Patents, Thickets and the Financing of Early-Stage Firms: Evidence from the Software Industry

Legal changes in the patentability of software since the mid 1990s have resulted in a substantial increase in the number of patents on software inventions. We focus here on the impact of transactions costs associated with patent "thickets" on new entrants' interactions with the capital markets. Using data on the financing of entrants into 27 narrowly defined software markets, we show that start-up software companies operating in markets characterized by denser patent thickets saw their initial acquisition of VC funding delayed relative to firms in markets less affected by patents after the mid 1990s. The relationship between patent thickets and subsequent financing activity such as IPO or acquisition is more complex, but there is weak evidence that firms without patents became less likely to go public if they operated in a market characterized by patent thickets. Firms with patents are more likely to be funded or experience a liquidity event. However, the application for a patent appears to matter more than its grant.     

Government policies towards Israel's high-tech powerhouse

Israel's Silicon Wadi is second only to US Silicon Valley in terms of business start-ups. The government policies play an important role in promoting innovation and driving the country towards a high-tech powerhouse. In this study the analyses, carried out through the lens of cluster and national innovation system (NIS), have shown that the thriving high-tech clusters are the result of government-led policies in creating the venture capital (VC) industry with the impacts of Yozma program. Importantly, the government financing did not crowd out but crowd in private investments. Israel presents an interesting case of the most successful Silicon Valley-style economy. The lessons of Israel in successfully climbing the technological ladder to become a high-tech powerhouse would be useful for other countries to learn how to promote high-tech clusters.     

Growth of born globals: the role of the entrepreneur’s personal factors and venture capital

This paper examines to what extent the human capital of entrepreneurs and the receipt of venture capital (VC) financing affect the growth of born globals (BGs). The study analyzes a sample of 242 BGs resulting from a survey on high-tech start-ups operating in the ICT and electronics sectors, located in different countries throughout the world. A multivariate explorative analysis controlling for the endogenous nature of VC is conducted. The results indicate that the experience of the entrepreneur in having previously established another entrepreneurial firm positively affects the growth of BGs. A negative effect is associated with the presence of heterogeneity in the management team in terms of education background. With regard to the linkage between financial capital and growth, it is found that both VC financing and the number of founders (a proxy for the availability internal capital) positively influence the growth of BGs.     

Where is the entrepreneurship bang for the patenting buck? Utility versus design patents

This research contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship by studying whether design patents and utility patents have similar effects on entrepreneurial activity. Other contributions of this research include comparing the relative influences on startup versus established entrepreneurs and the effects of patents versus trademarks. Results, based on a panel of U.S. states, show that established entrepreneurs benefit from both types of patenting and from trademarks, whereas startup entrepreneurs significantly benefit from only design patents, and the effects of design patents and trademarks are opposite. These findings suggest that the entrepreneurship bang from the patenting buck might differ across patenting types.     

The impact of venture capital financing method on SME performance and internationalization

One of the basic premises of venture capital is leverage, which often means adding money and other resources to speed up growth. As a result, small- to medium-sized venture funded firms are expected to show significant growth at an early stage. Our research examines how equity based-venture funding methods affect SME performance and internationalization. We divide venture capital financing into several categories: incremental financing where firms receive their venture capital funding in portions, lump-sum funding where firms receive their funding in one lump-sum, syndication where two or more external investors participate in a single financing round and non-syndicated financing where one investor participates in a single financing round. The results show that type of equity-based venture capital financing affect performance and internationalization. Annual sales growth rate and annual turnover are used as proxies for performance. Export ratio is used as a proxy for internationalization. Staged financing and financing through a syndicate has a positive effect on performance and internationalization when used separately. We observe a negative effect when syndication and staged financing are used in combination.     

Founders' Characteristics,Venture Capital Syndication and Governance in Entrepreneurial IPOs

Using a unique sample of 444 entrepreneurial IPOs in the UK and France this paper examines links between founders' characteristics, venture capital (VC) syndication and the development of effective boards in entrepreneurial firms. It argues that VC-backed IPOs suffer from two sets of agency problems which are related to principal-agent and principal-principal relationships between the founders and members of the VC syndicate. The empirical evidence shows that there is a curvilinear relationship between the intensity of founders' external ties and VC syndication. Founders' retained share ownership is negatively associated with VC syndication. We also find that in syndicated IPOs there is a higher involvement of passive private equity firms and “business angels” investing alongside VC firms, both in terms of their number and equity presence. VC-syndicated IPOs have more independent boards than IPOs with no VC involvement. Board independence is negatively associated with founders' retained equity. These results are consistent with the assumption that board independence is used to mitigate agency costs associated with VC involvement in IPO firms. Our findings also identify significant differences in governance characteristics between the UK and France. While French IPOs have less independent boards, they involve more VC backing in general and syndicated VC funding in particular, than UK IPOs.     

Accounting Scandals in IPO Firms: Do Underwriters and VCs Help?

We examine whether underwriter reputation, venture capitalist (VC) backing, and VC reputation are related to the probability that a newly public firm has serious accounting problems. Using a novel data set, we find that the probability of restatement by an initial public offering (IPO) firm is positively related to underwriter reputation and negatively related to VC backing, VC reputation, and VC maturity. Our results do not appear to be driven by the endogeneity of underwriter reputation or VC backing. Our findings suggest that while VCs positively influence the financial reporting quality of IPO firms, underwriters’ concerns about revenue generation outweigh their concerns about reputation.     

The Relevance of Financial versus Non-Financial Information for the Valuation of Venture Capital-Backed Firms

This study examines the relevance of financial and non-financial information for the valuation of venture capital (VC) investments. Based on a hand-collected data set on venture-backed start-ups in Germany, we investigate the internal due diligence documents of over 200 investment rounds. We document that balance sheet and income statement items capture as much economic content as verifiable non-financial information (e.g. team experience or the number of patents) while controlling for several deal characteristics (e.g. industry, investment round, or yearly VC fund inflows). In addition, we show that valuations based on accounting and non-accounting information yield a level of valuation accuracy that is comparable to that of publicly traded firms. Further analyses show that the industry-specific total asset multiples outperform the popular revenue multiples but lead to significantly less accurate results than those obtained from the more comprehensive valuation models. Overall, our findings might inform researchers and standard-setters of the usefulness of accounting information for investment companies and provide additional evidence to gauge the overall valuation accuracy in VC settings.     

Entrepreneurial financing in new business ventures: a help-seeking behavior perspective

How and from whom prospective entrepreneurs seek their start-up capital for new venture formation represent fundamental questions in entrepreneurial financing. Drawing on research of help-seeking behavior, we propose that apart from economic rationale entrepreneurs’ decisions to seek financing may be influenced by socio-psychological factors. Using a scenario experiment (venture risk x relational proximity) to investigate how prospective entrepreneurs considered funding from family and outsiders, it was found that they tended to seek family financing when the family was close and the risk was high, and inclined to seek outsider funding when the venture risk was high and the family was not close. The findings might seem paradoxical but they actually underscore the influence of socio-psychological factors in entrepreneurial financing decisions and offer novel contributions to the entrepreneurship, informal investment, and education literatures.     

Network brokers or hit makers? Analyzing the influence of incubation on start-up investments

Incubators are a prominent way to support technology based start-ups. Yet, it remains unclear to what extent these incubators enhance start-up performance, nor is it known through which mechanisms this would occur. In this paper we test two mechanisms to explain the relationship between incubation and the amount of investments raised by early stage start-ups as performance measure. The ‘hit maker’ mechanism refers to beneficial effects of the direct transfer of resources and organizational or business knowledge from the incubator to the start-up. The ‘network broker’ mechanism refers to the benefits that start-ups enjoy from being connected to external funding sources through the incubator’s networks. We test which of these mechanisms contribute to the performance of early stage start-ups. Our data comes from a unique survey from 935 entrepreneurs with early-stage technology based start-ups in Western Europe and North America. We find that incubators have a positive effect on (1) the amount of funding that start-ups attract and (2) the ability of start-ups to attract funding from formal investors and banks. Moreover, our results provide evidence for the network broker mechanism, but not for the hit maker mechanism.     

Innovation in start-ups: Ideas filling the void or ideas devoid of resources and capabilities?

We investigate how access to different types of resources affects the success of entrepreneurial start-up firms at early stages of development in small isolated economies by studying 12 start-ups based in New Zealand. We find that successful commercialization of innovations depends on the availability of complementary assets, and that capability-based resources, especially dynamic capabilities, have a greater impact on competitive advantage of start-ups than other intangible and tangible assets. For the start-ups in our study, alliances with partners are particularly important, and so the ability to form alliances is a key capability. Successful start-ups leverage their available resources to attract alliance partners in order to access necessary complementary resources. The start-ups in our study clearly demonstrated the ability to attract partners locally but struggled to do so internationally, thereby limiting their growth potential.     

A Property Rights Perspective on Venture Capital Investment Decisions

To understand how ownership differences influence specific types of strategic decisions, we examine the investment decisions of venture capital (VC) firms, for which a variety of property rights arrangements exist. We describe how VC firms are characterized by important differences in how and to whom various property rights are allocated. On this basis, we develop a series of hypotheses regarding differences in the range and types of investment opportunities pursued by private, corporate, and bank affiliated VC firms. Evaluating our hypotheses using data on investments carried out by 3557 firms, we find that these types of firm perform distinct roles in the ecology of VC financing.     

Are venture capitalist-backed IPOs more innovative? Evidence from an emerging market

This study examines whether venture capital (VC)-backed IPOs are more innovative than otherwise equivalent non-VC-backed IPOs. Using manually collected R&D records from annual reports and patent data from the Chinese State Intellectual Property Office (CSIPO) from 2007 to 2012, we find that VC-backed IPOs have higher R&D expenditures and more patents granted in the three years after IPOs. More specifically, they have more invention, application, and design patents in post-IPO. We use a two-stage instrumental variable, propensity score matching, difference-in-differences approach to mitigate selection biases and find our results to be consistent with our hypothesis. We conclude that VCs can positively influence IPO firms to increase R&D expenditures and innovative output levels in China. In addition, we document that the government ownership adversely affects innovation of VC-backed firms. Policy implications are discussed.     

The Relationship between Slack Resources and the Performance of Entrepreneurial Firms: The Role of Venture Capital and Angel Investors

In this study, we seek to further delineate factors that condition the relationship between slack resources and firm performance. To do so, we develop and test a model that establishes the role of venture capital (VC) and angel investors as powerful external stakeholders who positively moderate the slack–performance relationship. In addition, we provide more insight into this relationship by examining differences between these two types of private investors and by examining the role of their ownership stakes. We test our hypotheses using a sample of 1215 private firms, including VC‐backed firms, angel‐backed firms, and similar firms without such investors. We find that the presence of VC investors positively moderates the relationship between both financial and human slack resources and firm performance, while angel investors only positively moderate the effect of human resource slack. Further, VC investors are only marginally better at helping entrepreneurs to extract value from human resource slack than angel investors and they are no better when it comes to financial slack. Finally, we find that the impact of financial and human resource slack on firm performance is more positive in VC‐backed firms when investors hold high ownership stakes, an effect which is significantly stronger than when angel investors hold high ownership stakes.     

The impact of government financial support on the performance of new firms: the role of competitive advantage as an intermediate outcome

This research examines the influence of government financial support on new firms' performance. Extant empirical research on the topic has found mixed results, which warrants an exploration of the theoretical basis for the impact of support policies on new firms' performance. Grounding the theoretical model in the resource-based view and institutional theories, this study contends that performance outcomes – e.g. revenues or profits – should not be the first outcomes of public policies to be examined. Instead, competitive advantage formation is suggested as a link between support policies and new firms' performance. Using new firms from the USA, we examine the impact of government financial support measures – government loans, guarantees and government equity – on firms' overall competitive advantage and more specific types of competitive advantage based on innovation, licensing-in, marketing and human capital. Controlling for family funding, bank financing, equity of business angels and venture capitalists, industry, size as well as entrepreneur's characteristics, the results reveal that government guarantees and government equity have a direct effect on new firms' competitive advantage and only an indirect impact on performance. Our results suggest to policy-makers to focus on helping new firms build the necessary capabilities to compete successfully in the marketplace.     

Economic and capital market antecedents of venture capital commitments (1960–2010)

Using vector autoregression technique, we examine the interrelation between venture capital flows, economic development, capital market fund-raising activities, and capital market valuation, based on annual data of the United States over the past half-century. We find that venture capital commitments appear to be correlated with GDP and capital market valuation. While capital market fund-raising activities (Initial Public Offerings and Seasoned Equity Offerings) are also correlated with venture capital flows, these effects are subsumed by GDP, indicating that the overall economy drives both venture capital flows and capital market financing activities. Analyses from impulse response functions suggest that shocks to GDP have a permanent effect on venture capital flows, while the impact of capital market valuation (Standard & Poor 500 returns) on venture capital flows is rather short lived. Overall, both economy-wide development and financial market fluctuations seem to impact venture capital flows.     

Venture Capital Exit Rights

We investigate when and how venture capital contracts use exit rights such as drag‐along and tag‐along rights. Utilizing a data set of venture capital contracts from Germany, we find that almost all contracts allocate exit rights to the venture capitalist (VC) rather than to the entrepreneur. In our data set, the vast majority of exit rights deal with the sale of the entire company to a strategic investors rather than with initial public offerings (IPOs). We show that venture capital contracts include exit rights to mitigate potential hold‐up problems of the VC in the case of exit.     

The role of equity financing to support entrepreneurship in Asia—The experience of Singapore and Thailand

This paper is concerned with the role of equity financing to support entrepreneurship in Asia with a particular focus on venture capital (VC) financing policies of Singapore and Thailand. Although Singapore and Thailand adopt the government intervention approach in VC financing, the analysis has shown that Singapore is more successful due to effective use of innovation financing policies in the catch-up process to develop its economy and strong network linkages with US Silicon Valley. The case of Thailand has shown poor network linkages with redundant organizations/agencies competing on offering similar innovation financing schemes. The study offers effective innovation financing policy recommendations to support the national economic development. The research provides useful insights and lessons for other economies aimed at strengthening the entrepreneurial financing system.     

The role of venture capitalist to enhance the growth of Spanish and Italian university spin-offs

The establishment of spin-offs to commercialise university knowledge/technology is a potential mechanism to promote economic and innovative development. Nevertheless, University Spin-Offs (USOs) are usually resource-constrained, especially in obtaining funding, limiting their growth. Venture Capital (VC) investors play an important role in the financing and the improvement of their managerial skills, which are critical for firm growth. This paper aims to explore both the effect of VC partners on the USOs’ growth and the cross-national differences in the role played by them. To study both issues, we empirically analysed 516 Spanish and 904 Italian USOs created by 50 Spanish and 57 Italian universities, respectively, and observed them between 2005 and 2013. The results showed different effects in the Spanish and Italian cases. While in Spain the presence of VC partners positively affects the USOs’ growth, in Italy there is not a significant effect. This evidence calls for systematic policies by public administrations and universities to foster USO growth.     

Doing Well by Doing Good? Community Development Venture Capital

This paper examines the investments and performance of community development venture capital (CDVC). We find substantial differences between CDVCs and traditional VCs: CDVC investments are far more likely to be in nonmetropolitan regions and in regions with little prior venture activity. CDVC investments are likely to be in earlier stage investments and in industries outside the venture capital mainstream that have lower probabilities of successful exit. Even after controlling for this unattractive transaction mixture, the probability of a CDVC investment being successfully exited is lower. One benefit of CDVCs may be their effect in bringing traditional VCs to underserved regions—controlling for the presence of traditional VC investments, each additional CDVC investment results in an additional 0.06 new traditional VC firms in a region.