Entrepreneurs who need funding often turn to the venture capital industry. In Sweden, women entrepreneurs represent a third of the total number of entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, women-owned businesses only raise one percent of the total venture capital in Sweden. Previous research has attempted to explain why male entrepreneurs raise more venture capital than women entrepreneurs, however, more research is needed to understand the circumstances for success. This leads to the study’s aim which is to create an understanding of what makes women entrepreneurs successful when raising venture capital, and how they do it, and the research questions, which are How do drivers enable women entrepreneurs to raise venture capital? How do women entrepreneurs overcome the different challenges that they meet when raising venture capital? To reach the study’s aim and answer the research questions a qualitative method was used. Semi-structured interviews with ten respondents, who were women entrepreneurs who had raised venture capital, were conducted. This study contributes new perspectives to the already existing field of entrepreneurship and venture capital, by providing a new framework showing how women entrepreneurs overcome challenges and use drivers for raising venture capital successfully. The results show how the respondents use their entrepreneurial, risk-prone, and highly self-confident personality in their relationship with investors and other entrepreneurs, to successfully raise venture capital. The findings in this study suggest that governmental agencies should provide more network possibilities with venture capitalist firms and investors for women entrepreneurs.

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Entreprenörskap och företagande är essentiellt för ekonomisk tillväxt i ett land. Det bidrar med innovativa idéer som utvecklar samhället och möjliggör fler arbetstillfällen. För att entreprenörer och företag ska kunna utveckla dessa idéer krävs kapital, vilket emellertid kan vara svårt att erhålla. Nystartade- och tillväxtföretag förknippas med hög risk då de befinner sig i ett stadie där informationsasymmetrin är stor och utfallet av en investering är svår att beräkna. Venture Capital (VC) är en form av riskkapital som finansierar nystartade- och tillväxtföretag med hög risk. De bidrar med finansiering och erfarenhet i utbyte mot en andel av företaget. VC är därmed essentiellt för entreprenörskap, företagande och i längden även samhället. Under våren 2020 utbröt Covid-19-pandemin i Sverige och orsakade en instabilitet i samhället och dess ekonomi. Syftet är därmed att undersöka Covid-19-pandemins eventuella påverkan på den svenska VC-marknaden. För att studera dessa eventuella effekter undersöks förändringar i investeringsantal, investeringsvolym samt vilket stadie dessa investeringar genomförs. Dessutom undersöks förändringar i investeringsmönster, branschförskjutning samt hur den sociala distanseringen kan ha påverkat VC-marknaden. Forskningsfrågan besvaras genom insamling av realdata från Crunchbase samt intervjuer med aktörer på marknaden.  Resultatet av studien indikerar att antal VC-investeringar under året har minskat med 18,1%, däremot är investeringsvolymen fortsatt hög och har under året ökat med 155,1%. Det som framförallt kan utläsas är att Seed-investeringar, det vill säga investering i ett tidigt stadie, har drabbats hårdast. Antalet investeringar i detta stadie har minskat med 21% under året. Vidare indikerar resultatet även att den sociala distanseringen till följd av de införda restriktionerna har haft en indirekt inverkan på VC-marknaden. Detta då det inneburit en förändring i VC- processen och arbetssättet. Sammanfattningsvis kan det konstateras att VC-marknaden i Sverige har påverkats av Covid-19-pandemin. Däremot kan ingen större krasch identifieras då investeringsvolymen är fortsatt hög trots en minskning i antal investeringar. Studiens implikationer är en ökad förståelse för hur marknaden fungerar samt hur den har påverkats av Covid-19-pandemin. Resultatet kan vara av intresse för ett flertal intressenter, däribland entreprenörer, investerare, VC-bolag, forskare men framförallt politiska beslutsfattare. Genom en förståelse för marknaden kan politiska beslutsfattare upprätthålla samt stimulera den ekonomiska tillväxten.

Today’s the concept of social entrepreneurship; social capital and venture capital are defined by several experts. This case study sets out to gain an understanding of the relation between social capital and venture capital in Uppstart Malmö, a new social entrepreneurial organization which focuses on creating job opportunities in the city of Malmö, where unemployment rate is comparatively high. Analyzing empirical data from interview and other documentation, the results show that Uppstart Malmö is concentrating in the social dimension of enterprise and emphasizing on social capital more than venture capital. While by some means, the foundation is going toward achieving social goal. Uppstart Malmö is not yet an ideal model for completely social organization and commercial signs can be seen in their plans.

This study has theoretical, substantive, and methodological objectives following Brinberg and McGrath (1985). First, the resource-based view of the firm provides a context to support relationships determined from theory in Sociology, Finance and Entrepreneurshp. Using these interdisciplinary theories, the expected contributions of National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) member venture capital firm networks' human-based factors to the performance of initial public offerings are examined. Second, the substantive domain-venture capital-lacks articulation and quantification regarding the impact of venture capital firms on the start-up firms they support, which in this study is identified as IPO performance. Third, methodologically, the operationalization of organizational-related capital is proposed. The independent variables (human-based factors) include reputational capital, cumulative experience, social capital, and organizational-related capital. Organizational-related capital is a construct representing a firm's strategy that incorporates preferences specific to the venture capital industry, namely financing stage preference, industry relatedness, and geographic proximity. Venture capital firm networks are assessed at the syndicate and constellation levels (within and between industries) and bounded by membership in the National Venture Capital Association. Abnormal IPO stock price performance (the dependent variable) is assessed as the new issue's stock price benchmarked to the NASDAQ index and compounded over 21-day periods for up to 126 consecutive days after offering. Control variables were gleaned from economic-based theories found in the finance literature. Positive relationships were hypothesized between the independent variables and the dependent variable. Data constraints limited the number of observations examined, and the selection of IPOs investigated displayed little variance. Thus, explaining additional abnormal performance variance in IPOs backed by NVCA-member venture capital firms above and beyond that controlled for by economic-based theory was not fruitful. Although this study's findings were not statistically significant, many insights were generated that may positively influence future research in this area. The quest to better understand venture capital firms' contributions to entrepreneurial firms and the impact they have on publicly traded stocks remains meaningful. / Ph. D.

Prior research indicates that management forecast strategies affect investors' perceptions of management, which, in turn, influence investors' judgments about the firm. The current study hypothesizes and demonstrates that decisions about the completeness and form of management's forecast disclosure affect venture capitalists' (VCs) investment screening judgments. In an experiment, 53 experienced VCs indicate whether they would recommend conducting due diligence on a new venture. I manipulate the completeness (inclusion vs. omission of quantitative data about the components of earnings) and form (point vs. range forecast values) of management's financial forecasts in a 2 X 2 between-subjects design. When management is more (less) complete in its forecast disclosure, participants make more (less) favorable investment screening judgments. Additionally, when managers provide less complete disclosures, the use of point rather than range forecasts leads to particularly unfavorable screening judgments, whereas when managers provide more complete disclosures, the use of point rather than range forecasts leads to particularly favorable screening judgments. Taken together, these results indicate that the completeness of forecast disclosure increases the favorability of screening judgments and decisions about the form of financial forecasts can offset some of the adverse consequences of less complete disclosure. / Ph. D.

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.

My dissertation consists of two papers, one in the area of investment and the second in the area of corporate finance. The first paper examines robustness of momentum returns in the US stock market over the period 1965 to 2012. We find that momentum profits have become insignificant since the late 1990s partially driven by pronounced increase in the volatility of momentum profits in the last 14 years. Investigations of momentum profits in high and low volatility months address the concerns about unprecedented levels of market volatility in this period rendering momentum strategy unprofitable. Past returns, can no longer explain the cross-sectional variation in stock returns, even following up markets. We suggest three possible explanations for the declining momentum profits that involve uncovering of the anomaly by investors, decline in the risk premium on a macroeconomic factor, growth rate in industrial production in particular and relative improvement in market efficiency. We study the impact of venture capital funds' (VC) liquidity concerns on the timing and outcome of their portfolio firms' exit events. We find that VC funds approaching the end of their lifespan are more likely to exit during cold exit market conditions. Such late exits are also less likely to be via initial public offerings (IPO). A one standard deviation increase in the age of a VC fund at the time of the exit event is associated with a 5 percentage points decline in the probability of an IPO vs. a trade sale from an unconditional probability of roughly 30%. Several tests indicate that the decline in IPOs with VC fund age is not caused by lower portfolio firm quality. Focusing on the aftermath of IPOs, VC-backed firms experience significantly larger trading volume and lower stock returns around lock-up expirations if they are backed by older funds, and this lock-up effect is amplified if there are multiple VC firms approaching the end of their lifespan. Altogether, our results suggest that the exit process is strongly influenced by VCs' liquidity considerations. / Ph. D.

Yes / This study examines the governance attributes of post-IPO (initial public offering) retained ownership of private equity in business group constituent firms in contrast to their unaffiliated counterparts, in 202 newly listed firms in 22 emerging African economies. We adopt an actor centered institutional-theoretic perspective in rationalizing institutional voids and the advantages of maintained governance by both business angels (BA) and venture capital (VC) private equity. Our findings reveal private equity retain higher post-IPO ownership in business group constituents compared to unaffiliated firms and that this is inversely moderated in the context of improving institutional quality – where this is particularly strong in case of foreign VC as opposed to domestic VC or BA. Our result adds to the literature on multifocal corporate governance mechanisms and the institutional determinants of private equity investment.