Abstract
We analyze the impact of the duration of a crowdfunding project. To do so, we model the dynamics of crowdfunding from the funder's and the receiver's points of view, by a dynamic programming approach for computing the value of a platform's opportunity at a given time and deriving the optimal funding decision. Our results highlight the importance of project duration on a crowdfunder's investment choice, yielding interesting observations such as the existence of a key interval where the remaining campaign duration can be set up for successful funding and a corresponding dependence on the link between project target and utility.