The Future of Crowdfunding – GECA Think Tank Series 2026

Episode 1: Fewer Deals, Bigger Cheques – What the 2026 Data Says About Global Equity Crowdfunding

Recorded: 24 August 2026 Host: Andy Field, Steering Committee Lead, Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance Panel: Giancarlo Vergine (Founding Partner, Over Ventures – Italy), Chris Lustrino (Founder and CEO, KingsCrowd – US), Kieron O’Brien (Managing Director, Republic Europe – Ireland), Jill Storey (Non-Executive Director, Crowdfunding Institute of Australia)

This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability. Filler words, false starts and cross-talk have been removed and minor grammatical corrections made. The substance of each contribution is unchanged. Timestamps are approximate.

---

Welcome and series overview

[00:00] Andy Field: Hello everyone, and welcome to the first episode of GECA’s Future of Crowdfunding Roundtable series. I’m Andy Field, Steering Committee Lead at the Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance, and I’m delighted to be joined by a fantastic panel of experts who are going to give us real insight into today’s discussion.

Over this three-part series we’re going to look at crowdfunding from three different perspectives. We’re starting today with the evidence: what’s actually happening in the market right now, what the data tells us, which sectors are performing, and what we can learn by comparing different markets around the world.

Our second conversation will look at ecosystems: regulation, platforms, market maturity, and what actually makes a crowdfunding market successful. And the third will look forward, at what could transform the industry over the next decade or so, things like AI, tokenisation, institutional capital and new models of collaboration.

But today we’re deliberately starting with the evidence. There’s a lot of discussion about what should work in crowdfunding. We want to ask a slightly different question: what does the evidence actually tell us? Which sectors are attracting investment? Where are the strongest markets? Are we seeing common patterns across countries, or are different ecosystems developing in very different ways?

To help us answer that, we’ve brought together a group of people who see the market from quite different perspectives. We have Giancarlo Vergine from Over Ventures, based in Europe, specifically Italy. Hi, Giancarlo.

Giancarlo Vergine: Hi, Andy. Thank you for having me.

Andy Field: Giancarlo brings a really strong European perspective and a view across the different markets and ecosystems in Europe. We’ve also got Chris Lustrino, based in the United States, who heads up KingsCrowd. Hi, Chris.

Chris Lustrino: Hey. Always wonderful to be here, Andrew. Thanks for having me.

Andy Field: Chris brings the US perspective as well as KingsCrowd’s data and research on the crowdfunding market. We’re also joined by Kieron O’Brien from Republic Europe, based in Ireland. Hi, Kieron.

Kieron O’Brien: Evening, Andy. Thanks for the invite. I’m the new person in the group, so I’m looking forward to the conversation.

Andy Field: Kieron brings a platform perspective through Republic Europe, and a particularly useful view of how investors and issuers interact with the market. And finally, last but by no means least, we’ve got Jill Storey. It’s some ungodly hour in Australia at the moment. Jill, amongst other things, is a director of the Crowdfunding Institute of Australia and gives us an important perspective from Australia and the wider international market. Hi, Jill. Great to have you here.

Jill Storey: Good morning, Andrew. Nice to be here. Thanks.

Andy Field: Thanks, everyone, for joining us. Before we get into it: this is intended to be a conversation rather than a series of four presentations. We’re not going to try to get through a massive list of questions one by one. We’ll use themes to guide the discussion and hopefully challenge each other and follow up interesting points as they come up. So please jump in whenever you want to, whether someone says something you agree with or disagree with.

---

Market trends by region

[03:00] Andy Field: We’ll start with quite a broad question. I’d like to get a snapshot of what you’re seeing in your own markets. What are the most significant trends currently shaping equity crowdfunding activity in your region? Giancarlo, do you want to start?

Giancarlo Vergine: Let’s try. Apologies for my pronunciation – I’m probably the only non-native English speaker in this conversation.

First of all, we publish a report every year called the European Community Capital Landscape. We produce it in collaboration with the platforms, including Republic Europe, and it’s a study of trends, numbers and insights across the European equity crowdfunding market, excluding real estate and lending. A few months ago we also started a collaboration with KingsCrowd and Chris, which was born here thanks to GECA, to bring their data intelligence, a technology validated in the US, to the European market.

Thanks to that information, and to the study of those numbers, I can say that in the 2025 report and in the first half of 2026 we are seeing a concentration of both capital and platforms in Europe. The number of platforms is reducing across Europe, and at the same time there are fewer deals but an increase in capital raised. I don’t know whether that’s common to the other regions we’ll hear about later, but it’s one of the first trends we’re seeing.

Another important point is integration with venture capital. I’ve worked in this market, equity crowdfunding in Europe, for about ten years. In past years only the UK and a few other countries had any collaboration between platforms and VCs. Now it’s much more common. We see these deals in Italy, France, Germany, Spain and elsewhere, because venture capitalists are considering crowdfunding not as the last chance for a company to raise money, but as a means by which retail investors, non-sophisticated investors, can co-invest alongside the venture capital. That brings not only money but loyalty, new ambassadors, and the power of the community to these companies.

A third trend is specialisation. There are a few portals that are vertical, focused on specific industries or markets, for example health tech or life sciences in general, or food tech. Of course we also have the big generalist platforms like Republic Europe and Crowdcube that raise across all industries. But we are seeing this specialisation.

And finally, the transition from seeing crowdfunding as a funding channel to seeing it as part of the private market infrastructure. That’s why we also believe in the power of data for the private markets, as I mentioned before.

Andy Field: To summarise, the trends you’re seeing are fewer deals, consolidation in terms of platforms, but an increase in the amount of capital raised; integration with venture capital; and specialised platforms thriving in areas like health tech and life sciences. It would be interesting to hear from Chris whether that’s mirrored in the US.

[08:00] Chris Lustrino: Great question, and the simple answer is yes. What has essentially happened, from what we’ve been able to gather both from the data and from talking with people in the industry, comes down to the economics of doing these deals. For a platform, the amount of work to run a $100,000 deal is, unfortunately or fortunately, the same amount of work as it is to run a $5 million deal, or even a $25 million deal.

So a lot of these organisations have come to the realisation that they’re going to charge a really high upfront fee, and set out expectations of what they expect from you in terms of traction as a business and, more importantly, willingness to spend on things like marketing your capital raise. What we’ve seen is a large reduction in the number of companies raising, but a large increase in the average dollars raised per deal.

It’s becoming exceedingly rare to see companies coming to market to raise capital who aren’t working with a third-party marketing provider, whether that’s provided by the StartEngines and DealMakers of the world, who have their own internal marketing agencies, or by outside agencies like Capital Department, Maverick Brands, DNA and so on. At the end of the day, I think people have learned a lesson. “If you build it, they will come” is not true. If you build it and you bring them with you, the people you brought to the table will come. Or if you build it and then create a full marketing and sales funnel and actively work the deal for months on end, they will also come. But they won’t come otherwise, so you need to be willing to invest in one way or the other.

So yes, the simple answer is that we’ve seen a maturing of the types of companies raising in the space. We’ve seen fewer companies raising, but larger dollar amounts raised by them. And I really think that’s largely driven by business model decisions from the largest platforms in the industry.

[10:00] Andy Field: That’s a nice segue into getting a view from Kieron from a platform perspective. Chris is saying that in the States there are very similar trends to what Giancarlo is seeing in Europe, but also that a lot of founders are engaging outside agencies to help with marketing, and that the companies raising are perhaps a little more mature than in the past. Is that something you’d agree with, Kieron?

Kieron O’Brien: There are a couple of things to unpack there. I would echo what Chris has said on the US side; we’re seeing a lot of that happening with our US marketplace. What contradicts it is what we’re seeing in the European landscape. There’s a divergence. The US market is obviously much more harmonised and much easier to grow quickly, with volume and expertise there. In Europe we’re seeing a bit more harmonisation on the regulatory front, but not in behaviour, and we’ll talk about that a little later.

I would agree with Giancarlo, and he used a phrase I’ll probably repeat quite a few times: private market infrastructure. I think that’s where it’s going to move, and I think that’s why we’re seeing a shrinkage in the number of platforms. If you want to open up or access real retail capital, then issuers and large funds are looking for something more than just the transaction. They want to see what you can offer beyond a one-off campaign. Can you deliver investor engagement? Can you provide structured access to larger, later-stage deals? Because companies are staying private longer.

Now, we will buck the trend a little, to Chris’s point. Our volume of deals has gone up 22 per cent from last year. We’re actually seeing more deals coming through, but spread across early-stage and now late-stage deals. So we’re seeing a nice blend, a nice mix. I’d love to see a lot more 5 million deals, Chris. But we’re not going to turn down the 500K, because the 500K today, when they come back to us the second or third time, is your 1 million and your 5 million.

Andy Field: That’s interesting: the volume of deals and the blend of different-stage deals. Jill, does that resonate with what you’re seeing in Australia?

[13:00] Jill Storey: For Australia, some of it does. The market got going in 2018 with much excitement. One of the first campaigns was DC Power, a solar power company, and they raised two and a half million Australian dollars. For an early-stage deal, and one of the first on the platforms, that was a great start. They had 17,000 investors, some of them investing around $50. For what they were trying to do, building a solar business by bringing customers and shareholders together, I think at the time it was one of the largest numbers of shareholders in a deal.

But since then, over the last couple of years, things have changed. I think 2022 was the year the market peaked, at about $86 million. In the three years following, there’s been quite a substantial decline in overall volume. For the 2025 financial year, which in Australia ends on 30 June, it was down to about $30 million.

So the overall market has declined, and there’s also been the same contraction in platforms that’s been the case in other markets. A couple of the early platforms that were probably among the leaders, like Equitise, went into administration in 2024, and VentureCrowd went into administration a few months ago.

I think platform economics is going to be quite an interesting thing to unpack. Some of it is the market. Australia is smaller, with a population of 28 million, so when times are tougher the discretionary spend among a smaller number of people is tougher too. But I think the platform economics is also something worth diving deeper into.

Andy Field: I’m sure we will. And already we’re starting to see there isn’t necessarily one global crowdfunding story here. There are definitely similarities, but there are nuanced differences as well.

---

Which sectors attract investors

[15:00] Andy Field: Let’s bring this specifically to sectors. Chris, I’ll come to you first, because you have the data via KingsCrowd. Which sectors do you find are currently attracting the greatest investor interest, and, probably more importantly, why?

Chris Lustrino: It’s a great question, and I love it because it highlights a point I probably harp on about a little too much. Everyone thinks these are Shark Tank businesses, that only consumer goods are going to do well, and that’s so far from the truth.

Let me start with the answer. Healthcare is the number one category. It’s the number one industry in terms of dollars raised over the first half of 2026. This comes from our first-half report on the industry. Healthcare brought in the most dollars. Media and entertainment was second, which I think is really interesting. Transport and aerospace was third. Food and restaurants was fourth. Energy and natural resources was fifth. Real estate and construction was sixth. Consumer products was seventh. Financial services was eighth. Alcohol and recreation was ninth, and business software was tenth. And there are a zillion industries beyond that, but those are the top ten.

Healthcare, transport and aerospace, food, energy and natural resources. Do people immediately think those are going to be the largest categories out there? No. But the reality is, the more time I spend in this market, the more I learn about the investors in it and talk with our own 5,000 investors, the clearer it is that the largest dollar volumes are driven by really legitimate individual investors who are looking for a return. Those categories provide really great potential for return. They’re looking for space technology. They’re looking for biotechs, or healthcare and medtech devices with massive market opportunities. That’s what they’re looking for, and so those are the sectors that attract the largest dollar amounts.

It continually dismisses this myth that it’s only about consumer products. It’s so much more than that. And why? Because investors are looking for real return potential, and those categories provide it.

Andy Field: I expected you to say that, if I’m honest. I probably wouldn’t have predicted that exact top ten, but certainly quite a few of the ones in there. Giancarlo, does that look similar in Europe from the data you have access to?

[17:00] Giancarlo Vergine: Yes. In the first half of 2026 we see that life sciences – we call it life sciences, but it’s essentially health tech and healthcare – raised more than €60 million, which is on average more than 30 to 35 per cent of all the money raised. We’re not including the UK in that figure; it’s just the EU and ECSPR-regulated platforms. The second sector is food and agriculture, which is traditionally very strong in Europe, but it raised half the money of life sciences.

A very curious point is that digital, in general, is the sector with the most investors. This is a specific peculiarity in Europe. I don’t know about the US, but probably it’s similar, because when I look at KingsCrowd’s data it seems to be much the same. Some platforms don’t disclose the number of investors, so this relates only to platforms that do. Digital had more than 10,000 investors, almost 11,000, in the first half of 2026. So we can say that life sciences is the most capital-intensive sector, and digital is the most community-intensive one.

[19:00] Chris Lustrino: That’s interesting. And Andrew, just to add one other thing I thought was really interesting in our data. Taking it one step further, we’ve developed a ratio we call the investor demand ratio. It looks at dollars into a sector versus the number of active offerings available for investment. If you have a million offerings in media and entertainment and each one raised a dollar, and then you have one offering in transport and it raised a million dollars, those tell two very different stories. It’s basically asking whether there’s more supply than investor demand, or more demand than supply.

The four highest investor demand ratios, where there was really more demand than supply, were transport and aerospace, energy and natural resources, healthcare, and real estate and construction. Where there was a negative supply-to-demand ratio was in consumer products, media and entertainment, and food and restaurants: lots of deals, but smaller amounts going into each one. Whereas the energy and transport deals were seeing tons of demand and selling out, and there just weren’t enough other deals for investors to do in those sectors. There was actually more demand to find more deals like that. Which I think is a really interesting insight.

Andy Field: Absolutely. My thought from that, before I move to Kieron, is that the four highest investor demand ratio industries are probably driven by investor return, and the ones where supply outweighs demand are more consumer-based and community-based offerings. That’s quite an interesting way to look at it. Kieron, from the platform perspective, what are you seeing in terms of the types of businesses and sectors that are getting real investor traction?

[21:00] Kieron O’Brien: We take a slightly different tack initially. I jotted down some of our leading sectors, and they do overlap with Chris’s, and I’ll throw in one or two others which may be a surprise, or could actually be bundled in with health tech, which seems to cover everything. But for us it’s not so much that a sector is prominent as three conditions, and we call them the three Cs.

Obviously capital is a requirement, but how much capital does it take to operate the business successfully? Health tech, a huge amount of capital. Aerospace, a huge amount of capital. Consumer fintech, maybe not so much. So we look at the capital requirement. Then we look at the clarity of the message: how easy is it for the audience to understand what they’re being asked to invest in? And then, is there a community backing this up? Those are the three Cs.

In terms of sectors, we’re seeing a huge uptick in sports and fan communities, because that fandom and that type of loyalty exists in that world more than anywhere else. The other one you mentioned is health tech. We’re also seeing femtech, a lot of female-focused technology drawing interest, which hadn’t come up in the last 14 years that Republic, and its predecessor Seedrs in the UK, has been collecting data. And the other one, which may fall into your digital category, Giancarlo, or a different one, Chris, is creator economy platforms. To your point, Giancarlo, everything has gone digital, so anyone who can tap into the volume of activity on digital-first platforms is seeing definite interest.

One more important point: the average investment, or ticket size, swings dramatically. When you look at health tech or femtech, we see lower volumes of investors but a four or five times increase in ticket size. Whereas something like the creator economy or sports and fan communities, that’s your typical everyday retail investor. So there’s a broad spectrum in terms of where investors are focusing, and that leads to something we’ll probably touch on later, which is investor sophistication. I think we’re starting to see that come into the European marketplace more now.

Andy Field: Those three in particular are interesting: sports and fans, femtech, and creator economy platforms. I can’t think they’d necessarily fall into the categories we’ve already spoken about. Jill, how does that compare with what’s happening in Australia?

[24:00] Jill Storey: There are some similarities, but because the market is much smaller, I think the main driver, rather than a specific sector, is really the community and the strength of the community. Community brands and consumer brands are still doing quite well. But if you haven’t got a strong community, you’re not going to be successful on the platforms in Australia. It’s not as though there’s a group of investors waiting to see what comes on. You really need that community.

Consumer drinks are doing well. A couple of years ago the craft breweries did quite well, because there’s a big community of people interested in craft breweries. There are other sectors too. One of the interesting ones recently was an AI tax platform for accountants, which closed and did quite well. So there’s a bit of change. But I think it’s very interesting what Kieron said about sport, because in Australia that opportunity hasn’t really been explored sufficiently yet, and I think there’s a huge opportunity to look at what you’ve been doing and see how it can be used in the sports sector.

Kieron O’Brien: Stay tuned, Jill, because hopefully we’ll have an announcement towards the middle of next month which will help clarify that.

Andy Field: Very interesting.

---

Which sectors perform best

[25:00] Andy Field: That gave us a really good overview of the sectors that are typically performing. Let’s dig a little deeper into performance. Chris, I’ll start with you again. Which sectors would you say have consistently delivered the strongest results in terms of raises, and what characteristics have made them particularly successful and suited to equity crowdfunding?

Chris Lustrino: If we look at actual success in the first half – where the companies that actually closed funding rounds were – right at the top of the list is energy, power and natural resources. Second is real estate and construction. Third was media, entertainment and publishing, and fifth was healthcare and pharmaceuticals. So again it goes back to investor demand: where there’s interest, those companies tend to do well.

Now, I will tell you this. You also see the platforms start to lean into what works. It’s funny, because we’ll start hearing, “Hey, do you know this founder? Do you know that founder?” They want warm intros, because they’re finding that something is working on their platform. We actually have a section in our first-half report on the largest industries by platform. For Wefunder, for instance, healthcare and pharmaceuticals made up 37.6 per cent of their deal flow in the first half of 2026. For DealMaker, media, entertainment and publishing was 22 per cent. For StartEngine, healthcare and pharma was 21 per cent. Equifund was 78 per cent transportation, automotive, aviation and aerospace.

So once they find the thing that works, and they know they have the investor audience for it, they keep trying to find deals behind it. It’s a little bit investor demand, and then the platform saying, “This kind of works. Let’s double or triple down on it and go find more founders that fit.” And then they can tell the story that it worked for those companies too.

Andy Field: So do you think some of those platforms are almost becoming specialist by experience, rather than by business plan?

[28:00] Chris Lustrino: A hundred per cent. If they have a few, they get a few more. All founders are trying to de-risk their fundraise, so every data point is valuable. If StartEngine can say, “We’ve done eight of the ten largest healthcare raises in the last six months,” then you think, “I should just go with them.” They have the playbook, and they have the investors who are already interested.

I do think it ebbs and flows, because you almost tax the audience. They think, “I’m ready to do something else now,” and then you have to find the next thing. But I will say that for Wefunder historically, and even StartEngine, healthcare has always been a sector that has worked. I think there’s just enough demand to support a lot of deal flow there. Other sectors come and go, which is fun to watch.

Andy Field: Giancarlo, you’ve already mentioned that quite a few platforms in Europe are specialist: green energy, or health tech, and nothing else. How does what Chris has just said compare with what’s happening in Europe, and what is it about these businesses that makes them attractive to the crowd?

[29:00] Giancarlo Vergine: First of all, I’d like to add that the characteristics Chris described in the US, the playbook and the potential network of investors, are the statistical points that allow an entrepreneur to choose one platform over another. Europe is more fragmented. There are several local platforms. The big platforms that operate all over Europe are probably just two. A few others operate in several countries, but the majority operate in just one.

In France, for example, platforms are very specialised. There’s one that focuses on Series A rounds. There’s also the introduction of pre-IPO rounds. Several platforms offer them, but some are trying to specialise in pre-IPO, using crowdfunding regulation and technology to raise money from small investors for something that isn’t a start-up that might grow your portfolio a thousandfold, but perhaps two or three times. From an investor’s perspective it can be a way to diversify: I invest on that platform not for a specific sector, but for the pre-IPO stage, and on another platform because they raise for Series A or pre-seed.

As for the specific sectors and their success – life sciences, food and agriculture, digital and tech in Europe in the first half of 2026, which is almost the same as the whole of 2025 – they succeed for very different reasons. Life sciences combines significant capital requirements, as Kieron was saying, with identifiable milestones: TRL 2, TRL 4, IP and so on. Food and agriculture has historically worked because investors and everybody else can easily understand the products, the companies and the models. Digital has other advantages: companies that operate in digital usually try to turn thousands of users into investors, so it’s more of a community round.

So I think successful sectors generally have at least three characteristics: a strong community, a clear investment story, or a value proposition that investors can understand.

Andy Field: Some sectors naturally lend themselves to community ownership, of course. Kieron, I’ll direct this at you. Do you think the most successful businesses on your platform are simply better at telling their story and engaging investors? Is that absolutely key, as Giancarlo suggested?

[33:00] Kieron O’Brien: Potentially. And I’ll put a big caveat around that, because of something Chris mentioned early on: what’s the role of the platform these days? Some founders are engaging third-party specialised marketing agencies to tell the story for them. That’s core to what we do. We see this as a marketing campaign first, before it’s an investment campaign, because the intelligence you can get from interacting with their own crowd and our crowd is hugely valuable. Put that into a customer acquisition cost calculation and it’s probably the cheapest CAC you can ever get, compared to what you’d pay some providers.

To Giancarlo’s point, I think the ones that are successful are fairly simple. They have two key components, and then a third that’s relatively new. The first is: can people understand the proposition? That’s going to draw a larger base of people, because if they understand widget A versus health tech product B, people gravitate to things they can touch, feel, know or interact with. The second: is there a credible growth story? Every founder who goes into an institutional VC or PE meeting has their forecasts and projections ripped apart. What’s to assume that the smarter, more educated retail investor isn’t looking for the same credible growth story?

The third part, which only applies to certain sectors and has been delivering strong results and is actually growing now, is the inclusion of incentives. It’s that stickiness, keeping the community engaged not only initially but for a lot longer. The easiest example is multi-year subscription-based businesses. The obvious ones are TV packages, your Netflix, Disney, Paramount, where people sign up for 12 months. Maybe you could do some type of share drop or incentive scheme that gives you a guaranteed two, three or four-year average order value. That’s going to resonate with both retail and institutional capital communities.

Andy Field: That’s a really interesting point, and one we haven’t touched on yet. Jill, how does that compare in Australia? You touched on an example earlier of a successful campaign. What makes a campaign successful there?

[35:00] Jill Storey: I think it’s really the existing community and the strength of that community. In Australia, because the market is a bit smaller and newer, we haven’t seen many exits yet. Although people will be interested in returns, there’s not really much proof in the pudding yet. It’s early days. At the beginning, people are bought in because they love the brand, or there’s a really strong community, and that’s what gets people engaged.

I think at the very beginning there was a bit of a myth. Everybody who’d ever had a start-up idea thought crowdfunding was the place to be and that it was going to be easy. As time has gone on, we’ve realised it’s not easy money. And the other myth was that the platform came with the crowd. While the platform does come with some crowd, the organisation really needs its own crowd to be successful. That’s what we’re finding in Australia.

I think there’s a way to go in terms of seeing the whole deal through, and in terms of valuations. We probably haven’t yet been through the question of whether crowdfunding valuations were realistic, because we haven’t seen the exits yet.

Andy Field: That’s a very good point.

---

Convergence or specialisation

[37:00] Andy Field: Let’s zoom out a little. We’ve talked about individual sectors, but as you just mentioned, Jill, we’re talking about quite different markets, although the similarities have been made clear in the conversation so far. Are we seeing the same sectors and investment behaviours emerging everywhere, or are different regions developing their own crowdfunding specialisms? Is Europe doing something very different from everyone else for a particular reason? Giancarlo, let’s start with Europe.

Giancarlo Vergine: What we’re seeing in Europe is that the regulation, ECSPR, is very slowly creating a convergence, because it provides an infrastructure for a pan-European market. But in Europe we have 27 different countries, 28 if we include the UK, with different cultures and different languages, so it’s very difficult to run these kinds of cross-border rounds. The big platforms like Republic are working with big companies and scale-ups in the pre-IPO or growth phase, trying to bring deals that are well known all over Europe in order to create convergence. We’re not there yet. There are different markets emerging: France, Germany, and of course the UK is the leader. But looking at the trends we mentioned before, we are also seeing this kind of convergence.

I don’t know if I answered your question.

Andy Field: No, you did, absolutely. I’d be interested to hear how different that is from what’s happening in the US, or how similar.

[39:00] Chris Lustrino: Giancarlo and I have actually had a few really good conversations about the differences between the US and Europe, and it’s interesting. If you look at the average amount raised per company in the US versus Europe, Europe is actually nearly four times higher than the US. Talking about why that is, I think one factor is the level of access in the US and the infrastructure that existed even before crowdfunding came around. That’s angel groups. There are so many angel groups and clubs in the US, all with the promise of access. Whether or not they deliver on it – I’d argue they mostly don’t – they exist, and there are communities and places people can go to find deal flow.

In Europe, it sounds to me like culturally there’s dramatically less of that old-school infrastructure of angel groups and investment clubs, especially for private companies. So there’s a real appetite from investors sitting at home who are looking for deal flow, who are saying, “This is something I want to allocate as part of my strategy, but I literally can’t find it anywhere else, so I’m going to use these platforms.” It’s like mobile banking, which spread so much faster in places like Africa, and even Europe, where there was far less traditional payments and banking infrastructure. People just jumped straight to it. Here, there’s more of that old-school infrastructure we need to get people over, and a new generation saying, “Wait a minute, I want to commit my dollars through these platforms to find my deal flow, rather than join an angel group or an investment club.”

So I think one interesting facet of the US market is that adoption from investors has been a little slower, because it’s a generational shift. At the same time, when we look at where the largest dollar amounts come from, it’s not a surprise. It’s people who have had enough time to accumulate wealth, which is the older demographic. When you look at who’s deploying the most money into our market in the US, it’s 45 to 75-year-olds. And there’s just a smaller portion of them willing to do it, because a lot of them still want to stay outside of doing it this new way.

Giancarlo Vergine: That’s almost like Europe – the average age.

Andy Field: So investor culture and regulation are obviously going to play a part in the differences, along with the types of businesses seeking capital, which we’ve already mentioned, and probably the platform models as well. Jill, is Australia developing its own particular characteristics? I know you’ve said the market isn’t as developed and will hopefully develop further as time goes by.

[42:00] Jill Storey: I think there are a few things that might need to be looked at. For example, in the UK a lot of the people who invest are interested in the tax deductions and EIS. They come to the platforms because they know about the tax relief and they want to look for deals. It’s a different type of approach, and there’s much more integration between the number of companies that qualify for EIS, for example, and what’s on the platforms.

In Australia there is some relief for early-stage companies, but it’s quite difficult to fall into that category. It’s around innovation, so people don’t really go to the platforms to look for those deals. A new brewery, for example, wouldn’t fall into the category of an innovation company in most cases. So it hasn’t got the same quality of being the place you go to look for a tax incentive. That’s one structural difference; in the UK, I think people would go to the platforms for that.

The other thing is where we haven’t seen as much use yet. People often think of crowdfunding as being for new start-ups that are growing quickly. But where there are existing businesses, pretty good businesses that might just want to expand, develop something new, raise some more capital or redo their premises, that’s an opportunity that hasn’t been tapped to the extent it could be. Existing businesses with a strong consumer base could use the crowd to grow, rather than the start-up culture that was probably envisaged at the beginning of the equity crowdfunding market.

Andy Field: So that’s some real untapped potential that could be coming to the Australian market. Kieron, does your platform experience suggest that investors are becoming a bit more international in what they’re interested in?

[44:00] Kieron O’Brien: It’s interesting to hear what the group has said, because I think we’re probably seeing convergence in infrastructure a lot quicker than we’re seeing convergence in behaviour. As much as we all like to say we’re European, to Giancarlo’s point there are 27 states, and we all have our cultural differences and our slightly different levels of familiarity with private market investing. I think that’s the slowest part. It’s not so much specialisation as awareness, investor awareness.

Broadly speaking, and I apologise to anybody who listens to this episode, I’d say at a base level the US retail investor probably has a better base knowledge of private market investing, generally speaking, and Europe is working really hard to close that gap. So you’ve got an educational gap. Then you’ve got the variation in slightly harmonised regulation under ECSPR, which still doesn’t go as far as it can in the US. And then you’ve still got that local belief, the local desire to help the local community or the local business, rather than looking at it purely from an economics or numbers viewpoint and saying, “I’m not going to invest in that Italian sports company Giancarlo is backing, because it doesn’t make sense compared to Jill’s Australian company, which I know nothing about but which has better unit economics.” So I think we’ve got a bit of work to do there, but it’s happening very fast.

---

What markets can learn from each other

[46:00] Andy Field: That’s a nice segue, because I’d like to talk about what the different markets can learn from one another. This is a question to all of you. What can emerging crowdfunding markets – and you could probably put Australia in that category, Jill – learn from more mature ecosystems? And, equally importantly, what can mature markets learn from markets that are doing things differently? Is there something the US has got right that Europe could learn from, or something Europe has done particularly well?

Kieron O’Brien: Do you mind if I jump in? I’ll repeat myself ever so slightly, but I’d look at the US and say: investor culture. There’s storytelling there, a good level of knowledge of private market investing, accessibility and education. If you look at the UK, I think the UK has accepted crowdfunding as part of the funding stack. It’s now mainstream, and it’s part of the conversation. In Europe, I think we’ve run with the idea that regulation equals trust, and therefore trust equals investment, which is not necessarily the case. But we’ve run with the importance of having a regulated environment and a safe situation for investment to take place. And if we look at our Asian colleagues, what’s really prevalent there is digital access and user experience.

So there are four pieces of a puzzle, and if you join the best parts of all of them, you’ve got a tremendous private market ecosystem. I think there are areas where we’ve all done really well. We’ve just got to join them together quicker.

Andy Field: I think you’ve summed that up brilliantly, Kieron, because that’s essentially what GECA stands for: we want all the different markets to learn from each other to create, in a utopia, that perfect ecosystem. Which is obviously a lot more difficult than you’ve made it sound, but the way you’ve framed it is absolutely right. The investor culture in the United States; the UK having made crowdfunding mainstream; Europe, where regulation means trust, which then means investment; and Asia and the other markets with their digital infrastructure. Does anyone else have anything to add?

[48:00] Giancarlo Vergine: Yes, from my side. We work mostly in Europe, but now that we’ve started the collaboration with KingsCrowd we’re also in touch with some portals in the US, because there are European-founded companies based in the US that would like to launch a crowdfunding campaign. We work, for example, with Republic US and Wefunder, and we’re in touch with other platforms.

The point is that it seems easier to start and launch a crowdfunding campaign in the US, probably because of the regulation Kieron mentioned, because of the platforms and because of the technology. Republic has the same technology in the US and Europe, so we can see it from there. If you’d like to test crowdfunding and your community of investors, you can very quickly create your own page to test the water. In Europe, in southern Europe and Europe in general, it’s not so easy, because of the regulation and several constraints.

I think that looking at the US as a venture capital ecosystem, probably the best in the world in terms of capital raised and the companies that grow there, we have to try to find similarities and replicate what they’re doing in terms of keeping it simple. I know it’s difficult in Europe, because we need to regulate, regulate, regulate, and of course we must. But at the same time we should try to find a way to keep it easier.

And second, to repeat what Kieron was saying, we should try to spread the investment culture, to make it more popular. Everyone has to know more about their own finances and their own investments. We have a big gap here, not only in start-ups and venture capital, but if we look at the stock exchange too. So we need more education on that.

Andy Field: Interesting. Chris and Jill, do you have anything to add?

[51:00] Chris Lustrino: Sure, and I apologise, Andrew, I’ll have to run after this. All I want to say is that, as much as you mention regulation, on the other side of it in the US many people find the Form C, the form required to raise capital via Regulation Crowdfunding, to be quite intensive and too much. It’s rare to find an investor who actually reads through all of the risk disclosure and everything that goes into it. I’m a big believer in investor protections, and I do think disclosing audited financials and all of those things is really powerful and valuable. At the same time, it’s a major detractor for businesses, because it’s such a large hurdle to get over. On average it’s going to take two-plus months to get a company up and running with a capital raise, and it’s amazing how much simpler the documentation in Europe is compared to the US.

So I do think there’s a middle ground. I still believe financials need to be disclosed, but does it need to go to the level of an audit? Could we do a review? Could it be based on levels, on the amount raised? I think there’s work to be done there, and I’d love to see it.

And the other thing, though this is obviously very political, is that the tax advantages provided in the UK are deeply powerful. If you put anything like that in the United States, I believe it would help with investor demand and with founders building companies here, which is good for innovation. Anything even remotely like that in the US would be very powerful in driving demand into our market. I’d love to see something like that. Those are two big hurdles in managing through regulation in our space, but we’d love to see it. Thank you again, Andrew, for hosting this. Always appreciate it.

Andy Field: No problem. Thank you very much, Chris.

---

Signals to watch

[53:00] Andy Field: Chris has had to leave, and we’re near the end anyway. Let me come to a final question. We’ve talked about what’s going on at the moment, we’ve looked at the evidence and at how we measure things. Let’s move into the future a little. What should we be watching? What market signals should platforms, investors and regulators be paying attention to over the next five years, and what indicators might tell us the market is about to move into its next phase? Kieron, can we start with you?

Kieron O’Brien: Sure. Probably four or five things. Some are very obvious, but overarching all of them is whether platforms like ourselves remain campaign marketplaces or become genuine private market infrastructure providers. That’s one major thing I see happening, and I think it may well be driven by investor sophistication, which we’ve talked about. In general, investors are becoming more sophisticated and more knowledgeable, and quicker than I would ever have anticipated five or ten years ago.

That will be very much down to another obvious one, which is the further adoption of AI. You know my view on this. I don’t call it artificial intelligence, I call it assisted intelligence. It’s not going to replace judgment, but it will help people understand more complex things a lot more easily.

Evolution will continue. I spent the first ten years of my career in the public markets, and the best solutions were the ones devised by the market to solve a problem, which got traction, created a level of data and transparency, and could then be passed to the regulator, which made it easier for the regulator to make changes because the data supported it. I’d love to see more of that, and I know that’s what you’re working on, Giancarlo: creating a lot more transparency in the marketplace.

I think the lines between retail and institutional capital are completely blurred now. They’re nearly gone, to be honest, because we see many institutions coming to us, asking us to look at their investments and how we can mobilise our crowd to help. And ultimately, what are we trying to do? We’re trying to create liquidity. That’s the signal. If you can get two, three or ten times the liquidity, everybody is going to pay more attention. So ultimately that’s what we’re trying to do: drive more signals for more liquidity.

Andy Field: And I assume you include the development of secondary markets in that, Kieron?

Kieron O’Brien: Yes.

Andy Field: That’s the shortest answer I’ve had from you today. Jill, how about you?

[56:00] Jill Storey: I agree with what Kieron said. In Australia, I think it might be worth revisiting something. At the beginning, quite rightly, there was a lot of focus on investor protection. I think we might have got to the stage where we need to look again, and look at the platforms and platform economics, and how to make sure the platforms can be sustained. One of the leading platforms that are left recently had a reduction in its internal market valuation of 85 per cent. So I think we need to look at the platforms and make sure the model can be sustainable.

Andy Field: Giancarlo?

[57:00] Giancarlo Vergine: I would watch five signals, more or less. First, average round size: the increase in the average round that we’ve seen over the last two years. Second, institutional participation. As Kieron mentioned, there are now VCs and private equity firms asking platforms to engage, to create liquidity or to complete rounds for their portfolio companies. Third, cross-border participation, which is probably the biggest challenge in Europe. Fourth, secondary liquidity. It’s one of the most important, as I mentioned; it’s part of co-investment with institutional investors, but also secondary liquidity in general, whether a secondary market or rounds created specifically to bring liquidity to the market, because it triggers the market flywheel.

And finally, platform consolidation and specialisation. In Europe at the moment we have many licences, but few operators are sustainable in terms of balance sheet and operations. So I think we’ll see a consolidation of operators. There will be a few big generalists that become private market infrastructure, offering not only the fundraise but other kinds of services, and others that are specialised. I think there can also be collaboration between portals to facilitate cross-border participation. Those are the five points I’d watch.

---

Wrap up

[59:00] Andy Field: There’s definitely some overlap in what you’ve all said. That’s brilliant, and I think it’s a really good place to leave the conversation for now. We could go on, and there’s lots more to talk about on this subject, and we will in the future.

I just want to say thank you very much to Giancarlo, Chris, Kieron and Jill. We’ve covered a lot of ground, from where the money is flowing today to why certain sectors appear to work particularly well, and the opportunities that could be emerging over the next few years. One of the most interesting things to come out of this conversation is that there probably isn’t a single global formula for crowdfunding success. Different markets have their different characteristics. But there are some very clear common themes around community, investor behaviour, trust, and the types of businesses that lend themselves naturally to this model.

Thank you all once again, and thank you to everybody watching or listening. This is the first of three conversations in GECA’s Future of Crowdfunding series. We’ve started today with the evidence: what’s working and what the data tells us. In our next discussion we’ll move from the evidence to the ecosystems, looking at regulation, platforms, market maturity, and what actually makes a crowdfunding market successful. And we’ll finish the series by looking at the future: the technologies, the ideas and the changes that could transform this industry over the next decade.

Thank you again to all the panellists, and thank you for joining us.

Giancarlo Vergine: Thank you. Bye-bye.

Jill Storey: Thank you. Bye-bye.

---

The Future of Crowdfunding is phase one of GECA’s 2026–27 global research programme, which culminates in The Future of Crowdfunding Report 2027.

Global Equity Crowdfunding Alliance – thegeca.org