Master's Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Engineering - Industrial Engineering and Management, grade: 1,0, Kiel University of Applied Sciences, language: English, abstract: Crowdinvesting as a relatively new funding form for early-stage startups in Germany bears fundamental opportunities for all participants. In this respect, startup entrepreneurs are facing the challenge to convince potential investors of their business idea to finally induce investments. Since crowdinvesting communication is limited to digital channels the knowledge about what information is relevant for making investment decisions is of crucial significance. Moreover, the "crowd" can be considered as a completely new investor class with specific characteristics and information requirements compared to traditional capital providers.The purpose of this research study is to evaluate the importance of business models as a potential unit of analysis in the crowdinvesting decision-making process. In this respect, the significance of selected signalling criteria that may serve as quality indicators for investors will be investigated. In order to gain a broader understanding about the preferences in crowdinvesting a comprehensive empirical study of the German crowdinvesting market is conducted. Entrepreneurs, crowdinvestors as well as respective platforms and thus the entire concept of crowdinvesting will benefit from a knowledge gain.The theoretical framework describes the characteristics of e...