Xun Tong receives NWO grant for project on the success of female entrepreneurs in crowdfunding

Associate Professor Xun Tong has received a grant of € 50,000 from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for a project titled "Uncovering female entrepreneurs’ success in male-dominated crowdfunding sector."

The project aims to bridge the gender gap in crowdfunding, specifically within the technology sector, where female entrepreneurs' success rates (16%) lag significantly behind their male counterparts (80%). By introducing an innovative framework that delineates between traditional marketing capabilities for static campaign features and dynamic capabilities for interactive campaign features, Tong seeks to identify the unique combination of these capabilities that fosters female entrepreneurs’ funding success.

Tong looks forward to working on his new project. “As our society moves towards becoming more inclusive, equitable, and diverse, the entrepreneurship environment should follow suit. In this regard, female entrepreneurs need to be represented more in the crowdfunding economy, especially in male-dominated spaces where the high growth potential of startups and patent conversion into commercialization are plausible. I look forward to adopting a state-of-the-art machine learning technique to uncover female success in the technology sector within the crowdfunding economy. This project is related to my recent research interests in the areas of crowdfunding, diversity, equity, inclusion and the application of AI for enterprises.”

The NWO Open Competition

With the NWO Open Competition-SSH, NWO Social Sciences and Humanities wants to offer researchers the opportunity to carry out research into a subject of their own choosing without any thematic constraints. The aim is to facilitate excellent, non-programmed, curiosity-driven research that primarily addresses a social sciences or humanities research question and research problem.

For more information, please contact Xun Tong.