KEY SUCCESS FACTORS FOR CROWDFUNDING OPERATIONS OF ENTREPRENEURIAL PROJECT HOLDERS

Mainly motivated by the need to improve the success rate of fundraising campaigns on crowdfunding platforms, this article aims to identify the key success factors of crowdfunding operations initiated by Cameroonian entrepreneurs. Within this framework, an empirical study was carried out on 50 project leaders operating in various sectors of activity and having conducted funding campaigns between 2017 and 2020. This sample, selected using the reasoned choice method combined with the snowball technique, was analysed using appropriate statistical tests. In this context, the first step was to test the relationship of dependence or independence between the success of a campaign and its socio-demographic characteristics through a descriptive analysis. Based on this step, the variables deemed significant were included in a proven model via binary logistic regression, which made it possible to highlight characteristics specific to projects and entrepreneurs whose fundraising campaigns were successful. Following this approach, the results obtained show that the level of education, the length of professional experience, the size of the share capital and the contribution of professional investors are positively and significantly associated with the success of a crowdfunding operation in Cameroon. These results reinforce the theory in the sense that they teach us that certain indicators related to the project holders as well as the project itself can constitute positive signals for the target audience. Therefore, these entrepreneurs need to optimise on these characteristics in order to maximise the probability of success of their fundraising campaigns.