Duration analysis of venture capital staging: A real options perspective

This study takes a real options perspective towards venture capital staging and views the staging decision as a choice between holding the current option to invest and investing now to obtain the option to invest subsequently. It proposes that this staging decision depends on the factors that influence the value of these two options, such as competition and various sources of uncertainty. The empirical results suggest that market uncertainty encourages venture capital firms to delay investing at each round of financing, whereas competition, project-specific uncertainty and agency concerns prompt venture capital firms to invest sooner. This study has useful implications for theory and practice.     

Specialization versus diversification as a venture capital investment strategy

Much important work has informed us of rates of return earned by venture capitalists, the importance of venture capitalists to the “going public” process, and the criteria venture capitalists use to evaluate deals. This paper seeks to add to the literature by testing hypotheses, based upon both the finance and strategic management literature, regarding certain venture capitalist investment practices.Venture capitalists seek to control or manage risk (Driscoll 1974; MacMillan, Siegel, and SubbaNarasimha 1985). Financing structure and investment strategy provide several means for venture capitalists to do this. Tools available to the venture capitalist include portfolio diversification to spread risk across different industries, firms, or hot/cold IPO markets to minimize unsystematic or investment-specific risk. Information sharing, networking, and specialization can also be used to control unsystematic risk.Several hypotheses are developed from these conflicting perspectives. Data used to test the hypotheses are derived from responses to a survey of venture capitalists. Three hundred surveys were mailed to venture capitalists; 98, or 32.7%,returned usable responses.Portfolio diversification is a well-known means to control risk exposure by reducing unsystematic or specific risks. However, Bygrave (1987, 1988), as well as financial intermediation theorists, argues that maintaining a high degree of specialization is useful for controlling risk as well as for gaining access to networks, information, and deal flow from other venture investors. The analyses of this paper build upon Bygrave's work. We construct more rigorous tests to resolve the conflict between the diversification and information-sharing hypotheses. Our hypothesis tests were usually resolved in favor of the information-sharing view. For example, venture capitalists in the sample that were heavily involved in seed round financing were diversified across fewer numbers of firms and industries.Further evidence in favor of information sharing is seen in investment patterns across different financing stages. Diversification would imply maintaining a portfolio of investments across the different investment stages. The information sharing/specialization view would argue that it is best to stay focused on a single stage or several “connected” stages. The empirical evidence from the sample once again favors the specialization perspective.This research provides information of use to venture capitalists, as they seek information on how best to control risk; to entrepreneurs, as they learn of the factors venture capitalists consider in determining their investment strategy; and to academicians, as such studies provide insight to general industry practice and thus help to form the basis of classroom discussion and future research endeavors.     

The structure of the investment networks of venture capital firms

Venture capital firms are linked together in a network by their joint investments in portfolio companies. Through connections in that network, they exchange resources with one another. The most important of those resources are the opportunity to invest in a portfolio company (good investment prospects are always scarce), the spreading of financial risk, and the sharing of knowledge. All venture capitalists operate in very uncertain environments, none more so than the one confronting high innovative venture capitalists, HIVCs,¹ that specialize in investing in high innovative technology companies. The most uncertain of all their investments is a high-technology start-up with nothing more than a product in the head of the founder. There is uncertainty about the talent of the entrepreneur, the market need for the product, the development of a saleable product, the raising of second-round financing for working capital and expansion; the manufacturing of the product, competitors' responses, and government policies such as capital gains tax and ERISA rules, to name some of the major components. It is a formidable list. Indeed, it is hard to name a segment of any other industry that bears more uncertainty than HIVCs.A venture capital firm copes with uncertainty by gathering information. This research shows that the amount of coinvesting by a firm depends on the degree of uncertainty it faces. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the degree of coinvesting.By examining how venture capital firms were connected by their joint investments, it was found that the top 21 HIVCs comprise a tightly coupled network. And of that group, none is more tightly bound than the nine HIVCs located in California. In contrast, the group of top 21 firms that invest mainly in low innovative technology companies, LIVCs, is more loosely bound. HIVCs are more tightly bound together because they shoulder more uncertainty and therefore have a greater need to share information with one another.The practical implications of this study are as follows: Venture Capitalists. It is vital to be well-connected to other venture capital firms. They are important sources of information and investment opportunities. For HIVCs, the California group is central in the network, so links to them are valuable. Communications in a tightly coupled system are swift, so it is likely that information is disseminated very quickly among members of the group. It probably facilitates the setting of a market rate for venture capital. A disadvantage of a tightly bound system is that information flowing among the members has a redundancy and sameness about it, so to ensure a supply of fresh information, members should have as many links as possible to other organizations and individuals besides venture capitalists. Entrepreneurs. When entrepreneurs submit a proposal for funding to venture capital firms, they can assume that news will spread fast to other firms. Thus, they should not use a bird-shot approach; rather, they should select their targets with rifle precision. The proposal should be submitted to a few firms that are known to specialize in the type of product or service that the entrepreneur is planning to make. Entrepreneurs should be concerned about more than the price of the deal. When the top 61 firms invest in a portfolio company, they bring information, contacts, and “deep pockets” to the companies in which they invest. Those factors are significant in nurturing a growing company. Policy Makers. The networks of HIVCs and UVCs are quite different. The HIVCs cluster around oases of high-technology entrepreneurship in the northeast and California, whereas the LIVCs are more evenly spread throughout the U.S.A. HIVCs are located almost exclusively in the so-called “bi-coastal regions of prosperity.”This study found cliques among the venture capital firms. But it found no evidence that the top 61 firms exclude other venture capital firms from their coinvestments of first-rounds of capital. More research is needed before conclusions can be drawn about the power and influence of the top firms. Researchers. In a recent article, Granovetter (1985) suggests that if we are to explain economic behavior, we must understand the networks in which transactions are embedded. This research shows that the networks formed by the syndicated coinvestments of venture capital firms may help us to explain their behavior. A general model for coinvestment networks that is developed in this article is applicable to analysis of syndicated coinvestments not only of venture capital firms, but of investors and lenders in general.     

Industry relatedness in trade sales and venture capital investment returns

We investigate relationships between the industry relatedness of venture capital-backed companies and their strategic acquirer in trade sales and the achieved investment returns of venture capitalists. Using a proprietary data set of 716 trade sales, we analyze return differences between lateral and synergetic trade sales, as well as between horizontal and vertical trade sales. We find that venture capitalists achieve higher returns with lateral rather than synergetic trade sales, and that the difference is greater for deals involving early stage companies characterized by strong information asymmetries. In addition, horizontal trade sales yield higher returns than vertical trade sales; however, in boom phases of the venture capital market, this effect reverses. Finally, we find that experienced venture capitalists are able to overcome disadvantageous situations in trade sales, resulting in comparable returns across all trade sale categories.     

When does corporate venture capital investment create firm value?

Over the past decade, billions of dollars have been invested by established companies in entrepreneurial ventures—what is often referred to as corporate venture capital. Yet, there is little systematic evidence that corporate venture capital investment creates value to investing firms. Scholars have suggested that established firms face underlying challenges when investing corporate venture capital. Namely, structural deficiencies inherent in corporate venture capital may inhibit financial gains. However, firm value may still be created as a result of other benefits from investing—primarily providing a window onto novel technology. In this paper, we propose that corporate venture capital investment will create greater firm value when firms explicitly pursue corporate venture capital to harness novel technology. Using a panel of CVC investments, we present evidence consistent with our proposition. The findings are robust to various specifications and remain unchanged even after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity in investing firms. Our results have important implications for corporate venture capital in particular, and technology strategy in general.     

基于实物期权的企业项目投资时机选择分析

文章简述了实物期权理论,并构造了利用实物期权中的延迟投资期权进行投资时机选择的步骤,以期对企业项目投资决策起一定的指导作用。     

The interplay of need and opportunity in venture capital investment syndication

This study examines the syndication of investments novel to a VC firm as a function of the firm's need and opportunity to do so. We distinguish two types of uncertainty that firms face when considering novel investments: egocentric, pertaining to making the right decisions, and altercentric, pertaining to being evaluated as a potential partner on the investment. Whereas the former increases the firm's need to syndicate the investment, the latter reduces the firm's opportunity to do so, making it contingent upon the firm's status and reputation for attracting potential partners. Using data on first-round venture capital investments, we find that novel investments are more likely to be syndicated. Moreover, this relationship is stronger for firms with higher status and weaker for firms with higher reputation. These results highlight a relational aspect of uncertainty, inherent in a particular VC firm — investment dyad, and suggest that status and reputation play different roles in aligning the need and opportunity to syndicate novel investments.     

The influence of R&D investment on the use of corporate venture capital: An industry-level analysis

We consider how internal research and development (R&D) influences the use of corporate venture capital (CVC) and how this relationship varies across industries. We find that, in general, R&D investments increase the number of CVC deals in an industry. We also find that R&D investment has a particularly strong influence on the use of CVC in industries that are growing rapidly and changing technologically. Our analysis provides greater clarity on the relationships involving R&D and CVC in the presence of contingencies by integrating insights of absorptive capacity and real options reasoning.     

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.     

社会资本对农村家庭人力资本投资行为影响的实证分析

基于苏北农村的抽样调查,本文在控制了苏北农村家庭的年收入、未婚子女数量等变量之后,利用Eviews6.0的多元线性回归分析,考察了苏北农村家庭的社会资本对其人力资本投资状况的影响作用.研究发现,苏北农村家庭的社会资本对其人力资本投资具有不可忽略的作用,但并不具有非常积极的作用,具体表现为:家庭结构社会资本时家庭人力资本投资具有一定的促进作用,但作用的力度并不理想;而家庭认知社会资本与家庭人力资本投资却具有反向作用.     

Requisite expertise,firm reputation,and status in venture capital investment allocation decisions

Drawing together research in the upper echelon perspective, strategy, and organizational sociology, this paper examines (1) the relationship between the finance expertise of a venture capital (VC) firm's management team and investment selection, and (2) the moderation of this relationship by the VC firm's social position. We find that while finance expertise is associated with a lower proportion of early-stage investments, this relationship is weaker for firms with high reputation and stronger for firms with high status. We conclude with a discussion of the importance and nuances of external image considerations on investment decisions as well as insights into the importance of the requisite nature of expertise.     

New venture internationalization: The role of venture capital types and reputation

This study examines how different types of venture capital relate to new venture internationalization. Using a sample of 646 U.S. new ventures that executed IPOs between 1995 and 2010, we find that ventures with foreign or corporate venture capital have higher levels of international intensity. We also investigate the moderating role of VC reputation on the relationship between foreign venture capital and international intensity and corporate venture capital and international intensity. Our results suggest that VC reputation weakens the positive relationship between corporate VC and international intensity.     

企业投资决策的实物期权方法分析

在现代市场经济条件下,传统的投资决策方法已经不能适应于环境不确定而产生的动态投资管理的需要,因而,一种全新的投资决策分析工具———实物期权方法应运而生,在面对较大的环境不确定性情况下,实物期权方法则显得更为有效和科学。     

Finding a way through the venture capital maze

Venture capital is an excellent source of funds for entrepreneurs seeking startup or expansion capital. Yet many profitable ventures never get off the ground because the entrepreneur does not know how to present the business concept so that it is most likely to be funded. The ideas presented here to help the entrepreneur are developed from practical experience and the results of a four-year study.     

Exploring the innovation strategies of young firms: Corporate venture capital and venture capital impact on alliance innovation strategy

We investigate how governance structure and power influence alliance exploration strategy. Adopting a real options perspective and the agency view, we suggest that innovation strategies differ based on the firm's governance authority. We find that the motivations of corporate venture capitalist firms, venture capitalists, and firm founders may have an impact on the formation of exploratory alliances among adolescent firms. Using a sample of 122 adolescent firms, we examine the influence that governance structure has on the firm's alliance portfolio and innovation potential. While the influence of corporate venture capitalist firms alone do affect alliance formation strategy, corporate venture-backed firms with founders having high influence (knowledge or ownership in the firm) are more likely to form innovation-focused alliances. In contrast, venture capitalist-backed firms tend to avoid innovation-focused alliances, preferring more exploitive ones, even when founders have high influence within the firm.     

Financing entrepreneurship: Bank finance versus venture capital

This paper examines the entrepreneur's choice between bank finance and venture capital. With bank finance, the entrepreneur keeps full control of the firm and has efficient incentives to exert effort. With venture capital finance, there is a two-sided moral hazard problem as both the entrepreneur and venture capitalist (VC) provide unverifiable effort. The entrepreneur benefits from the VC's managerial input but must surrender partial ownership of the venture, thus diluting the entrepreneur's incentive to provide effort. Venture capital tends to be preferred to bank finance when VC productivity is high and entrepreneurial productivity is low.     

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.     

Formal institutions, culture, and venture capital activity: A cross-country analysis

Why does the level of venture capital activity vary across countries? This study suggests that the variation can be attributed to the different levels of formal institutional development. Further, this study proposes that venture capitalists respond differently to the incentives provided by formal institutions depending on different cultural settings. Analysis of VC activity for 68 countries during the 1996-2006 period shows that formal institutions have a positive effect on the level of venture capital activity, but this effect is weaker in more uncertainty-avoiding societies and in more collectivist societies. This study has useful theory and policy implications for venture capital and entrepreneurship development.     

Determinants of required return in venture capital investments: a five-country study

Using two complementary theoretical perspectives, we develop hypotheses regarding the determinants of the return required by venture capitalists and test them on a sample of over 200 venture capital companies (VCCs) located in five countries. Consistent with resource-based theory, we find that early-stage specialists require a significantly higher return than other VCCs when investing in later-stage ventures. Consistent with financial theory, we find that acquisition/buyout specialists require a significantly lower return than other VCCs when investing in expansion companies. Furthermore, in comparison to specialists, highly stage-diversified VCCs require a significantly higher return for early-stage investments. Independent VCCs require a higher rate of return than captive or public VCCs. In general, higher required returns are associated with VCCs who provide more intensity of involvement, have shorter expected holding period of the investment, and being located in the US or UK (in comparison to those in France, Belgium, and The Netherlands).     

Closing the regional equity capital gap: The role of informal venture capital

There is evidence from a number of countries that small firms encounter a shortage of long-term investment finance, particularly at start-up and initial growth. Expansion of the institutional venture capital industry has done little to fill this equity gap on account of its preference for making large investments in established companies and management/leveraged buyouts. Moreover, the supply of venture capital exhibits a high level of spatial concentration. Initiatives by state/provincial and local governments, most notably in economically lagging regions, to increase the supply of risk capital for start-ups and early stage businesses have at best provided a very partial, and often costly, solution. A more appropriate approach to increasing the supply of start-up and early stage finance is to facilitate the more efficient operation of theinformal venture capital market. Informal investors, or business angels, are private investors who provide risk capital directly to new and growing businesses in which they have no family connection. Most business angels are unable to find sufficient investment opportunities and so have substantial uncommitted funds available. There is also considerable scope for expanding the population of business angels. The most cost-effective means of closing the equity gap is therefore for the public sector to underwrite the operating costs of business introduction services whose objective is to overcome the two main sources of inefficiency in the informal venture capital market, namely the invisibility of business angels and the high search costs of angels seeking investment opportunities and entrepreneurs seeking investors, by the provision of a channel of communication between informal investors and entrepreneurs seeking finance.