Abstract
This study investigates how the determinants of crowdfunding success evolve across different stages of experience of serial crowdfunders, defined as entrepreneurs who repeatedly launch campaigns on crowdfunding platforms. While prior research has identified factors such as pledging conditions, project quality, founder credibility, and social capital as key drivers of success, most studies have treated serial crowdfunders as a homogeneous group and adopted a static perspective. Using a dataset of 46,190 campaigns launched on Kickstarter by 16,242 serial crowdfunders between 2009 and 2024, creators are classified into three groups, Newbies, Explorers, and Veterans, to test how success factors vary across these stages. The results show that the relative importance of signals related to pledging conditions and project quality decreases with experience, while social capital becomes the dominant driver of success for more experienced crowdfunders. The findings suggest that crowdfunding success should be understood as a dynamic process in which the drivers of performance evolve along the entrepreneurial learning trajectory. This study contributes to crowdfunding research by providing evidence that success factors are contingent on experience, and by highlighting the central role of community building in sustaining long-term success for serial crowdfunders.
