IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbvent/v26y2011i4p391-411.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

CEO compensation in venture-backed firms

Author

Listed:
  • Bengtsson, Ola
  • Hand, John R.M.

Abstract

We hypothesize that because fast-growing young companies must raise money in private capital markets that contain significant financing frictions, the CEOs of such firms will be compensated for successful fundraising. Using a sample of 1585 private venture-backed U.S. firms, we find that the cash pay of entrepreneur-CEOs is increasing in both the quantity and quality of financing secured and is more sensitive to successful fundraising the more challenging and difficult is the fundraising task. Successful fundraising also increases the gap between the pay of CEOs and other executives. Finally, we show that while VC financing dilutes the CEO's fractional equity ownership, it increases the dollar value of that ownership.

Suggested Citation

  • Bengtsson, Ola & Hand, John R.M., 2011. "CEO compensation in venture-backed firms," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 391-411, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:26:y:2011:i:4:p:391-411
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883-9026(09)00120-7
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:bla:jfinan:v:43:y:1988:i:3:p:593-616 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. John, Teresa A & John, Kose, 1993. "Top-Management Compensation and Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(3), pages 949-974, July.
    3. Thomas Hellmann & Manju Puri, 2002. "Venture Capital and the Professionalization of Start‐Up Firms: Empirical Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 169-197, February.
    4. Lerner, Josh, 1995. "Venture Capitalists and the Oversight of Private Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(1), pages 301-318, March.
    5. Steven N. Kaplan & Berk A. Sensoy & Per Strömberg, 2009. "Should Investors Bet on the Jockey or the Horse? Evidence from the Evolution of Firms from Early Business Plans to Public Companies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(1), pages 75-115, February.
    6. Manju Puri & Rebecca Zarutskie, 2012. "On the Life Cycle Dynamics of Venture-Capital- and Non-Venture-Capital-Financed Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(6), pages 2247-2293, December.
    7. Cole, Rebel & Mehran, Hamid, 2007. "What can we learn from privately held firms about executive compensation?," MPRA Paper 4710, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Yael V. Hochberg & Alexander Ljungqvist & Yang Lu, 2007. "Whom You Know Matters: Venture Capital Networks and Investment Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(1), pages 251-301, February.
    9. Gompers, Paul A, 1995. "Optimal Investment, Monitoring, and the Staging of Venture Capital," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1461-1489, December.
    10. Baker, G.P. & Jensen, M.C. & Murphy, K.J., 1988. "Compensation And Incentives: Practice Vs. Theory," Papers 88-05, Rochester, Business - Managerial Economics Research Center.
    11. Mehran, Hamid, 1992. "Executive Incentive Plans, Corporate Control, and Capital Structure," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(4), pages 539-560, December.
    12. Core, John E. & Guay, Wayne R. & Verdi, Rodrigo S., 2006. "Agency problems of excess endowment holdings in not-for-profit firms," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 307-333, September.
    13. Elazar Berkovitch & Ronen Israel & Yossef Spiegel, 2000. "Managerial Compensation and Capital Structure," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(4), pages 549-584, December.
    14. Sorensen, Morten, 2007. "Learning by Investing: Evidence from Venture Capital," SIFR Research Report Series 53, Institute for Financial Research.
    15. Berger, Philip G & Ofek, Eli & Yermack, David L, 1997. "Managerial Entrenchment and Capital Structure Decisions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1411-1438, September.
    16. Thomas J. Chemmanur & Karthik Krishnan & Debarshi K. Nandy, 2011. "How Does Venture Capital Financing Improve Efficiency in Private Firms? A Look Beneath the Surface," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(12), pages 4037-4090.
    17. Mitchell A. Petersen, 2009. "Estimating Standard Errors in Finance Panel Data Sets: Comparing Approaches," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(1), pages 435-480, January.
    18. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:4:p:1805-1844 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Jensen, Michael C & Murphy, Kevin J, 1990. "Performance Pay and Top-Management Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(2), pages 225-264, April.
    20. Baker, Malcolm & Gompers, Paul A, 2003. "The Determinants of Board Structure at the Initial Public Offering," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 46(2), pages 569-598, October.
    21. Ola Bengtsson & Frederick Wang, 2010. "What Matters in Venture Capital? Evidence from Entrepreneurs’ Stated Preferences," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 39(4), pages 1367-1401, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Ewens Author-1-Name-First: Michael Author-1-Name-Last: Ewens & Ramana Nanda Author-2-Name-First: Ramana Author-2-Name-Last: Nanda & Christopher Stanton Author-3-Name-First: Christopher Author-, 2020. "Founder-CEO Compensation and Selection into Venture Capital-Backed Entrepreneurship," Harvard Business School Working Papers 20-119, Harvard Business School, revised Sep 2023.
    2. Ewens, Michael & Nanda, Ramana & Stanton, Christopher, 2020. "The Evolution of CEO Compensation in Venture Capital Backed Startups," SocArXiv rku3m, Center for Open Science.
    3. Ola Bengtsson, 2011. "Covenants in Venture Capital Contracts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(11), pages 1926-1943, November.
    4. Magnus Henrekson & Tino Sanandaji, 2018. "Stock option taxation: a missing piece in European innovation policy?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 411-424, August.
    5. Rishabh, Kumar, 2021. "Bank as a Venture Capitalist," Working papers 2021/09, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    6. David R. Williams & Betty S. Coffey & Carlton C. Young, 2018. "Human capital and agency effects on CEO compensation of IPO biopharmaceutical firms and the market’s response," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 22(2), pages 315-337, June.
    7. Rebel A. Cole & Hamid Mehran, 2016. "What do we know about executive compensation at small privately held firms?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 215-237, February.
    8. Chua, Ansley & Nasser, Tareque, 2016. "Insider sales in IPOs: Consequences of liquidity needs," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 1-17.
    9. Parker, Simon C., 2020. "Editorial: On submitting economics articles to JBV," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 35(4).
    10. Cronqvist, Henrik & Fahlenbrach, Rüdiger, 2013. "CEO contract design: How do strong principals do it?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(3), pages 659-674.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rin, Marco Da & Hellmann, Thomas & Puri, Manju, 2013. "A Survey of Venture Capital Research," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 573-648, Elsevier.
    2. Josh Lerner & Ramana Nanda, 2020. "Venture Capital's Role in Financing Innovation: What We Know and How Much We Still Need to Learn," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(3), pages 237-261, Summer.
    3. Ola Bengtsson & John R. M. Hand, 2013. "Employee Compensation in Entrepreneurial Companies," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 312-340, June.
    4. Andrew Metrick & Ayako Yasuda, 2011. "Venture Capital and Other Private Equity: a Survey," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 17(4), pages 619-654, September.
    5. Alperovych, Yan & Hübner, Georges & Lobet, Fabrice, 2015. "How does governmental versus private venture capital backing affect a firm's efficiency? Evidence from Belgium," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 508-525.
    6. Lohwasser, Todor S., 2020. "Meta-analyzing the relative performance of venture capital-backed firms," Discussion Papers of the Institute for Organisational Economics 4/2020, University of Münster, Institute for Organisational Economics.
    7. Ting-Kai Chou & Jia-Chi Cheng & Chin-Chen Chien, 2013. "How useful is venture capital prestige? Evidence from IPO survivability," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 40(4), pages 843-863, May.
    8. Bengtsson, Ola & Sensoy, Berk A., 2011. "Investor abilities and financial contracting: Evidence from venture capital," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 477-502, October.
    9. Jia, Ning & Wang, Dan, 2017. "Skin in the game: General partner capital commitment, investment behavior and venture capital fund performance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 110-130.
    10. Grilli, Luca & Murtinu, Samuele, 2014. "Government, venture capital and the growth of European high-tech entrepreneurial firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(9), pages 1523-1543.
    11. Block, Joern & Fisch, Christian & Vismara, Silvio & Andres, René, 2019. "Private equity investment criteria: An experimental conjoint analysis of venture capital, business angels, and family offices," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 329-352.
    12. Kang, Jun-Koo & Li, Yingxiang & Oh, Seungjoon, 2022. "Venture Capital Coordination in Syndicates, Corporate Monitoring, and Firm Performance," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    13. Sonja Daltung & Vittoria Cerasi, 2006. "Financial structure, managerial compensation and monitoring," FMG Discussion Papers dp576, Financial Markets Group.
    14. Ewens, Michael & Gorbenko, Alexander & Korteweg, Arthur, 2022. "Venture capital contracts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 131-158.
    15. Cao, Jerry & Liu, Qigui & Tian, Gary G., 2014. "Do venture capitalists play a monitoring role in an emerging market? Evidence from the pay–performance relationship of Chinese entrepreneurial firms," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 121-145.
    16. Amor, Salma Ben & Kooli, Maher, 2020. "Do M&A exits have the same effect on venture capital reputation than IPO exits?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    17. Hsu, Hung-Chia Scott, 2013. "Technology timing of IPOs and venture capital incubation," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(C), pages 36-55.
    18. Jain, Neelam, 2006. "Debt, managerial compensation and learning," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 377-399, February.
    19. Hochberg, Yael V. & Serrano, Carlos J. & Ziedonis, Rosemarie H., 2018. "Patent collateral, investor commitment, and the market for venture lending," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 74-94.
    20. Thomas J. Chemmanur & Karthik Krishnan & Debarshi K. Nandy, 2011. "How Does Venture Capital Financing Improve Efficiency in Private Firms? A Look Beneath the Surface," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(12), pages 4037-4090.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:26:y:2011:i:4:p:391-411. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusvent .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.