Si le succès d'une campagne de crowdfunding dépend du projet qui est financé, il est aussi fortement lié aux choix stratégiques faits par l'entrepreneur et par le design de la campagne de financement en elle-même. Cette thèse étudie trois composants principaux du design d'une campagne de crowdfunding en se basant sur une base de données unique de plus de 22 000 projets présentés sur la plateforme Indiegogo. Premièrement, en choisissant entre les modèles de financement "keep-it-all" et "all-or-nothing", l'entrepreneur a la possibilité de transférer lerisque entre lui-même et la foule. Cela aura un impact sur la quantité d'informations qu'il divulguera et sur le comportement des participants. Deuxièmement, la personnalité de l'entrepreneur, et plus particulièrement son niveau de narcissisme, affecte également la manière dont la campagne est mise en place (taille, informations,...) et du soutien qu'il/elle obtient de la foule. Enfin, étant donné que nous savons que les entrepreneurs en série bénéficient habituellement de leur expérience via leur réseau et leur réputation, nous analysons sa capacité à recommencer une seconde campagne, la manière dont l'entrepreneur la conçoit et sa capacité à gagner, ou pas, le soutien du public après un premier succès ou un premier échec. / If the crowdfunding campaign success depends on the project that is financed, it is also closely linked to the strategic choices of the entrepreneur and by the design of the financing campaign in itself. This thesis investigates three main components of the campaign design by using a unique database of more than 22,000 crowdfunding projects presented on the Indiegogo platform. First, by choosing between the keep-it-all and the all-or-nothing funding model, the entrepreneur is able to shift the risk between himself and the crowd. This will impact thecampaign disclosures and the behavior of the participants. Second, the personality of the entrepreneur and more precisely his level of narcissism also affects the way that the campaign is set up (size, soft information,...) and the support he/she receives from the crowd. Finally, since we know that serial entrepreneurs usually benefit from experience through network and reputation, we analyze his/her ability to restart a second campaign, the way that entrepreneurs design it and his/her capacity to gain, or not, support from the crowd after a first success or after a first failure.

L’objectif de cette thèse est de développer des modèles quantitatifs utilisant les options réelles pour une évaluation financière des choix stratégiques entrepreneuriaux. Cependant, il ne s’agit pas seulement de développer des aspects techniques (ou manipulations mathématiques). Les modèles proposés dans la thèse visent également à fournir des informations pratiques utiles à la fois aux entrepreneurs et aux investisseurs, afin de faciliter la prise de décision dans les négociations contractuelles pour le financement et l'investissement dans les start-ups et les firmes entrepreneuriales.Cette thèse se compose de deux parties. La première partie définit les concepts utilisés afférents à la question de recherche. L’adoption de la perspective proposée par la finance entrepreneuriale nous permet de centrer notre approche sur la négociation et une relation d'égalité entre les participants dans le processus de prise de décision, alors que la finance d’entreprise traditionnelle s’intéresse à la relation principal-agent. En effet, les méthodes généralement utilisées comme les cash-flows actualisés (DCF) ou le Taux de Rendement Interne (TRI) ne sont pas adéquates pour effectuer une évaluation financière dans un contexte entrepreneurial. Ainsi, la problématique de cette thèse peut être formulée de la manière suivante : Comment les choix stratégiques des start-ups et firmes entrepreneuriales devraient-ils être évalués dans le cadre des négociations contractuelles ?Afin de traiter cette problématique, trois problèmes particuliers seront exposés dans la deuxième partie. Nous proposerons de les étudier à partir de l’approche par les options réelles qui convient parfaitement à l'analyse des choix stratégiques dans un contexte de finance entrepreneuriale.Le premier article analyse l’évaluation d’un contrat de licence dans le secteur biopharmaceutique. En résumé, lors de la conclusion d’un contrat de licence, les dirigeants et les responsables de la négociation doivent prendre en compte de nombreux facteurs tels que la phase de développement, la prévision des coûts d'investissement et la volatilité des marchés. De plus, la prise en compte des interactions comportementales des deux parties lors de la négociation du contrat de licence est essentielle pour la construction d'un modèle de simulation, notamment en ce qui concerne l’interaction dynamique entre le donneur de licence et le preneur de licence.Le deuxième article s’intéresse à la question de la dilution pour les nouveaux actionnaires lors du deuxième tour de financement en présence de détenteurs d’obligations convertibles. Selon les résultats de la simulation, il est possible de vérifier que le taux de « discount » et le « valuation cap » ont un impact important sur le coût de la prise de décision en matière d’investissement en actions. Les résultats montrent également que plus le taux de discount est élevé et moins le valuation cap est important, plus les coûts sont élevés, et la probabilité de succès de la négociation devient donc faible. Par conséquent, l’entrepreneur doit en tenir compte lorsqu’il entre en négociation lors du deuxième tour de financement.Le troisième article aborde le choix d’une stratégie de sortie pour un entrepreneur (acquisition ou introduction en bourse) notamment « The IPO valuation premium puzzle » proposé par Bayar et Chemmanur (2011). Bien qu'il soit normal que l’entrepreneur et les investisseurs en capital-risque envisagent l’introduction en bourse, il est également possible qu'ils choisissent l'acquisition comme stratégie de sortie. En utilisant la théorie des jeux, ce phénomène contradictoire peut être expliqué par l’existence de deux équilibres de Nash. En complément de la gestion des risques afférents au marché, l’entrepreneur doit prêter attention à la relation avec le capital-risqueur lorsqu’il choisit la stratégie de sortie. / The objective of this dissertation is to develop the quantitative models that adopt the real options analysis for financially evaluating the entrepreneurial strategic choices. However, it does not only focus on the technical aspects (or its mathematical methodologies). The models proposed in the dissertation aim to provide the practically useful information in order for both entrepreneurs and investors to make decisions in the contractual negotiation of financing and investing in the start-ups and ventures.This dissertation consists of two parts. The first part gives the definitions of the essential concepts that shall be incorporated into the research question. Adopting the perspectives that are provided in entrepreneurial finance leads us to focus on the fair negotiations among participants in the process of decision-making, while the traditional corporate finance emphasises the principal-agent problem. Actually, the common methods, such as Discounted Cash-Flows and Internal Rate of Return, are not always suitable for implementing financial valuations in the context of entrepreneurial finance. Therefore, the research question of this dissertation can be set as follows: How should strategic choices in contract negotiation be financially evaluated?In order to deal with this problem, three particular issues are introduced in the second part. The real options analysis is utilised in all of the three issues, which is quite suitable for analysing them.The first article deals with the issue of licensing contract with bio-pharma venture. In summary, when closing a licensing contract negotiation, those in charge of the negotiation must consider many factors, such as the phases of R&D, the investment costs and the market volatility. In addition to those, the interaction of the participants of the contractual negotiation should be taken into account. For modelling this relationship, the assumption of dynamic interaction between licensor and licensee is introduced.The second article focuses on the dilution problem in the second financing round under the existence of convertible note holders. According to the simulation results, “discount” and “valuation cap” have a great impact on the equity decision-making cost. The results also show that the costs increase when the degree of discount becomes greater and the valuation cap becomes smaller. This may jeopardize the success of negotiation. Entrepreneurs should take these factors into consideration in the second financing round.The third article analyses the exit choice (acquisition or IPO), especially the “IPO valuation premium puzzle” proposed by Bayar et Chemmanur (2011). While entrepreneurs and venture capitalists prefer an IPO, acquisition can be chosen. Utilising the game theory, this contradictory phenomenon can be explained as the two Nash equilibria. In addition to financial market risks, entrepreneurs should pay attention to the relationship with venture capitalists, when they choose the exit strategy.

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This study investigates the influence of investors on the sustainability orientation of startups and the use of causation and effectuation approaches. The aim of the study is to gain a comprehensive understanding of how and why investors influence startups in their sustainability orientation, and what impact this has on the use of causation and effectuation decision-making logics. While there are several studies on how sustainability orientation affects the funding success of, for example, venture capitalists or crowdfunding campaigns, little is known about how startups deal with their sustainability orientation to attract new investors, or after they have found and collaborated with an investor. The question here is to what extent startups allow themselves to be influenced by investors in their sustainability orientation, i.e. whether they increase, maintain or decrease it. In order to explore this context, the following research question was formed:  How does investor funding affect the sustainability orientation of startups, and how does this change the ongoing decision-making approach of startups?  We chose to use a qualitative research method in which interviews were conducted with Swedish startups. The interviews included questions about participants' experiences, feelings, and perceptions of investor influence on their sustainability goals, as well as approaches to causation and effectuation based on the characteristics of the theory established in the theoretical framework. During the interviews with the startups, we looked at different funding sources such as venture capitalists, business angels and local investment companies, and also considered different rounds of funding such as seed and startup funding.  The results of the study show that investors have an impact on the sustainability orientation of startups when there is a trade-off between the sustainability goals of the startups and the economic goals of the investors. In such cases, startups tend to neglect the environmental or social goals in order to enable the achievement of the investors' economic goals. This leads to a lower sustainability orientation and a stronger focus on economic objectives. With regard to the use of causation and effectuation logics, it can be seen that the startups influenced in their sustainability orientation switch from a causation logic before investor financing to an effectuation logic after investor financing in relation to the company's goals. All other examined characteristics of causation and effectuation, such as vision, strategies, conception of the product or service and the handling of uncertainty, do not indicate any changes.  Finally, this study adds insights to the existing theory of causation and effectuation on how a change in sustainability orientation affects the use of causation and effectuation logic. However, the study also has limitations, which is why we suggest that future studies conduct the study again in a new setting, e.g. in a different country and with different startups, in order to validate the results against the limitations.

Thesis advisor: Thomas J. Chemmanur / My dissertation consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, I study the impact of a place-based tax credit policy, the Opportunity Zone program created under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, on local private investments and entrepreneurship. Using a difference-in-differences approach and comparing census tracts designated as Opportunity Zones and other eligible but non-designated tracts, I find that the policy has drawn significantly more private investments to economically distressed areas. Surprisingly, however, these private investments have led to decreases in local new business registration. The decrease in entrepreneurship was mainly in the non-tradable sector, which is more sensitive to local conditions than the tradable or construction sector. Further robustness tests suggest that the above results are causal. I provide one explanation for the above findings that more private investments went to existing and older firms in Opportunity Zones, discouraging potential entrepreneurs from competing with the better-financed firms locally. In the second chapter, I examine how changes in investor protection regulations affect local entrepreneurial activity, relying on the heterogeneous impact of a 2011 SEC regulation change on the definition of accredited investors across U.S. cities. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I show that cities more affected by the regulation change experienced a significantly larger decrease in local angel financing, entrepreneurial activity, innovation output, employment, and sales. I find that small business loans and second-lien mortgages became entrepreneurs’ partial substitutes for angel investment. My cost-benefit analysis suggests that the costs of protecting angel investors through the 2011 regulation change outweigh its benefits. In the third chapter, which is co-authored with Thomas Chemmanur and Harshit Rajaiya, we address three important research questions by using a large sample of angel and venture capital (VC) financing data from the Crunchbase and VentureXpert databases and private firm data from the NETS database. First, we analyze the relative extent of value addition by angels versus VCs to startup firms. We show that startups financed by angels rather than VCs are associated with a lower likelihood of successful exit (IPO or acquisition), lower sales and employment growth, lower quantity and quality of innovation, and lower net inflow of high-quality inventors. We disentangle selection and monitoring effects using instrumental variable (IV) and switching regression analyses and show that our baseline results are causal. Second, we investigate the complementarity versus substitution relationship between angel and VC financing. We find that a firm that received a larger fraction of VC or angel financing in the first financing round is likely to receive a larger fraction of the same type of financing in a subsequent round; however, when we include other non-VC financing sources such as accelerators and government grants into the analysis, a firm that received angel (rather than other non-VC) financing in the first round is also more likely to receive VC financing in a subsequent round. Third, we analyze how the financing sequence (order of investments by angels and VCs across rounds) of startup firms is related to their successful exit probability. We find that firms that received primarily VC financing in the first round and continued to receive VC financing in subsequent rounds (VC-VC) or those that received primarily angel financing in the first round and received VC financing in subsequent rounds (Angel-VC) have a higher chance of successful exit compared to those with other financing sequences (VC-Angel or Angel-Angel). / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

Empirical and theoretical topics in applied microeconomics are discussed in this dissertation. The first essay identifies and measures managerial advantages from access to high-quality deals in venture capital investments. The underlying social network of Harvard Business School MBA venture capitalists and entrepreneurs is used to proxy availability of deal access. Random section assignment of HBS MBA graduates provides a key exogenous variation for identification. Being socially connected to peer venture capital firms and private equity seeking startups leads to more deal flow, larger asset under management and better performance in the inaugural funds of HBS-executive run venture capital firms. The second essay presents a two-stage model of competing ad auctions. Search engines attract users via Cournot-style competition. Meanwhile, each advertiser must pay a participation cost to use each ad platform. Advertiser entry strategies using symmetric Bayes-Nash equilibrium that lead to the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves outcome of the ad auctions are derived. Consistent with the model predictions, empirical evidence shows that multi-homing advertisers are larger than single-homing advertisers. Comparative statics on consumer choice parameters, quality, and user welfare are used to analyze the prospect of joining auctions to mitigate participation costs. The analysis provides conditions when such joins do and do not increase welfare. The third essay develops and computes a dynamic model of search in internet advertising. Micro-level browsing data from Microsoft's Bing.com (formerly known as Live.com) is used for structural estimations. The model predicts that users do not click on any ad with weak signals due to accumulating search cost and monotonicity of the value function. Rational search reveals a cascading pattern: the user clicks on a sufficiently high, highest-signal ad first, then moves on to the ad with the next highest conditionally expected probability of match once his assessment on the current ad degrades over time. The user exits when maximum assessment of likelihood of match over all ads is below a threshold value. The essay provides a novel approach to understanding rational herding behavior when product quality is only partially unraveled.

Abstract: Previous literature suggests that there are significant differences among Swedish and NonSwedish groups, as the non-Swedish counterpart of the system face more challenges and hurdles while obtaining finance for their businesses. The aim of the research paper is to map the processes of the obtaining finance from both private and government institutions and gather intelligence on the criteria to ascertain if there are any explicit difference in the processes a non-Swedish entrepreneur has to go through before it gets funded. Qualitative research approach is used in this thesis where we performed in-depth interviews in the form of open discussion with five organizations which includes government institutions and network of private of Investor. We identified two different mindsets and processes i.e. Government and Private Investors where they focus on different aspects of process even though the pre-requisite documents are similar and overlapping. The empirical data collected using qualitative methods were converted into narratives and build into process map to see whether there are any explicit differences in the processes defined for obtaining finance for non-Swedish entrepreneur. Our conclusion is that there is no difference in the processes but there are many elements which can lead to non-Swedish entrepreneur to fall out of the system. So, it‟s matter of small improvements of the system which will make it more efficient, transparent and inclusive for all the participants within the system. The research shows that there are some nuances which can add up and lead to the NonSwedish entrepreneur to be excluded from the system but there are no explicit differences in the process. In the suggested improvement, these gaps and loopholes can be covered to make the system more efficient, transparent and inclusive which can lead to equal opportunities for everyone and also increasing the economic activity within the Kronoberg region.

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Small auto repair business owners need strong operational skills; however, some lack expertise in managerial strategy. The purpose of this multiple case study was to identify managerial strategies small auto repair business owners use to sustain businesses in Columbus, Ohio with respect to strategy, time management, and alteration of value chain services. Based on the Vroom expectancy theory of motivation, small auto repair business owners may use effectiveness and efficiency of business performance with particular emphasis on managerial strategic development and execution to enhance financial results and rewards. Data collection involved face-to-face, semistructured interviews with 5 small auto repair business owners. Analysis of the interview transcripts involved coding data to identify key themes. Themes that emerged from the study included effective managerial strategies for small auto repair business owners, business plans, initial challenges and addressing subsequent changes, education and certification, customer satisfaction and business knowledge, and financial analysis and reporting. Recommendations for enhanced small auto repair business ownership focus included adequate access to resources to achieve operational competence and achieve managerial success. Findings from this study might engender positive social change by providing owners of small auto repair businesses ways to improve planning processes and make prudent investments to ensure long-term, viable, and sustainable businesses.

The dissertation consists of two essays. The first essay studies governance structures and their effectiveness for start-up companies and their survival. We utilize data from the Kauffman Survey, which tracks a sample of firms from their inceptions through their first eight years of existence. We hypothesize and find evidence that a startup's governance system affects its survivability as well as its performance. We show that controlling for the firm size and the industry, cross-sectional variations in the performance of the start-up firms can be explained by governance variables; the presence of one or more independent board member on the board, the separation between the person holding the CEO position and the chair of the board. From the startup survival perspective, we show that the presence of one or more independent board member(s), the separation between CEO and board chair, and external funding are effective factors that promote a start-up's longevity. The second essay studies the direct and indirect relations between Governance and firm survival and performance through Entrepreneurial Orientation. Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is defined as the attributes, including innovativeness, autonomy, risk-taking attitude, proactiveness, and competitive aggressiveness, that a business organization displays at the time of entry. Several researchers have studied the linkage between EO and organizational performance as well as the survival rate of new firms and find conflicting results. Reasons for the contradictory results might very well be the way the researchers have defined the EO attributes and the data source they use which is based on subjective responses. In the hopes of reducing inconsistent results, we propose that it is the governance factors that influence the performance and survival of these firm via mediating role of entrepreneurial orientation. Governance factors remove the definition as well as data measurement problems. By using the 8-year longitudinal data of 4928 startups, we show that governance system significantly impacts a start-up’s performance and survival via entrepreneurial orientation.