VentureBeat by Eric Blattberg | January 22, 2014

Kickstarter chairman and former CEO, Perry Chen (center), sits with his co-founders Yancey Strickler (right) and Charles Adler (left).

Israeli equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd worked with marketing firm Evolve Inc. to handpick a list of 800 influential members of the crowdfunding community.

The multibillion dollar crowdfunding industry wouldn’t be where it is today without the people on this list.

They are entrepreneurs, investors, regulators, politicians, analysts, legal professionals, and journalists. Together, their actions and commentary have driven the nascent industry forward.

Related: Equity Crowdfunding Takes Shape in Canada

Using influencer discovery and engagement tools like Traackr, Little Bird, Group High, and Google, the folks behind this list narrowed it down to the top 30 thought leaders. They considered factors like social reach, engagement frequency, citations by financial journalists, and sentiment among industry insiders, among others.

“We looked around and no one has really tried to come up with a list that made sense of the movers and the shakers in the industry,” OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved told VentureBeat. ”Like any list, you can always poke holes in it, but I think we’ve got a pretty darn good solution here.”

Related: Why Successful Crowdfunding Requires a Social-Media Mind-Set

The top dog turned out to be Perry Chen, the cofounder, chairman, and former CEO of Kickstarter, the world’s largest crowdfunding site. Chen is followed by Naval Ravikant, the prominent angel investor and founder of AngelList, which rolled out an equity crowdfunding service called AngelList Invest in early 2013.

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