How useful is venture capital prestige? Evidence from IPO survivability

This study examines the effect of venture capitalist (VC) prestige on the post-issue survivability of IPOs and how VC characteristics influence the effect. We find that IPOs backed by prestigious VCs are less likely to delist for performance failure and have longer listing duration relative to those without VC backing; however, IPOs backed by ordinary VCs are as likely to delist as IPOs without VC backing. The finding is robust for Internet and high-tech firms. We further examine heterogeneous VC characteristics and find that the ability of prestigious VCs to improve IPO survival is a function of their investment experience and managerial ability. VC prestige characterized by industry specialization and syndication networks is not related to IPO survival. Overall, the results suggest that the VC characteristics that produce prestige, rather than the prestige itself, drive the long-term survival of IPOs.     

Venture capitalist participation and the performance of Chinese IPOs

We examine the effects of venture capitalist participation in IPOs in China and find that VC-backed firms are more underpriced than non-VC firms. Both VC-backed and non-VC-backed IPOs experience long-run underperformance; however, VC-backed IPOs perform significantly better. The higher level of underpricing and cost of going public for the VC-backed firms are consistent with the monitoring role of the VC. Finally, the fact that VC reputation is associated with lower underpricing is consistent with the reputational capital theory, which asserts that reputable VCs use their expertise and experience to minimize underpricing in order to preserve their reputational capital.     

Venture capital investors and foreign listing choices of Chinese companies

We investigate the listing choice of Chinese VC-backed companies between a domestic market and foreign stock markets. Using a comprehensive sample of 2249 IPOs of Chinese companies that went public during the 1994–2013 period, we find that companies backed by Chinese domestic VCs are significantly less likely to list abroad while those backed by foreign VCs or co-invested by foreign and domestic VCs are significantly more likely to do so. We further find that the introduction of a domestic stock market for high-tech start-ups (the ChiNext Board) significantly reduces the likelihood to list abroad. However, the effect of VC participation largely disappears after the introduction of the ChiNext Board, in that the companies backed by foreign or co-invested VCs are more likely to list domestically. Moreover, we find that VC-backed IPOs have larger issuance sizes, but we find no impact on IPO underpricing of these Chinese companies. These results on IPO outcome hold for both the full sample and a matched sample using propensity score matching.     

Cross-border venture capital investments in Asia: Selection and exit performance

We investigate the investment behavior and exit performance of VCs that have pursued expansion outside their home locations, specifically, in Asia. Our findings indicate that, in the Asian VC markets, foreign VCs have relative advantages over local VCs in terms of size and experience while they are at a disadvantage in information collection and monitoring due to both geographic and cultural distances. When investing alone, foreign VCs are more likely to invest in more information-transparent ventures. Partnership with local VCs helps alleviate information asymmetry and monitoring problem and has positive implication for the exit performance of local entrepreneurial firms. Specifically, we find that after controlling for the endogeneity of selection, firms with both foreign and local VC partnership are about 5% more likely to successfully exit.     

Mixed ownership and firm performance: Evidence from the Chinese venture capital industry

We examine the impact of mixed ownership on the performance of venture capital (VC) firms in China. We use successful/unsuccessful exits from VC-financed entrepreneurial companies and number of patent applications by VC-financed companies as proxies for VC firms' performance. Consistent with existing research on the inferior performance of SOEs relative to non-SOEs, we find that on average government-controlled VC firms (GVCs) underperform domestic private investors-controlled VC firms (PVCs). More importantly, we find that introducing minority private investors (i.e., mixed ownership) helps improve the performance of GVCs. However, we find no evidence that introducing minority government investors (i.e., mixed ownership) helps improve the performance of PVCs. Our results provide relevant information to the ongoing debate on the role of the government investors and private investors in developing the VC industry in emerging markets.     

Assessing mission drift at venture capital impact investors

In this article, we consider a recent trend whereby private equity available from venture capital (VC) firms is being deployed toward mission‐driven initiatives in the form of impact investing. Acting as hybrid organizations, these impact investors aim to achieve financial results while also targeting companies and funds to achieve social impact. However, potential mission drift in these VCs, which we define as a decoupling between the investments made (means) and intended aims (ends), might become detrimental to the simultaneous financial and social goals of such firms. Based on a content analysis of mission statements, we assess mission drift and the hybridization level of VC impact investors by examining their missions (ends/goals) and their investment practices (means) through the criteria of social and financial logic. After examining eight impact‐oriented VC investors and their investments in 164 companies, we find mission drift manifest as a disparity between the means and ends in half of the VC impact investors in our sample. We discuss these findings and make suggestions for further studies.     

Venture Capitalists, Syndication and Governance in Initial Public Offerings

This paper examines the development of effective boards in venture capital (VC)-backed initial public offerings. It argues that VC-backed IPOs suffer from two sets of agency costs which are related to principal–agent and principal–principal relationships between the founders and members of the VC syndicate. Using a unique sample of 293 entrepreneurial IPOs in the UK it shows that VC syndicates invest in relatively more risky firms. VC-backed IPOs have more independent boards than IPOs with no VC involvement, with board independence being higher in syndicated VC-backed firms. These results are consistent with assumption that these governance factors are used to mitigate agency costs associated with VC involvement in IPO firms. We also find that in syndicated IPOs there is a higher equity presence of passive private equity firms investing alongside VC firms.     

Why do contracts differ between venture capital types?

The main objective of the present paper is to investigate differences in the design of contracts between venture capitalists and their portfolio firms across venture capital (VC) types. By controlling for selection effects, we focus on contract design differences which reflect differences in corporate governance approaches across VC types. To address this issue, we use a unique, hand-collected German data set consisting of all contractual details of VC investments into 290 entrepreneurial firms in the period 1990–2004. By employing various matching procedures, we show that VC types differ in their corporate governance approach vis-à-vis their portfolio firms. It turns out that independent VCs, when compared to captive VCs, use significantly more contract mechanisms which induce active intervention.     

Alternative investments in emerging markets: A review and new trends

This paper provides a review of the alternative investments literature in emerging markets, with a focus on art and wine, angel investment, venture capital and private equity, private debt, hedge funds, crowdfunding, and IPOs. We show that there has been relatively more growth in the scholarly interest in alternative investments in emerging markets compared to alternative investments and compared to emerging markets over the period 2000–2016. We highlight topics that have been the subject of scholarly focus, and identify topics for future research.     

Broadening versus reinforcing investor portfolios: Social structure and the search for venture capital investors

This paper highlights the venture capital investor (VC) portfolios of startups, and explores how the portfolios evolve. We emphasize the important trade-off between broadening and reinforcing VC portfolios (i.e., expanding to new VCs versus relying on existing VCs). This is because, to startups, new and existing VCs generate very different opportunities and constraints. Focusing on the social structure of existing VCs, we argue that startups are more likely to opt for new VCs when the internal networks of existing VCs are denser, when the external networks of existing VCs are smaller, and when the status of existing VCs is lower. Additionally, we not only focus on whether new VCs are on board, but also pay attention to which new VCs are introduced, by analyzing the ex-ante embeddedness between existing and newly-introduced VCs. We stress that when new VCs are highly embedded with existing VCs, their involvement makes only a limited contribution to broadening a startup's portfolio and network. We test the hypotheses using a sample of VC financing rounds in the U.S. and find broad support.     

How venture capital firms differ

Four potential sources of differences between venture capital (VC) firms were examined—venture stage of interest, amount of assistance provided by the VC, VC firm size, and geographic region where located. Through a questionnaire, 149 venture capitalists provided data about their firms, about what they look for in evaluating an investment, and about how they work with a portfolio company following an investment.Firms were divided into four groups based on venture stage of interest. The earlier the investment stage, the greater the interest in potential investments built upon proprietary products, product uniqueness, and high growth markets. Late-stage investors were more interested in demonstrated market acceptance.There were no differences by stage regarding the desired qualities of management. However, after the investment was made, earlier stage investors attached more importance to spending their time evaluating and recruiting managers. Earlier stage investors sought ventures with higher potential returns—a 42% hurdle rate of return for the earliest stage investor versus 33% for the late-stage investor.Late-stage investors spent more time evaluating a potential investment. However, after the investment was made, there was little difference in the amount of time spent assisting the portfolio company. There were, however, differences in the significance that VCs attached to particular post-investment activities. Firms were split into three groups based upon the amount of time the VC spent with a portfolio company after an investment was made as lead investor. The most active group averaged over 35 hours per month per investment, and the least active group averaged less than seven hours.The difference in assistance provided was not strongly tied to differences in investment stage of interest. There were major differences in the importance the VCs attached to their post-investment activities. Not surprisingly, high involvement VCs viewed their activities as more important.Based upon the amount of capital they managed, firms were also split into three groups. Average fund size varied from 278 to 12 million dollars. The larger firms had more professionals and managed more money per professional. The large firms provided the least, and the medium-sized firms the most, assistance to portfolio companies. Large firms also made larger individual investments. Even though they invested over half their funds in late-stage investments whereas smaller firms focused on the earlier stages, the large firms were still a major source of early stage financing.There were no differences between geographic regions in the proportion of investments where the venture capital firm served as lead investor. There were, however, major regional differences in investment stages of interest. Also differences were observed between regions that were not a result of differing size and investment stage.     

Venture capitalist governance and value added in four countries

The rapid internationalization of markets for venture capital is expanding the funding alternatives available to entrepreneurs. For venture capital firms, this trend spells intensified competition in markets already at or past saturation. At issue for both entrepreneurs and venture capital firms is how and when venture capitalists (VCs) can provide meaningful oversight and add value to their portfolio companies beyond the provision of capital. An important way VCs add value beyond the money they provide is through their close relationships with the managers of their portfolio companies. Whereas some VCs take a very hands-off approach to oversight, others become deeply involved in the development of their portfolio companies.Utilizing surveys of VCs in the United States and the three largest markets in Europe (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France), we examined the determinants of interaction between VCs and CEOs, the roles VCs assume, and VCs' perceptions of how much value they add through these roles. We examined the strategic, interpersonal, and networking roles through which VCs are involved in their portfolio companies, and we analyzed how successful such efforts were. By so doing we were able to shed light on how and when VCs in four major markets expend their greatest effort to provide oversight and value-added assistance to their investment companies.Consistent with prior empirical work, we found that VCs saw strategic involvement as their most important role, i.e., providing financial and business advice and functioning as a sounding board. They rated their interpersonal roles (as mentor and confidant to CEOs) as next in value.Finally, they rated their networking roles (i.e., as contacts to other firms and professionals) as third most important. These ratings were consistent across all four markets. VCs in the United States and the United Kingdom were the most involved in their ventures, and they added the most value. VCs in France were the least involved and added the least value; VCs in France appeared to be least like others in terms of what factors drove their efforts. Our theoretical models explained a greater proportion of variance in governance and value added in the United States than elsewhere. Clear patterns of behavior emerged that reflect the manner in which different markets operate. Among the European markets, practices in the United Kingdom appear to be most like that in the United States.Determinants of Governance (Face-to-Face Interaction)We operationalized VC governance or monitoring of ventures as the amount of face-to-face interaction VCs had with venture CEOs. We found some evidence that VCs increase monitoring in response to agency risks, but the results were mixed. Lack of experience on the part of CEOs did not prompt significant additional monitoring as had been predicted. A more potent determinant was how long the VC-CEO pairs worked together; longer relationships mitigated agency concerns and reduced monitoring. Contrary to expectations, perceived business risk in the form of VCs' satisfaction with recent venture performance had little impact on face-to-face interaction. Monitoring was greatest in early stage ventures, indicating that VCs respond to high uncertainty by increased information exchange with CEOs. We measured two types of VC experience and found different patterns for the two. Generally speaking, VCs with greater experience in the venture capital industry required less interaction with CEOs, whereas VCs with greater experience in the portfolio company's industry interacted more frequently with CEOs than did VCs without such experience.Determinants of Value AddedWe argued that VCs would most add value to ventures when the venture lacked resources or faced perceived business risks, when the task environment was highly uncertain, and when VCs had great investing and operating experience. Contrary to expectations, VCs added most value to those ventures already performing well. As we had predicted, VCs did add relatively more value when uncertainty was high: e.g., for ventures in the earliest stages and for ventures pursuing innovation strategies. Finally, we found that VCs with operating experience in the venture's focal industry added significantly more value than those with less industry-specific experience. These results are consistent with anecdotal evidence that entrepreneurs have a strong preference for VCs with similar backgrounds as their own. We found no evidence that experience in the venture capital industry contributed significantly to value added. Together, these results suggest that investigations of the social as well as economic dimensions of venture building may prove a fruitful avenue for future study. Overall, the results showed that value-added is strongly related to the amount of face-to-face interaction between VC-CEO pairs and to the number of hours VCs put in on each individual venture.Implications for Venture CapitalistsThe competition for attractive investments is heating up as economies become more globalized. Thus, the pressure on venture capital firms to operate both efficiently and effectively is also likely to build. It is as yet unclear whether the recent trend toward later stage, safer investments will continue, and how those venture capital firms following this path can differentiate themselves from other sources of capital. Venture capital firms that are able to choose the appropriate bases for determining governance effort and the appropriate roles for delivering added value to their portfolio companies will be those most likely to survive.In the largest, most robust markets (i.e., the United States and the United Kingdom), more effort is expended by venture capitalists to deliver something of value beyond the money. This suggests that the tradeoff preferred by those succeeding is to be more rather than less involved in their investments. Our results indicate that VCs clearly economize on the time they devote to involvement in their portfolio companies. However, our results also indicate that they do this at the great peril of producing value insufficient to justify the cost of their product.Implications for EntrepreneursOur findings provide two important insights for entrepreneurs. First, they show that where and when they obtain venture capital is likely to have an impact on the extent and nature of effort delivered by their venture capital investors. It appears that on average entrepreneurs receiving venture capital in the United States and the United Kingdom will be more closely monitored and will receive more value-adding effort from their VCs than will those in France or the Netherlands. Needless to say, entrepreneurs should consider their preferences for level and type of involvement from their investors as they consider their choice of partners. In France, for example, VCs put great emphasis on their financial role in comparison with other roles, but they contribute much less than VCs elswhere via other strategic, interpersonal, and networking roles.The second key implication of our findings is that entrepreneurs may be able to gauge what roles VCs will see as most important, when VCs are more or less apt to become involved in their companies, and when they believe they can most add value. Such knowledge may help CEOs anticipate VC activity, be aware of the parameters of VCs' preferences, communicate their own preferences, and negotiate the timing and extent of interaction. For example, although our results indicate that geographic distance significantly limits face-to-face interaction, it appears to have less impact on the amount of value added.Implications for ResearchersMuch more can be learned about the relative efficiency and effectiveness of alternative governance arrangements. Little is known about how formal structures such as contract covenants and board control work in conjunction with informal oversight and interaction. Even less is known about how value is added and how it is best measured. Although this study took a step toward developing a model of the circumstances under which value is added, the theory and its operationalization await further development.     

How to Design Public Venture Capital Funds: Empirical Evidence from South Korea

This study examines the effects of several features of government‐managed, sponsored venture capital (VC), and private VC funds on overall VC investments in new technology‐based firms (NTBFs) during two developmental stages (i.e., growth and restructuring) in South Korean VC market and suggests hints for designing effective government VC programs. Our results from data on 463 funds in the period 1995–2005 indicate the factors bearing a positive effect on VC investments targeted to NTBFs. Such factors are the fund specialization focusing on certain industrial sectors, performance‐sensitive compensation for venture capitalists in private and government VC funds.     

The impact of institutional sources of capital upon the minority-oriented venture capital industry

Venture capital (VC) funds specializing in investing equity capital in minority-owned businesses have grown rapidly over the past decade, fueled by the willingness of major institutional investors to support this traditionally neglected niche. We investigate impacts of public pension funds upon the minority VC sector. These funds, providing over half of all capital invested in minority VCs, selectively invest, seeking to fund only those VCs likely to generate high returns. Although they attempt to pick the winners, our findings indicate that they have failed to do so. The influence of public pension funds upon the minority VCs is nonetheless real, skewing investing away from traditional practices and toward those of the venture capital mainstream. In the process, minority VCs funded by pension fund money invest in high-tech fields more than other minority-oriented VC funds do. Further, they are less likely to fund minority-owned small firms, focusing increasingly upon firms owned by nonminority Whites. Neither of these trends has resulted in increased returns. Rather, diverting minority-oriented VCs away from their traditional mission of investing in minority firms operating in a broad range of industries has resulted in lower returns over the years studied.     

Can Spending Time in the Minors Pay Off? An Examination of the Canadian Junior Public Equity Markets

This paper tests whether the junior public equity markets serve as an effective development market for early‐stage firms compared to private venture capital (VC). Focusing on the Canadian market, we compare the long‐run stock performance of firms that graduate from the Toronto Venture Stock Exchange (TSX‐V) to the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) against the performance of VC‐backed firms that have a direct IPO on the TSX. Controlling for various confounders and possible selection biases, we find that TSX‐V graduations significantly outperform VC‐backed IPOs by 28.2 percentage points in the three years following the TSX listing. Our results are consistent with the idea that a TSX‐V listing provides the insiders of early‐stage companies with valuable public‐markets experience.     

The different roles played by venture capital and private equity investors on the investment activity of their portfolio firms

Venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) investors play different roles in their portfolio companies. We argue that this will translate in a recognizable difference in the investment sensitivity to cash flows of portfolio companies and its evolution after the first investment round. We hypothesise that VC, thanks to its ability in overcoming asymmetries in information, will entail a reduction in the financial constraints which hampered the growth of investee firms. We predict, instead, a greater dependency of investments to cash flow for PE-backed companies, driven by the renewed interest for growth of their management combined with higher leverage. We find evidence confirming our hypotheses on a large panel of Spanish unlisted firms in low and medium technology sectors, where both VC and PE firms are active.     

The nature of information and overconfidence on venture capitalists' decision making

Venture capitalists (VCs) are considered experts in identifying high potential new ventures—gazelles. Thus, the VC decision process has received tremendous attention within the entrepreneurship literature. Yet, most studies on VC decision-making focus on which decision criteria are central to selecting gazelles. Although informative, the majority of these studies has neglected cognitive differences in how VCs make decisions. This is surprising considering the influence cognitive differences are likely to have on the exploitation of an opportunity as well as its influence on likely success. The current study investigates whether VCs are overconfident, as well as the factors surrounding the decision that lead to overconfidence.Overconfidence describes the tendency to overestimate the likely occurrence of a set of events. Overconfident people make probability judgments that are more extreme than they should, given the evidence and their knowledge. In the case of the new venture investment decision, overconfident VCs may overestimate the likelihood that a funded company will succeed.The results of the current study indicate that VCs are indeed overconfident (96% of the 51 participating VCs exhibited significant overconfidence) and that overconfidence negatively affects VC decision accuracy (the correlation between overconfidence and accuracy was 0.70). The level of overconfidence depended upon the amount of information, the type of information, and whether the VC strongly believes the venture will succeed or fail.As more information becomes available, people tend to believe they will make better decisions; they are making a “more informed decision.” More information ideally should enable the VCs to assess any potential pitfalls. However, additional information makes the decision more complex. Information factors may contradict and relate to other information in unexpected ways. Even if more information is available, people usually don't analyze all of it (even though they believe they do). Thus, more information creates greater confidence, but it also leads to lower decision accuracy.The type of information that is available also impacts overconfidence and decision accuracy. VCs are intuitive decision makers. When people are familiar with a decision and the structure of the information surrounding that decision, they resort to automatic information processing. On the other hand, if information surrounding the decision is structured in an unfamiliar way, people need to decipher what each piece of information means and how that impacts their overall accuracy. In the case of expert VCs, that means they must deviate from their intuitive style. It seems that forcing them outside their “comfort zone” has a negative effect on their confidence and has an even greater effect (negative) on their accuracy.There is evidence of an “availability bias” in VC decision-making; VCs rely on how well the current decision matches past successful or failed investments. VCs are overconfident in their prediction of venture success when they predict a very high level of success. VCs are also overconfident in their prediction of venture failure when they predict a very low likelihood of success. This high level of overconfidence in success predictions (or failure predictions) may encourage the VC to limit information search and fund a lower potential investment (or prematurely reject a stronger potential investment).Although overconfidence in itself does not necessarily lead to a wrong decision, the bias is likely to inhibit learning and improving the decision process. Overconfident VCs may not fully consider all relevant information, nor search for additional information to improve their decision. Moreover, the natural tendency for people to recall past successes rather than failures may mean that VCs will make the same mistakes again. VCs can take simple steps to reduce the effect of overconfidence, including counterfactual thinking (i.e., imaging scenarios where current assumptions might not hold), formally recording how past decisions were made at the time of the decision (versus trying to recall how that decision was made from memory), and using actuarial decision aids that decompose decisions into core components. Reducing overconfidence may lead to stronger decisions. It is hoped that this study illustrates the power of cognitive theories for understanding VC decision-making.     

Angel Financing and the Performance of High‐Tech Start‐Ups

In this paper, we investigate what drives the performance of high‐tech start‐ups receiving angel financing, while taking a closer look at the capabilities (i.e., experience) and investment behavior of business angels (BAs). We exploit a new data set (extracted from Crunchbase), which consists of 1,933 high‐tech start‐ups that received at least one financing round from a BA. The results indicate that the experience of BAs in early stage investments is positively associated with additional receipt of follow‐on rounds of financing and sequential capital injections from venture capitalists (VCs). Later‐stage experience is positively associated with the start‐up's success (i.e., probability to be listed or acquired), but reduces the need for new VCs to invest in the start‐up. Furthermore, we find consistent evidence that start‐ups that combine BA and VC financing experience higher levels of funding amounts, additional VC financing, and an improved likelihood of success. Finally, we find that the co‐localization of BA investors and start‐ups in the same area facilitates the attraction of VC financing.     

National distances,international experience,and venture capital investment performance

This study examines how the performance of cross-border venture capital investments is affected by national institutional and cultural distances between the environments of venture capitalists (VCs) and investee ventures. We propose that institutional and cultural distances will decrease VCs' effectiveness in conducting venture capital activities and negatively affect investment performance in terms of exit success, and obtain supportive evidence while controlling for geographic distance. We further analyze how VCs can use their international experience to mitigate the negative consequences of national distances. We find that while broad international experience in diverse countries attenuates the deleterious effects of institutional distance in a significant way, it does not have a similar impact in attenuating the negative effects of cultural distance.     

Incremental impact of venture capital financing

This paper investigates the differences in the return generating process of venture capital (VC)-backed firms and their peers that operate without VC financing. Using a unique hand-picked database of 990 VC-backed Belgian firms and a complete population of Belgian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we focus on the extent to which the presence of a VC investor affects the sensitivity of a firm’s returns to the changes in the capital structure, in the operating cycle, and in the industry dynamics. The differences may stem from the (self-) selection of better companies into VC portfolios, from the venture capitalists’ (VCs) value-adding activities, and/or from both. We examine these factors in the context of a complex simulation procedure which allows separating selection from value-adding when traditional approaches are difficult to implement. Our results indicate that VC-backed firms are able to extract more rent from the changing industry conditions and from the optimizations in their capital structure. The presence of VCs in the firm’s equity seems to have only a marginal effect on the operating cycle efficiency. Overall, the results are suggestive of the value-adding being the main driver of the VC-backed firm’s performance.