Signaling by early stage startups: US government research grants and venture capital funding

Entrepreneurship researchers have documented that early stage startups rely on signals to demonstrate the transitions in their identities that they must make when they cross organizational life cycle thresholds. However, early stage startups in emerging industry contexts tend to have few good signals upon which to rely. Public agencies can play a valuable role in this process, but prior research has not sufficiently examined how startups effectively leverage this support. In this paper, therefore, we develop a framework to investigate the role that signals can play for early stage startups when they win prestigious government research grants. We test this framework in the setting of the emerging U.S. clean energy sector and find that in comparison to a matched sample of clean energy startups that have not won prestigious research grants, startups with these grants were 12% more likely to acquire subsequent venture capital (VC) funding. Another significant result is that the value of this signaling is greater for startups that have fewer patents. The important contribution of this finding is that it shows that signaling has the potential to redistribute benefits rather than just provide an additional accrual of advantages to the already high status actors. Together these results highlight the advantages for startups in emerging industries of pursuing signaling strategies with public agencies when they attempt to make important transitions through the stages of their organizational life cycles.

Unpeel the layers of trust! A comparative analysis of crowdfunding platforms and what they do to generate trust

Crowdfunding can prove to be a crucial alternative financing method, especially for microentrepreneurs, new ventures, and nonprofit associations. But trust needs to be built before prospective users decide to use crowdfunding, and we still lack an in-depth understanding of how crowdfunding platforms make users trust them. We analyzed 50 crowdfunding platforms of different types, from investment and lending platforms to reward and donation platforms. Within the sample, we included successful and consolidated platforms, such as Kickstarter, Crowdcube, and Indiegogo, as well as lesser-known and less active platforms, such as Crowdence, Zank, and Fundeen. A comparative analysis of these platforms reveals a diversity of organizational practices that aim to generate trust on four levels: trust toward the platform, toward the project, toward the users, and toward the notion of crowdfunding overall. We suggest guidelines for best practices for crowdfunding platforms and a checklist of points for prospective users searching for the right crowdfunding platform.     

Blitzscaling: The good,the bad,and the ugly

Today’s disruptive innovations are driving the creation of numerous billion-dollar startups. Venture capitalists focus on these potentially disruptive technology startups and fund them furiously, advancing their speed of growth. The idea is to scale fast and seek huge returns for investors. Terms that define this type of aggressive scaling have recently developed in Silicon Valley. Unicorn is defined as a venture with a value of $1 billion, while a decacorn describes startups with a value of $10 billion. Another recent term is blitzscaling: funding a venture for extremely fast growth and prioritizing speed over efficiency in an environment of uncertainty. While blitzscaling is being used heavily by investors in Silicon Valley, we look at exactly what comprises this new phenomenon and how it is used in practice. We examine the concept, its stages, and its prevalence before reviewing the different examples of how the strategy has been implemented for success (the good), cases of its failure in practice (the bad), and the extreme cases of ethical compromise by ventures (the ugly). From these cases, we draw specific lessons that, if understood and appropriately addressed, would help new ventures effectively implement the strategy.     

Launching for success: The effects of psychological distance and mental simulation on funding decisions and crowdfunding performance

This research examines how potential backers form mental representations of products in reward-based crowdfunding campaigns, and how these representations affect funding decisions and campaign performance. To test our framework, we conducted four experiments and also drew on a sample of 961 Kickstarter campaigns. Our results show that two campaign characteristics – the product's development stage and the indicated time to product delivery – determine the psychological distance that supporters experience in response to a campaign, and that psychological distance, in turn, inhibits individual campaign contributions and cumulative campaign success. Furthermore, we find that encouraging supporters to imagine the benefits of product usage is an effective means to increase support for campaigns that elicit high psychological distance.     

Working the crowd: Leveraging podcasts to enhance crowdfunding success

Crowdfunding has become an increasingly popular tool for entrepreneurs to solicit public funding from individuals. As its popularity grows, entrepreneurs are seeking to learn more about crowdfunding to improve their chances of success. In this article, we explore how podcasts can offer fresh insights to crowdfunding and serve as an effective tool for entrepreneurs to improve their knowledge and the likelihood that their campaigns are funded. We discuss key insights for entrepreneurs offered by ten popular podcast episodes on crowdfunding. Each episode offers enduring lessons for entrepreneurs interested in launching a campaign and also exemplifies the value that podcasts can potentially offer entrepreneurs.     

Bellwether and the herd? Unpacking the u-shaped relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions in reward-based crowdfunding

Building on the insights from observational learning and other social influence research, this study challenges the existing literature that proposes a linear relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions in the crowdfunding setting. Instead, we propose a U-shaped relationship, illustrating a negative relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions when funding amounts are small and this relationship becomes positive when prior funding amounts are large. Consistent with the rational herding perspective, we assume that individuals do not mindlessly mimic one others' behaviors, but incorporate quality signals into their decision-making. Signals indicating a high quality project such as video quality, as well as the preparedness and passion of the entrepreneur enhance this U-shaped relationship whereas indicators of situational urgency weaken this relationship. Based on a sample of 11,019 daily observations of 333 Kickstarter projects, we find general support for our hypotheses. Our post hoc experiment further supports the mechanisms underlying the U-shaped relationship. This paper extends our understanding of the relationship between past actions and subsequent behavior, and contributes to the literatures of observational learning, crowdfunding, and visual information.Executive summaryWe challenge the extant literature that has proposed, but inconsistently documented, a positive effect of prior funding on subsequent crowdfunding contributions. We argue that such inconsistency is due to the lack of integration of insights from other social influence research, such as observational learning, threshold models, and bystander effects. This research has been limited when postulating that crowdfunding backers simply imitate others' actions in order to mitigate uncertainty producing a linear effect, yet such an effect depends on the intensity of others' actions and may be curvilinear. This research overlooks the fact that backers do not merely passively imitate others' behaviors, but incorporate quality signals sent by entrepreneurs to make such decisions. Thus, it is important to account for potential moderators that may influence the complex relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions.Based on observational learning research and related models, accrued prior funding may be perceived differently by potential backers: individuals may view accrued funding as a sign of a decreased funding need on the part of a campaign's creators, because others are already backing the campaign or, alternatively, they may see it as a cue of high product quality. These conflicting effects may lead to a U-shaped relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions at a collective level. At low funding levels, prior funding may be negatively associated with subsequent contributions because such levels indicate there is already support, but that the campaign may not be of high quality. At medium levels, prior funding may have no effect on contributions, aside from halfhearted interest of other backers. At high levels, prior funding may be positively related to subsequent contributions as this sends a robust cue of project quality and convinces prospective donors to contribute. Further, we derive a U-shaped relationship which may be moderated by visual media-based quality signals and situational urgency.To test these hypotheses, we conducted two studies. One was a field study of 333 Kickstarter projects, with 11,019 daily observations of crowdfunding activities from mid-February 2013 through mid-April 2013. We used the Kicktraq website to track Kickstarter projects and recruited 390 participants via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to evaluate the video pitches on Kickstarter. Our results suggest a negative relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions when funding amounts are small. This relationship becomes positive when prior funding amounts are large. Thus, we find a U-shaped relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions, with an inflection point when prior funding amounts reach between 72% and 80% of the funding goal. This is strengthened in the presence of visual media-based quality signals, such as video quality, as well as the preparedness and passion of the entrepreneur. However, indicators of situational urgency may weaken this U-shaped relationship.We followed up with a post hoc experiment to document the two mechanisms by which prior funding influence subsequent contributions. We found that increases in the prior funding amount increased perceived product quality but decreased perceived urgency. These perceptions were found to jointly influence participants' proposed pledged amounts, supporting an explanation of a complex relationship between prior funding and subsequent contributions.This study is among the first to offer a more complete picture of the relationship between past actions and subsequent behavior under market and institutional constraints (i.e., when market actors observe the censored behaviors of other actors on crowdfunding platforms) and contributes to the literatures of observational learning, crowdfunding, and visual information.     

Founders' experiences for startups' fast break-even

While some previous studies have found that the role of founders' collective experiences is paramount in resolving problems inherent in startups, others have failed to substantiate this. This study claims that this incongruence is attributable to a failure to consider organizational processes in which founders' experiences translate into organizational assets through information distribution and interpretation. Using the data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics, this study demonstrates that startups reach their break-even point faster when their founders have had work experience in the same industry, and that this effect becomes stronger when these firms commit more resources to information distribution and interpretation.     

Big fish: Leveraging the fear of missing out in equity crowdfunding in the post-COVID-19 era

In this article, we look at how to leverage the positive face of the fear of missing out (FOMO) to foster brand community-building in the context of equity crowdfunding in the post-COVID-19 era. Using thematic analysis from 15 interviews with crowd investors across Europe and North America, we investigated how FOMO influences the decision-making of crowd investors. Findings suggest that FOMO is a powerful belongingness facilitator that can support the crowd investor’s self-determination strategies and thus their willingness to take part in a crowdfunding community, sharing in its values and beliefs. FOMO can be used by entrepreneurs to activate identification mechanisms through which they can create a loyal fan base. We conclude by proposing an entrepreneurial action plan to guide the entrepreneur in making the most of FOMO in equity crowdfunding ventures.     

Administration of crowdfunding at Australian universities

Crowdfunding offers a new funding model for research activities at universities. It combines fundraising with public engagement and an entrepreneurial spirit. While universities might be expected to show enthusiasm for the possibilities of crowdfunding, support has not been widespread in Australia. Only a small number of Australian universities have provided active support for crowdfunding of research activities. Interviews with academics and administrators from two Australian universities with a history of providing strong support for research crowdfunding show that clear vision and firm leadership are required to overcome organizational inertia. Universities need to provide space for academics and administrators to innovate, try new approaches, and even fail as they learn whether crowdfunding works for them. Peer support and organized training can help academics as they seek to build an audience via social media engagement. Universities can also provide analysis of campaign progress and, in some cases, funding to support campaigns. The article concludes with best-practice advice for universities that wish to encourage research crowdfunding supported by a framework that describes a continuum of support, ranging from an outright ban to benign neglect to strong support for this new activity.     

Social entrepreneurship and digital platforms: Crowdfunding in the sharing-economy era

Though crowdfunding is no longer an atypical fundraising mechanism, its practical use remains limited, particularly when it comes to social entrepreneurship, owing to the numerous challenges unique to social-entrepreneurial ventures. By combining existing research on social entrepreneurship, value cocreation, the sharing economy, and digital platforms, this work offers practical insights into how existing platforms can be used for crowdfunding financial resources, sourcing creative ideas, collaborating, and gathering an array of nonfinancial resources. Additionally, this article discusses the ideal digital platform solution and explains how a multifaceted, multiuse digital platform can be created and utilized by new social ventures for meeting a multitude of needs. By focusing on a mission of social change and by understanding how digital platforms can avail crowdfunding, social entrepreneurs can overcome legitimacy issues and lack of traditional funding avenues. This taps into many of the typical aspects of the sharing economy: the benevolence of the actors, use of the internet for facilitation, and the motivation to engage in a new way of doing things. Thus, this article adopts a multidisciplinary view in exploring how crowdfunding can be coupled with the remobilization of idling resources using digital platforms to support social-entrepreneurial ventures in a myriad of ways.     

Choose your words carefully: Harnessing the language of crowdfunding for success

When it comes to raising money via crowdfunding, the language used in campaign narratives matters. Little practical guidance has been offered to those wishing to use crowdfunding concerning how to tailor the language in a crowdfunding campaign to enhance funding prospects. We take insights generated in academic research and distill those down to practical guidance for crowdfunding users. Here, we focus on two important aspects of language. First, we highlight how language that provides insight into the entrepreneurs’ personality—words expressing positivity, charisma, resilience, or narcissism—relates to funding. Second, we outline how various linguistic styles used to describe the general topics of the campaign relate to funding. Our work is particularly applicable to one of the most popular forms of crowdfunding: rewards-based crowdfunding.     

Critical competitive strategy issues every entrepreneur should consider before going into business

The topic of formulating and implementing competitive strategy is usually considered from the perspective of a large, well established, and oftentimes multi-divisional corporation. Achieving a sustainable competitive advantage, however, is every bit or even more critical to the survival of smaller startup businesses. Although much research has been performed on how startup companies create value for their constituencies and on how they launch products, few attempts have been made to apply classical large-company strategy ideas to startups. In this paper we consider eleven distinct differences between how large, established firms and their smaller startup counterparts consider strategy initiatives with an eye to guiding entrepreneurs toward higher probabilities of success. The eleven differences are building on market strengths, size of market, relationship to resources, presence of constraints, visibility of and by competitors, investor expectations, shareholder/investor risk tolerance, process, portfolio management, triage, and time horizon for results.     

Red flags and rave reviews: Explaining too-good-to-be-true crowdfunding campaigns

Crowdfunding platforms enable entrepreneurs to bring to life ideas that may otherwise have remained unrealized. When crowdfunding campaigns go well, campaigners are able to fulfill their vision, funders’ engagement is rewarded, and society gains access to a range of new offerings. But some recent high-profile medical-technology campaigns have failed to deliver their promised rewards despite reaching and at times far exceeding their funding goals. The objectives of this article are to shed light on why donors fund campaigns that turn out to be too good to be true and to examine how this engagement reduces trust in crowdfunding. To this end, I explore the role of product creativity as a dual mechanism for both funding success and postfunding delivery failure. Product creativity is typically associated with positive crowdfunding outcomes. But in the context of medical-technology campaigns, product creativity may make community members more attracted to campaigns that are less likely to deliver on their campaign promises. This phenomenon then increases the likelihood that the campaign will reduce trust in crowdfunding, hurting donors, the focal venture, and future campaigners. I offer practical implications for crowdfunding platforms, campaigners, and supporters interested in learning more about the pitfalls associated with initially successful crowdfunding campaigns.     

Designing a dangerous unicorn: Lessons from the Theranos case

Until its highly publicized downfall, Theranos was a so-called unicorn with a compelling proposition to popularize routine blood testing by making it more convenient, using a smaller sample of blood, and testing at a lower cost than conventional, often fear-inducing needles. Holmes and Theranos were reliant on the development of new technology to bring their idea to life. Instead, they became perhaps one of the most infamous examples of failed product innovation. In this article, we contend that although character failings and alleged criminal activity could not have been mitigated realistically, valuable strategic and operational lessons can be learned for future technology startups. By conducting a counterfactual thought experiment and examining Theranos through the lens of Design Innovation (DI), we provide evaluations and predictions across strategic and operational constructs from both an internal and external perspective. We use Theranos to demonstrate the value of DI to future technology-driven entrepreneurs, proposing alternative approaches to medical device startups.     

Startup Success Factors in the Capital Attraction Stage: Founders’ Perspective

Only a small percentage of startups attract capital from venture capital investors. To determine the factors which owners of startups consider the most important for attracting seed venture investments, the founders of 40 startups in Latvia and Russia were questioned. The researchers compared organizational and financial factors’ importance for two groups of entrepreneurs: those who succeeded and those who failed in attracting funding. The results of the study indicate certain differences between the viewpoints of founders and investors regarding success factors. Based on the factor and regression analysis, the authors developed a model to forecast success in capital attraction.     

Following the Crowd—Does Crowdfunding Affect Venture Capitalists’ Selection of Entrepreneurial Ventures?

Given the increasing popularity of crowdfunding as a new means to finance entrepreneurial ventures, we assess whether and how crowdfunding campaign‐specific signals that affect campaign success influence venture capitalists’ selection decisions in ventures’ follow‐up funding process. Our study relies on cross‐referencing a proprietary data set of 56,000 crowdfunding campaigns that ran on Kickstarter between 2009 and 2016 with 100,000 investments in the same period from the Crunchbase data set. Drawing on signaling theory and the microfinance literature, our empirical findings reveal that a successful crowdfunding campaign leads to a higher likelihood to receive follow‐up venture capital (VC) financing, and that there exists an inverted U‐shaped relationship between the funding‐ratio and the probability to receive VC funding. Further, we find statistical evidence that an endorsement by the platform provider has a likewise positive impact on the receipt of VC. Contrary to our expectations, word‐of‐mouth volume seems to be a negligible factor when it comes to follow‐up VC financing. Our results support the view that crowdfunding signals are factored into the VC’s funding decision in order to evaluate the potential of entrepreneurial ventures.     

Natural Environment,Market Orientation,and Firm Innovativeness: An Organizational Life Cycle Perspective

Drawing upon the corporate social responsibility literature, we investigate the moderating effects of the natural environment and the stage of an organization's life cycle on the market orientation to firm innovativeness relationship. Through 229 owners or chief executive officer respondents, our results establish evidence of (1) a positive linkage between market orientation and firm innovativeness; (2) natural environmental policy positively moderating the market orientation to firm innovativeness relationship; and (3) organizational life cycle negatively moderating market orientation to innovativeness. Our findings suggest ventures characterized as being early in the organizational life cycle are more likely to have a positive environmental policy toward the natural environment leading to a competitive advantage through firm innovativeness.     

Overhead aversion and facial expressions in crowdfunding

Overhead aversion—donors’ negative attitudes toward their donated money being used for overhead costs—has been explored in many contexts. In this study, we first confirm findings from prior research that high overhead costs imposed on project initiators have a negative effect on supporters' funding decisions and that higher overhead costs make project funding less successful in crowdfunding. Thereafter, we investigate how the negative effect of overhead costs on funding performance is moderated by the project initiator's facial expressions in the image on the project webpage. A smiling face mitigates overhead aversion, whereas a sad face amplifies it. We collected a large sample of data from Kiva, a loan-based crowdfunding platform, and used a deep learning algorithm to categorize the facial expressions of project initiators. Subsequently, a propensity score weighting approach was applied to minimize confounding effects. This empirical study indicates that the project initiator's smiling face, rather than a sad face, can alleviate supporters' overhead aversion.     

Patent Protection,Startup Takeovers,and Open Innovation

Abstract

Open innovation largely relies on startup innovators transferring their R&D to incumbent firms. Yet, such innovators are at a disadvantage when faced with incumbents holding patent portfolios, raising the question why do such Lilliputian firms choose to innovate? In view of this, we study the impact of patent protection on the innovation incentives of startup firms in a dynamic model where an incumbent faces a sequence of potential startups and the incumbent’s chance of winning an infringement lawsuit increases with the size of its patent portfolio. It is shown that open innovation–style takeover deals generate extra benefits for the incumbent via its enhanced future bargaining positions, a part of which accrues to the current startup as an increased bargaining share, justifying R&D activity that would not have taken place otherwise.