UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business has joined with the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership to create CrowdBerkeley. CrowdBerkeley will focus on teaching and understanding the power of crowdfunding. The course will provide a premier hub of education, research, and learning engagement on all topics related to crowdfunding. Throughout the course, students will learn how to raise equity without traditional investors, create credit and loan models without brick-and-mortar lenders and understand the implications of new currencies.
CrowdBerkeley is led by the faculty director of the College of Engineering’s Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership, Lee Fleming, assistant professor Adair Morse, Berkeley-Haas Finance Group, Professor Laura D’Andrea Tyson, director of the Haas School’s Institute for Business and Social Impact, Dr. Richard Swart, who has joined IBSI as a Scholar in Residence and the Berkeley-Haas Center for Social Sector Leadership.
Fung Institute engineers have been assembling databases from global crowdfunding platforms to provide researchers, policy experts and government agencies with the tools that are needed to advance knowledge on technology models and to facilitate innovation and networks in crowdfunding.
Berkeley-Haas faculty and researchers in finance and social enterprise will use the data that has been collected to study what impact crowdfunding has on traditional financial models and how it is paving the way for innovation and new ventures. Berkeley-Haas students have launched several crowdfunding companies, including Indiegogo and WeFinance.
The CrowdBerkeley course will enhance the study of crowdfunding on the Berkeley campus. The business school is also redefining finance education by including crowdfunding models in the MBA curriculum.