
Ask HN: Who created crowdfunding? - johncoogan
Digging through wikipedia, I turned up Brian Camelio[1], who founded ArtistShare in 2001. It seems he&#x27;s listed as a potential &quot;father of crowdfunding&quot; but I wonder who else was integral.<p>[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Brian_Camelio
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Asparagirl
Ashkenazi Jews have been doing crowdfunding for books for hundreds of years.
It's called Prenumeranten (פרענומעראנטען) and the standard backer's reward is
the backers' names published as a thank you in the book, sometimes mentioning
their hometowns too.

This link is temporarily offline, but has a ton more information once it's
back up:
[http://www.jewishgen.org/Rabbinic/infofiles/prenumeranten.ht...](http://www.jewishgen.org/Rabbinic/infofiles/prenumeranten.htm)

Prenumeranten are a very useful resource for genealogists.

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DigitalSea
The underlying concept of a community of people working towards a common goal
isn't something that was recently invented. I grew up in a neighbourhood that
would regularly hold events involving the street to raise money for particular
causes. Churches and community groups have been crowd-funding donations
towards causes since forever, as have charities.

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ericdenver
[http://www.fundable.com/crowdfunding101/history-of-
crowdfund...](http://www.fundable.com/crowdfunding101/history-of-crowdfunding)

