): Thank you, Andy. Thank you again.
Andy Field (Host): Thank you very much. That’s exactly the challenge GECA exists to help address, and conversations like this are exactly why we exist: to bring together diverse global perspectives, challenge fragmented thinking, and help shape a more connected and inclusive equity crowdfunding system.
And to our listeners, thanks for tuning in. Stay with us for future episodes as we continue to explore the people, the policies, and platforms that are unlocking crowdfunding without borders. Don’t forget to follow GECA for more conversations with the people shaping the future of global equity crowdfunding.
And visit our website, thegeca.org, to learn more about our mission, our equity, our growing supporter base of equity crowdfunding ecosystem stakeholders, and just learn how you can get involved. Until the next time, see you soon.
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Data Intelligence Meets Regulatory Innovation: Barry James Joins GECA
The Man Who Built the Evidence Base for Crowdfunding - and Changed Regulation to Match Reality
In 2012-13, while most policymakers still viewed crowdfunding as an experimental curiosity, Barry James was doing something radical: tracking every campaign, building the data infrastructure to prove crowdfunding worked, and simultaneously architecting the regulatory change needed to let it flourish.
A decade later, that dual approach - rigorous data intelligence combined with regulatory innovation - has transformed how governments worldwide approach fintech regulation.
Now, GECA welcomes Barry as Strategic Advisor, that same systems-level thinking comes to the challenge of building borderless crowdfunding.
When Data Meets Disruption
Barry didn't just write about crowdfunding's potential. He created The Crowd Data Center, tracking over 900,000 campaigns across more than a decade - the world's largest crowdfunding dataset. This wasn't academic curiosity. It was infrastructure.
"We needed evidence, not anecdotes," explains Barry, "Regulators don't move on enthusiasm. They move on data that demonstrates market function, investor behaviour, and risk profiles. The Crowd Data Center became the analytical foundation that helped legitimize crowdfunding as a mainstream funding channel - first in the UK, then globally."
That data revealed patterns nobody else could see. His "State of the Crowdfunding Nation" reports, published quarterly since 2014, didn't just track volume. They exposed the emergence of what Barry termed the "eFunding Escalator" - a new capital formation pathway where crowdfunding served as validation for traditional finance to follow.
Yet more groundbreaking was "Women Unbound," research conducted with PwC analyzing 450,000+ campaigns. The findings challenged conventional wisdom: women-led crowdfunding campaigns reached their targets more often than men-led campaigns - a stark contrast to the expectations there have been in traditional entrepreneurship where women receive barely two percent of venture funding.
"The data told us something profound about access and bias," Barry notes. "Crowdfunding wasn't just democratizing capital access. It was revealing how traditional gatekeepers had systematically failed entire demographics. That evidence became impossible for policymakers to ignore."
The Regulatory Architect
But data alone doesn't change systems. In August 2012, Barry published a proposal in Real Business that would reshape UK financial regulation: the Financial Conduct Authority (then FSA) should create an "Innovation Unit" specifically designed to enable fintech innovation while maintaining investor protection.
The idea was revolutionary. Financial regulators traditionally approached innovation with caution, if not outright resistance - 'Prevention Mindset'. Barry's proposal flipped the model: regulation should also support innovation, without compromising protections.
Barry explained at the time. "We had regulatory frameworks designed for 20th-century financial institutions being applied to 21st-century technology platforms. The mismatch was strangling innovation that could benefit millions of underserved businesses and investors."
He didn't just propose the concept. He campaigned for it. Through the Westminster Crowdfunding Forum he co-founded and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Crowdfunding and Non-Bank Finance, Barry worked directly with legislators to make the case.
In 2014, the FCA Innovation Unit ("Hub") launched, beginning the transforming the UK's regulatory culture. The impact rippled globally. Today, more than 95 regulators have replicated the model, specifically designed to enable fintech while protecting ecosystem participants. The innovation has since spread across 18 fields from aerospace and AI to nuclear.
"Barry's work on the FCA Innovation Unit represents exactly the kind of systems thinking we need for global crowdfunding harmonization," said Andy Field, GECA Steering Committee Executive Lead. "He didn't just advocate for less regulation or more innovation. He architected a framework that enabled innovation, serving rather than endangering protections - and proved it could work at national scale. Creating a model that is now referenced worldwide."
From Westminster to Global Standards
Barry's influence extends beyond single initiatives. As Co-Chair of the Westminster Forum on Crowdfunding and Non-Bank Finance, he co-created the institutional space where regulators, platforms, entrepreneurs, and policymakers could engage in evidence-based dialogue.
These weren't talking shops. They were working sessions that shaped policy at the highest levels. When the UK government needed to understand crowdfunding's role in SME finance, they looked to Barry's data. When the European Commission sought insights on alternative finance regulation, Barry's research informed their approach.
His book, "New Routes to Funding - The Handbook of Modern Funding," became required reading for business advisors and entrepreneurs navigating the new funding landscape. Industry leaders called it a "page turner" and "gamechanger" - unusual praise for a book about capital formation mechanics.
"Barry has this extraordinary ability to grasp complicated systems and translate them for ordinary people with metaphors that border on the lyrical," noted Dr. Julie Gregory, a long-time collaborator. "Always visionary, always reaching for the future."
Beyond Crowdfunding: Blockchain, AI, and Digital Money
Barry's expertise doesn't stop at crowdfunding. As Founding Chair of the British Blockchain and Frontier Technologies Association, and a founding columnist for City AM's CryptoInsider, and The Fintech Times, he's tracked the evolution of blockchain, tokenization, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) with the same data-driven rigour he brought to crowdfunding.
His Remaking Money project explores how CBDCs will transform national currencies - changes he describes as potentially as significant as the internet itself. His Humane Economics work challenges the financialized thinking that he argues damages both society and planetary ecology. He has said:
"Eighty-six percent of central banks globally are now working on digital currencies," Barry observed. "This will touch everyone. At every stage there will be opportunities and pitfalls. We need the same kind of evidence-based, systems-level thinking we applied to crowdfunding regulation - but at an even larger scale."
This polymathic approach - spanning crowdfunding data, regulatory architecture, blockchain technology, AI implications, and monetary systems - represents exactly the cross-disciplinary thinking required for global coordination.
"What we need in global crowdfunding harmonization isn't expertise in just one domain," Field emphasized. "We need people who understand how technology, regulation, data, and institutional behavior interact across complex systems. Barry's four decades navigating those intersections - in the NHS with health tech, in financial services with fintech, in policy with regulatory innovation - gives him unique translation capability between worlds that typically don't speak the same language."
The GECA Mission
Barry's appointment comes as GECA advances from dialogue to infrastructure-building. The organization's mission - creating transparent, credible, borderless equity crowdfunding markets - requires exactly the combination Barry brings: data intelligence that builds the evidence base, regulatory expertise that enables practical frameworks, and systems thinking that connects fragmented pieces into coherent wholes.
"I'm excited to join GECA at this pivotal moment," Barry said. "We're at an inflection point with huge challenges and even greater potential. Equity crowdfunding could remain trapped in fragmented national silos - or could fulfil its potential as global infrastructure. If we have the drive and ambition to build the standards, data interoperability, and trust architecture to make this a reality."
GECA's first priorities include advancing work on disclosure standards, platform interoperability, and evidence-based advocacy with regulators. The Crowd Data Center's decade-plus dataset provides GECA with unmatched analytical depth on campaign performance, investor behaviour, and market dynamics across jurisdictions - insights that inform both standards development and regulatory dialogue.
"Barry doesn't just bring data or regulatory expertise in isolation," Field noted. "He brings the methodology for using data to drive regulatory evolution - the same approach that created the FCA Innovation Unit. That's transformative for GECA. We're not just advocating for better rules. We're building the evidence base that helps regulators worldwide understand what works."
Looking Ahead
Barry's career trajectory reveals a consistent pattern: identify emerging technology or market structure, build the data infrastructure to understand it rigorously, create the institutional spaces for stakeholder dialogue, and architect the frameworks that enable innovation while protecting participants.
He did it in the NHS during the 1990s, pioneering electronic health information transfer with what became nationally known as the "Sheffield Project." He did it in fintech with the FCA Innovation Unit. He did it in crowdfunding with The Crowd Data Center and Westminster Forums.
Now he's applying that same methodology to GECA's mission of borderless crowdfunding markets.
"The technology for cross-border crowdfunding exists," Field observed. "The demand exists - investors already invest internationally, and platforms already scale across borders. What's missing is the coordinated infrastructure: common disclosure standards, interoperable data schemas, regulatory frameworks that recognize each other's gatekeeping. That's not a technology problem. It's a coordination problem. And coordination problems require the kind of multi-stakeholder, evidence-based, systems-level work that GECA champions."
With Barry's appointment, GECA gains not just UK representation but four decades of proven infrastructure-building expertise - the data intelligence, regulatory architecture capability, and institutional relationships needed to turn fragmentation into coordination.
"We're building the rails for global crowdfunding," Field concluded. "Barry's been building rails his entire career - in health tech, in fintech, in regulatory innovation. He knows what it takes to turn aspiration into infrastructure. Welcome to the team, Barry. Let's build what comes next."
About Barry James
Barry James is a polymathic analyst, strategist, and transition architect with over 40 years of pioneering expertise in technology, finance, and social innovation, with impact across ~100 nations. As Founder and CEO of The Crowd Data Center, he created one of the world's leading crowdfunding data resources, tracking 900,000+ campaigns over more than a decade.
Barry conceived and successfully advocated for the creation of the UK Financial Conduct Authority's Innovation Unit (2012-2014), transforming regulatory culture to enable fintech innovation - a model since replicated in approximately 100 jurisdictions globally. As author of "New Routes to Funding - The Handbook of Modern Funding" and founding Co-Chair of the Westminster Forum on Crowdfunding and Non-Bank Finance, he has shaped policy dialogue at the highest levels.
His "State of the Crowdfunding Nation" reports and groundbreaking "Women Unbound" research with PwC provide evidence-based insights demonstrating how crowdfunding unlocks entrepreneurial potential. With deep expertise spanning equity crowdfunding, blockchain, AI, and central bank digital currencies, Barry brings systems thinking and institutional relationships essential to GECA's mission of harmonized global crowdfunding standards.
About GECA
The Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance (GECA) is a neutral, industry-led network bringing together equity crowdfunding platforms, national associations, regulators, policymakers, and technology providers to build transparent, credible, borderless equity crowdfunding markets.
GECA's mission is to foster dialogue, alignment, and practical pathways for cross-border collaboration - addressing regulatory fragmentation, advancing interoperable infrastructure, and creating the standards and trust architecture that enable equity crowdfunding to fulfill its global potential.
Learn more: https://thegeca.org
Join GECA: https://thegeca.org/join
Media Contact:
Andy Field
GECA Steering Committee Executive Lead
info@thegeca.org
GECA Appoints Jill Storey: Big 4 Partner Turned Crowdfunding Pioneer
GECA Strengthens Asia-Pacific Leadership with Appointment of Renowned Finance and Crowdfunding Expert
Former Big 4 Partner, Early UK Crowdfunding Pioneer, and Ocean Climate Finance Leader Brings Institutional Rigor and Entrepreneurial Insight to Global Harmonization Mission
The Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance (GECA) today announced the appointment of Jill Storey as Strategic Advisor for Australia to its Steering Committee, marking a significant expansion of the organization's Asia-Pacific expertise and regulatory insight.
Jill brings over 25 years of global financial expertise spanning four continents, pioneering crowdfunding experience from the sector's earliest days, and proven impact investing leadership at the intersection of finance, innovation, and climate solutions.
From Big 4 Partnership to Crowdfunding Pioneer
Jill's career foundation was built through partnerships at three of the world's most prestigious professional services firms - Andersen, KPMG, and Deloitte - across the UK, Europe, Hong Kong, and Australia. In these roles, she advised global financial institutions and multinationals in energy and resources sectors on complex cross-border tax strategy, risk management, and governance issues for global workforces.
"The expertise required to navigate multi-jurisdictional regulatory frameworks, manage cross-border compliance, and advise institutions on strategic risk is exactly what GECA needs as we work toward harmonized global crowdfunding standards," said Andy Field, GECA Steering Committee Executive Lead. "Jill doesn't just understand regulatory complexity theoretically - she's lived it at the highest institutional level across four continents and multiple regulatory regimes."
But what sets Jill apart is her rare combination of institutional rigor and entrepreneurial agility. In 2012, following the London Olympics, she recognized crowdfunding's potential to democratize access to finance and founded a donation-based crowdfunding platform in the UK called Inspire a Star, designed to help children and young people realize their sporting dreams.
This wasn't a side project - it was a fundamental shift from advising institutions to building infrastructure that served underrepresented communities directly.
Building Australia's Equity Crowdfunding Framework
After relocating to Australia, Jill acquired and developed ReadyFundGo, an Australian reward-based crowdfunding platform focused on social entrepreneurs, innovators, and startups. Her hands-on platform experience provided invaluable insight into what makes crowdfunding work in practice - not just in regulatory theory.
Building on this experience, Jill worked closely with several Australian crowdfunding platforms during a critical period: the early implementation of Australia's regulated equity crowdfunding framework. She supported two Australian platforms in obtaining their ASIC crowd-sourced equity funding licenses - navigating one of the world's most progressive regulatory environments for retail equity investment.
Her work across donation, reward, and equity-based crowdfunding models provides a comprehensive perspective on alternative finance evolution that few practitioners can match.
Governance, Policy Leadership, and Industry Development
Since 2017, Jill has served as Non-Executive Board Member of the Crowdfunding Institute of Australia, contributing to industry development and dialogue around crowdfunding and emerging forms of digital finance. Her governance experience spans corporate organizations, not-for-profits, and early-stage ventures - bringing practical insight into building sustainable, well-governed crowdfunding platforms and markets.
"GECA isn't just about platforms - it's about building trustworthy, well-governed ecosystems that regulators, investors, and issuers can rely on," Field emphasized. "Jill's board-level governance experience across multiple organizational types gives her the systems-level perspective we need to help platforms professionalize while maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit that makes crowdfunding powerful."
Impact Investing and Climate Finance Leadership
Currently serving as Ocean CO2 Removal Advisor to the World Ocean Council, Jill exemplifies the intersection of finance, innovation, and impact investing. She works across the global marine carbon dioxide removal (CDR) ecosystem on commercialization, policy alignment, and measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) integrity - advancing high-integrity, ocean-based carbon removal solutions while maintaining rigorous standards for commercialization and governance.
Her focus on ocean-based climate solutions addresses one of the most critical challenges facing global climate strategy. As equity crowdfunding increasingly channels capital toward sustainable innovation, climate tech, and impact ventures, Jill's expertise in structuring high-integrity impact markets becomes directly relevant.
Jill's credentials reflect her commitment to combining theoretical rigor with practical application. She holds an MBA, a Master's in Environmental Science, and is both a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Taxation Specialist.
Why This Appointment Matters for GECA
Jill's unique combination positions her perfectly to advance GECA's mission of creating transparent, credible, borderless equity crowdfunding markets. Her institutional finance expertise - twenty-five years advising global institutions across four continents - provides deep understanding of how institutions evaluate regulatory complexity. Her hands-on experience supporting platforms through ASIC licensing offers practical insight into operationalizing progressive regulation. Her multi-model crowdfunding experience and climate finance leadership demonstrate ability to structure high-integrity markets that balance innovation with credibility.
"I'm honored to join GECA's Steering Committee at such a pivotal moment for global crowdfunding," Jill said. "Throughout my career - from advising multinational institutions on cross-border governance to founding platforms that help entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life - I've seen firsthand how fragmentation creates friction and how coordination unlocks potential. Equity crowdfunding has proven it can democratize access to capital, support underrepresented founders, and channel investment toward innovation that matters. But for it to reach its full potential globally, we need the kind of regulatory clarity, platform interoperability, and trust infrastructure that GECA is building."
Australia's equity crowdfunding framework, regulated by ASIC, represents one of the more progressive approaches globally. The crowd-sourced equity funding (CSEF) regime allows eligible companies to raise up to AUD 5 million per year from retail and wholesale investors through licensed intermediaries. Jill's direct experience helping platforms navigate ASIC licensing during this framework's early implementation provides GECA with valuable insights into what works when translating regulatory intent into operational reality.
"Jill's appointment represents exactly the kind of expertise GECA needs as we move from dialogue to infrastructure-building," Field noted. "She brings the rare combination of Big 4 institutional rigor and hands-on crowdfunding platform experience. Her work supporting Australian platforms through ASIC equity crowdfunding licensing is particularly valuable -Australia's framework is one of the most progressive globally, and Jill's direct experience gives her insight into what works, what doesn't, and how to translate regulatory intent into platform practice."
Looking Ahead
Jill's appointment comes at a pivotal time for GECA and the global equity crowdfunding ecosystem. As regulatory frameworks mature, technology enablers like tokenization and AI emerge, and cross-border activity increases, the need for coordinated standards, interoperable infrastructure, and trust architecture becomes more urgent.
GECA's work focuses on creating practical pathways for cross-border collaboration by addressing regulatory fragmentation, advancing interoperable platforms and data standards, and building the evidence base that helps regulators, platforms, and policymakers make informed decisions.
Jill's appointment strengthens GECA's ability to deliver on this mission by bringing direct regulatory licensing experience, multi-stakeholder governance expertise, impact investing rigor, entrepreneurial insight, and climate finance leadership that connects crowdfunding to broader sustainable finance trends.
Australia's representation on GECA's Steering Committee strengthens the organization's Asia-Pacific presence at a critical time, enabling cross-jurisdictional learning from one of the world's most advanced equity crowdfunding regulatory frameworks.
About Jill Storey
Jill Storey is a finance and crowdfunding expert with over 25 years of global experience spanning institutional finance, entrepreneurship, governance, and impact investing. A former Partner with Andersen, KPMG, and Deloitte across the UK, Europe, Hong Kong, and Australia, she advised global financial institutions and multinationals on complex cross-border strategy, risk management, and governance.
An early crowdfunding pioneer, Jill founded a donation-based platform in the UK in 2012 and later owned and developed an Australian reward-based platform. She has worked closely with crowdfunding platforms across donation, reward, and equity models, including supporting two Australian platforms in obtaining ASIC crowd-sourced equity funding licenses.
Since 2017, Jill has served as Non-Executive Board Member of the Crowdfunding Institute of Australia. Currently Ocean CO2 Removal Advisor to the World Ocean Council, she advances high-integrity ocean-based carbon removal and climate markets. Jill holds an MBA, Master's in Environmental Science, and is a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Taxation Specialist.
About GECA
The Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance (GECA) is a neutral, industry-led network bringing together equity crowdfunding platforms, national associations, regulators, policymakers, and technology providers to build transparent, credible, borderless equity crowdfunding markets.
GECA's mission is to foster dialogue, alignment, and practical pathways for cross-border collaboration - addressing regulatory fragmentation, advancing interoperable infrastructure, and creating the standards and trust architecture that enable equity crowdfunding to fulfill its global potential.
Learn more: https://thegeca.org
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