Study On The Effect Of Social Capital On Results Of Technology Startups Resources Acquisition In Crowdfunding Situation

Under the background of the Internet, crowdfunding has not just been a way to financing for entrepreneurs. Products will attract the attention of all the stakeholders by crowdfunding that could increase their social media presence. Entrepreneurs could acquire a variety of heterogeneous, scarce, or(and) even strategic business resource from the network of crowdfunding stakeholders, which is more valuable than financing.In this paper, effects on the result of entrepreneurs’ resource acquisition from social capital were studied in crowdfunding situation. There are three basic problems in this study, which include:(1) the capital structure in crowdfunding situation;(2) whether and how social capital in crowdfunding situation could influence the result of resource acquisition of technology startups;(3) what role of entrepreneurs’ network ability plays in this process.Firstly, the social capital structure in crowdfunding situation was reconstructed in combination with the features of crowdfunding through drawing on former research results of the social capital structure, and then reasonable explanations for that were given. This result will be useful to make deeper researches on related questions, such as how the each dimension of social capital impacts on the acquisition of which business resource and how any two dimension of social capital interact.Secondly, the results were got from three key aspects of social capital, network ability and resource acquisition through exploratory multiple case studies. At the end of case studies, three conclusions were generalized by descriptive analysis in a single case and comparative analysis between multiple cases:(1) in the crowdfunding situation, the social capital from entrepreneurs has an important influence on the results of technology startups resource acquisition;(2) in the crowdfunding situation, entrepreneurs’ network ability has an important influence on the results of technology startups resource acquisition;(3) in the crowdfunding situation, entrepreneurs’ network ability could improve the utilization efficiency of social capital and then influence on the results of technology startups resource acquisition. Thus, it has been verified that the theoretical statements and theoretical model of social capital impacting on the results of resource acquisition in the crowdfunding situation.Finally, multi-Agent-based modeling was used to simulate the process of social capital impacting on the results of resource acquisition in the crowdfunding situation. Be clear on how entrepreneurs use the social capital to improve the influence on crowdfunding followers, and then have the in-depth and effective interaction with them to prompt investment decisions. Entrepreneurs are given effective suggestions on the practical level that how to make use of social capital to build the products based network to acquire external business resources. At the same time, the results of simulation and case study conclusion complement each other, which strengthen the support of theoretical statements and theoretical model on this study.It not only enriches the theoretical perspective but also is full of practical significance that studies resource acquisition in the crowdfunding situation from social capital perspective:(1) highlighting the role and advantage of the social capital in the process of resource acquisition in the crowdfunding situation and giving enlightenments to entrepreneurs;(2) guiding entrepreneurs to improve the utilization efficiency of social capital through enhancing networking ability;(3)providing advices on the future development of the platform from the perspective of gathering business resources.