Crowd investing in Germany has been a new financing method available to innovative growth companies since 2011. Here, the mostly young companies try to address a broad mass of private investors through a targeted public call. Based on an extensive database and a company survey, we show the first lines of development of a growing market. It becomes clear that entrepreneurs consciously opt for crowd investing in advance, although alternatives are available to them. In general, the form of financing harmonizes with established types of early-stage financing. In addition, it can be seen that although the stability of the companies' portfolios is above the national average, the forecasts made at the time of financing are not being met.