Crowdfunding, cascades and informed investors

•I model investment choices among multiple projects on a crowdfunding platform.•Under imperfect information about the quality of projects, cascades can form.•Surprisingly, fewer informed investors can cause more good projects to be funded.•Fewer good projects in the pool can also cause more good projects to be funded.

Do higher proportions of (a) informed investors and (b) high-quality projects increase the number of good projects that are ultimately financed via crowdfunding? A simple model and simulation reveal the answers to both questions to be: 'not necessarily'.