The Impact of Narrative Style and Entrepreneur’s Experience in Crowdfunding Campaigns

Abstract. As the caption of the entrepreneurial project is the main source of information for funders in crowdfunding campaigns, appropriate narrative styles may rouse interest in the crowd and ultimately affect the amount of funding obtained by entrepreneurs. In this study, we empirically assess the effect of two opposite narrative styles on the success of these campaigns. Based on a sample of about 6,000 projects, we show that the use of the narrative sing outcome, more than entrepreneurs, indicating that experience may leverage the latter narrative emphasizing the potential traits of the achieved, as the experience itself represents a signal of trustworthiness in the project realization.