Michael Beier from the Swiss Institute for Entrepreneurship (SIFE) in Graubünden presents new research findings from crowd-funding data on gender-specific patterns in different phases of start-up projects.

How do females and males differ in their collaborative startup behavior? And how does this affect their start-up projects? Much has been researched and published on these questions. However, some aspects of the phenomenon are difficult to study empirically because they are hard to observe directly. Surveys of founders are of limited use in this regard. In an in-depth study of data from reward-based crowdfunding, Michael Beier shows differences in the collaborative start-up behavior of females and males and the effects from these, some of which were previously unobservable. Among other things, this allows him to gain new insights into gender-specific patterns in the initiation and preparation of start-up projects, the development and use of communities during the initial start-up phases, and learning effects over time. 

Dr. Michael Beier studied business administration at the University of Cologne and received his Ph.D. While completing his Ph.D., he was a research and teaching assistant at the Seminar for Business Administration, Corporate Development and Organization at the University of Cologne. At the University of Applied Sciences Graubünden, he works at the Swiss Institute for Entrepreneurship (SIFE) in the research area of "Digital Strategies." His research focuses on the tensions between organizational research, digital technologies, and computational social science, particularly on digital business models, digital communication of and in organizations, and analytics / AI applications. In recent years, he has worked intensively on reward-based crowdfunding and social media in entrepreneurship, innovation management, and marketing. 

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