Crowdsurfer is a service based in Cambridge, UK that gathers global data on crowdfunding and peer-to-peer finance. With information from 1,000 collaborative finance platforms, this service will help increase the transparency of the crowdfunding industry, allowing those who subscribe to its service the chance to get a rare look at what is happening behind the scenes.
The company says it can help a wide variety of groups (such as marketers, brands, financial services professionals, consultants, and investors) with the sometimes difficult task of identifying trends and gaining useful market insight.
Their database currently has information on crowdfunding from over 70 countries, including over 160,000 projects and is currently in beta testing. On their website they describe themselves as:
“[A] team of Cambridge data engineers and technologists backed by 18 investors including from some of the best-known financial institutions in the world, including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, Thomson Reuters and the technology investors that famously backed DeepMind. Our CEO founded the world’s first community shares platform.”
A recent Financial Times post said that Emily Mackay, Crowdsurfer’s founder and former technology analyst got the idea while setting up a community finance platform that allowed people to buy and sell shares in renewable energy products. She realized it would be useful to have a high-quality information database that was easy to use. Their goal is to analyze this information and display it in a way that makes it meaningful, “We’re building up a suite of questions that people want answering from this data – like how much a market is worth, or whether a particular campaign is happening.”
There are a couple other companies using big data to help get ahead of crowdfunding market trends, but not necessarily as a main focus or as simple to understand as is the case with Crowdsurfer.
One of these is Crowd Valley, a site that enables people to launch peer-to-peer or online investment marketplaces. They keep data on all of their clients and release quarterly reports on their findings (CrowdfundingPR recently posted an update on their Q3 market report).
Another company embracing crowdfunding data is TheCrowdfundingCentre, which also consists of TheCrowdDataCenter. This service is a little more like Crowdsurfer in that they provide information on over 150k projects. They allow you to search for information by project or by platform. Part of this service is available for free, but there are more advanced options available on subscription.
A post from Crowdfund Insider notes that Jason Best, co-founder of Crowdfund Capital Advisors and deeply involved in the creation of the JOBS Act, responded to TheCrowdDataCenter’s first report by saying:
“Data is critical in driving the development of any industry and none more than crowdfunding. The ability to document money invested, jobs created, sales growth, new company starts, etc. are all vital to demonstrate to regulators and investors that this market is the modern finance market and one that should be embraced.”
The rise in the gathering of this information goes to show the growing demand for more insight into the crowdfunding industry for a range of interested groups, including creators and regulators. It will be interesting to see if they have a big impact on the crowdfunding market at these services continue to grow.
