Where does the word Crowdfunding come from?
By now, if you have ever visited our website, you will know that we are passionate about alternative investment and, of course, crowdfunding. We love that projects are funded collectively and that, thanks to the union of many people, projects are created that otherwise would not have been able to be born. But to understand it, we first had to know exactly how crowdfunding worked, and so we realized how much it could achieve.
But where does the word come from? What is Crowdfunding? Who was the first to use that term?
The etymology of the word 'Crowdfunding' comes from the conjunction of the English words 'crowd' and 'funding'. The word Crowdfunding began being used to describe a new way of getting a project funded and consists of appealing openly to a group, or a multitude of investors, to contribute those funds.
According to the website Wordspy, specialized in new words, the first written record of the use of the word Crowdfunding was in an article published by Michael Sullivan on his blog 'fundavlog' on August 12, 2006.
"Many things are important factors, but funding from the ‘crowd’ is the base of which all else depends on and is built on. So, Crowdfunding is an accurate term to help me explain this core element of fundavlog."
Although the original article is no longer available for consultation, a copy of the article can be found on the WaybackMachine website. This would officially put the start of Crowdfunding in 2006.
Obviously anyone could argue that the idea of providing funds among a multitude of people to a cause is much older than this article and not lacking in reason, since throughout history we can find many examples of projects that have occurred thanks to Crowdfunding. The Eiffel Tower, some of Mozart's works of art, hundreds of churches, cathedrals such as Sagrada Familia, and the foundations of the Statue of Liberty are some of the many cases that show all that can be achieved by every grain of sand.
So what has lead up to start calling it 'Crowdfunding'? What really makes the difference with everything that has been done before is the emergence of the Internet. It is not solely the fact that investments can be comfortably done online, but what really makes the difference is the number of people who can invest or finance a project, and also the dissemination that you can give each project. How much money would Mozart have today if he were to carry out a Crowdfunding campaign? And how many meters would the Eiffel Tower measure? Would the Statue of Liberty be seen from Sydney?
