Team Experience and ICO Success: An Empirical Study of Entrepreneurs in Blockchain Projects

Initial coin offering (ICO), based on the blockchain technology, has emerged as a new fundraising mechanism in entrepreneurial finance for ventures to raise capital via crowdfunding. Building upon the limited yet growing body of literature on the interaction of entrepreneurship, crowdfunding, and organizational learning, this article aims to investigate the relationship between entrepreneur teams’ functional-based experience and crowdfunding success with a focus on the ICOs of blockchain projects. We also examine the moderating roles of the characteristics of blockchain projects on the relationship. The study collects empirical data on 428 blockchain projects which had completed their ICOs. Logistic regression models are developed to test hypotheses. The results show that entrepreneurial teams’ technically related ICO experience has a positive impact on their ICO success while commercially related ICO experience has a negative impact. Further examination shows that the sector factor significantly moderates both impacts. The moderating effect of soft caps is found insignificant. These findings add to the existing literature by highlighting the impact of entrepreneurs’ experience on the success of their ICO projects and have implications for practice on managing entrepreneurial team to improve crowdfunding performance.