Ricerc@Sapienza

Relational capital is a vital asset of the contemporary economy, and it refers to the sum of relations among organizations and their stakeholders to create value. Previous literature states that relational capital appears as a strategic asset, especially for start-ups run by women entrepreneurs. We aim to deepen the dynamics of relational capital in female entrepreneurship, especially start-ups, analyzing the Italian context during the years 2011–2012, known as the time of the financial crisis.

Crowdfunding is a new channel of finance for companies, focusing on gender studies one of the main causes of the failure of ternale enterprise development are under-capitalization and the barrier to credit access. In this way, some intangible factors, as relational capitai, can play a relevant role to connect the woman entrepreneur by new stakeholders, like crowd-funders, and overcome the barriers. For these reasons, the aim of this paper is to analyse if relational capitai (RC) can help the woman start-up (WSU) to fundraise during the early stage.