Abstract
We examined the underlying mechanism about how people leverage social capital to monetary capital under crowdfunding context. By combining the social networks information and crowdfunding activities together, we are able to distinguish the focal proponent’s friends and non-friends. The findings show that, first, the early contribution is critical for final funding outcome, and the contribution generated by focal proponent’s friends has significant positive influence in yielding funding success as well; second, the focal proponent’s networks centrality and cohesion have significant positive impact on attracting friends to participate in the funding campaign.

Keywords: Crowdfunding, Social Capital, Social Networks