The popular mythology surrounding the U.S. venture-capital industry derives from a previous era. Venture capitalists who nurtured the computer industry in its infancy were legendary both for their risk taking and for their hands-on operating experience. But today things are different, and separating the myths from the realities is crucial to understanding this important piece of the U.S. econom...

This paper develops a theory why innovation often takes place in new rms that depend overproportionally on external nance usually supplied by specialist intermediaries called venture capitalists. It is argued that innovative projects are characterized by two features: uncertainty that is resolved through a learning by doing process and private bene ts for the entrepreneur from running the proje...

Venture capital is equity finance (the business risk-bearing class of capital) provided to unquoted businesses. Such investee firms can be started up, expanded, rescued, purchased as unquoted businesses, or become unquoted as a consequence of purchase using venture capital. Moreover, it can enable additional bank finance to be raised, usually of the traditional type (term, loans and overdrafts)...

We explore why venture capital funds limit the amount of capital they raise and do not reinvest the proceeds. This structure is puzzling because it leads to a succession of several funds financing each new venture which multiplies the well known agency problems. We argue that an inside investor cannot provide a hard budget constraint while a less well informed outsider can. Therefore, the ventu...

B ecky Bace, one of the luminaries of computer security, grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. She spent 12 years at the US National Security Agency (NSA), where her work focused on intrusion detection and cryptography. Currently, Bace is a venture consultant with the venture capital firm Trident Capital in Palo Alto, California. Featured here is an excerpt adapted from the full interview between Bac...

The returns to private equity investment have become a vexed issue, attracting widespread debate in the media, government, and among researchers. Much of the attention has focused on later-stage buyout investments, but there is a general move towards greater transparency and disclosure of the returns to both early and late-stage venture capital (VC) investments. Shortcomings in the information ...

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In this paper, we focus on the potential innovation benefits to corporate venture capital, i.e. equity investments in entrepreneurial ventures by incumbent firms. In particular, we ask do firms that invest corporate venture capital learn about and appropriate new technologies and practices from those ventures they invest. Our investigation builds on two theoretical pillars. First, incumbent fir...

This paper analyses the efficiency of venture capital and its impact on primary equity markets in France and Germany. It shows that venture capital operates according to the signalling model in France and according to the learning model in Germany. Only the learning model can serve as a rationale for government subsidies. In the signalling model, many young venture capital firms succeed without...

In view of the allocation of cash flow rights and control rights in venture capital firms, a financing contract model is set up by introducing the entrepreneur’s self-owned capital in this paper. This paper analyzes the affecting factors and mechanism to the allocation of cash flow rights and control rights, shows the relationship between cash flow rights and control rights, gives the bargain i...