IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/entthe/v32y2008i3p459-483.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Venture Capitalists’ Evaluations of Start–Up Teams: Trade–Offs, Knock–Out Criteria, and the Impact of VC Experience

Author

Listed:
  • Nikolaus Franke
  • Marc Gruber
  • Dietmar Harhoff
  • Joachim Henkel

Abstract

The start–up team plays a key role in venture capitalists’ evaluations of venture proposals. Our findings go beyond existing research, first by providing a detailed exploration of VCs’ team evaluation criteria, and second by investigating the moderator variable of VC experience. Our results reveal utility trade–offs between team characteristics and thus provide answers to questions such as “What strength does it take to compensate for a weakness in characteristic A?†Moreover, our analysis reveals that novice VCs tend to focus on the qualifications of individual team members, while experienced VCs focus more on team cohesion. Data were obtained in a conjoint experiment with 51 professionals in VC firms and analyzed using discrete choice econometric models.

Suggested Citation

  • Nikolaus Franke & Marc Gruber & Dietmar Harhoff & Joachim Henkel, 2008. "Venture Capitalists’ Evaluations of Start–Up Teams: Trade–Offs, Knock–Out Criteria, and the Impact of VC Experience," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 32(3), pages 459-483, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:entthe:v:32:y:2008:i:3:p:459-483
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6520.2008.00236.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6520.2008.00236.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1540-6520.2008.00236.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Enrique Díaz De Leó & Paul Guild, 2003. "Using repertory grid to identify intangibles in business plans," Venture Capital, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(2), pages 135-160, April.
    2. Rea, Robert H., 1989. "Factors affecting success and failure of seed capital/start-up negotiations," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 149-158, March.
    3. Macmillan, Ian C. & Zemann, Lauriann & Subbanarasimha, P. N., 1987. "Criteria distinguishing successful from unsuccessful ventures in the venture screening process," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 123-137.
    4. Tyzoon T. Tyebjee & Albert V. Bruno, 1984. "A Model of Venture Capitalist Investment Activity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(9), pages 1051-1066, September.
    5. Dixon, R, 1991. "Venture capitalists and the appraisal of investments," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 333-344.
    6. Zacharakis, Andrew L. & Meyer, G. Dale, 1998. "A lack of insight: do venture capitalists really understand their own decision process?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 57-76, January.
    7. Gorman, Michael & Sahlman, William A., 1989. "What do venture capitalists do?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 231-248, July.
    8. Shepherd, Dean A. & Ettenson, Richard & Crouch, Andrew, 2000. "New venture strategy and profitability: A venture capitalist's assessment," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 15(5-6), pages 449-467.
    9. Shepherd, Dean A. & Zacharakis, Andrew, 2002. "Venture capitalists' expertise: A call for research into decision aids and cognitive feedback," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 1-20, January.
    10. Zacharakis, Andrew L. & Meyer, G. Dale, 2000. "The potential of actuarial decision models: Can they improve the venture capital investment decision?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 323-346, July.
    11. Macmillan, Ian C. & Siegel, Robin & Narasimha, P. N. Subba, 1985. "Criteria used by venture capitalists to evaluate new venture proposals," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 119-128.
    12. Franke, Nikolaus & Gruber, Marc & Harhoff, Dietmar & Henkel, Joachim, 2006. "What you are is what you like--similarity biases in venture capitalists' evaluations of start-up teams," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 802-826, November.
    13. Riquelme, Hernan & Rickards, Tudor, 1992. "Hybrid conjoint analysis: An estimation probe in new venture decisions," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 7(6), pages 505-518, November.
    14. Shepherd, Dean A. & Zacharakis, Andrew & Baron, Robert A., 2003. "VCs' decision processes: Evidence suggesting more experience may not always be better," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 381-401, May.
    15. Siegel, Robin & Siegel, Eric & Macmillan, Ian C., 1993. "Characteristics distinguishing high-growth ventures," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 169-180, March.
    16. Geoffrey H. Smart, 1999. "Management assessment methods in venture capital: An empirical analysis of human capital valuation," Venture Capital, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(1), pages 59-82, January.
    17. Dean A. Shepherd & Andrew Zacharakis, 1999. "Conjoint analysis: A new methodological approach for researching the decision policies of venture capitalists," Venture Capital, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(3), pages 197-217, July.
    18. Robinson, Richard Jr., 1987. "Emerging strategies in the venture capital industry," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 53-77.
    19. Hausman, Jerry A. & Ruud, Paul A., 1987. "Specifying and testing econometric models for rank-ordered data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1-2), pages 83-104.
    20. Jorge Silva, 2004. "Venture capitalists' decision-making in small equity markets: a case study using participant observation," Venture Capital, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(2-3), pages 125-145, February.
    21. Beggs, S. & Cardell, S. & Hausman, J., 1981. "Assessing the potential demand for electric cars," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 1-19, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Petty, Jeffrey S. & Gruber, Marc, 2011. ""In pursuit of the real deal": A longitudinal study of VC decision making," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 172-188, March.
    2. Dawson, Alexandra, 2011. "Private equity investment decisions in family firms: The role of human resources and agency costs," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 189-199, March.
    3. Woike, Jan K. & Hoffrage, Ulrich & Petty, Jeffrey S., 2015. "Picking profitable investments: The success of equal weighting in simulated venture capitalist decision making," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(8), pages 1705-1716.
    4. Clarysse, B. & Knockaert, M. & Lockett, A., 2005. "How do early stage high technology investors select their investments?," Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School Working Paper Series 2005-21, Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School.
    5. Shepherd, Dean A. & Zacharakis, Andrew, 2002. "Venture capitalists' expertise: A call for research into decision aids and cognitive feedback," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 1-20, January.
    6. Rafał Morawczyński, 2020. "Venture Capitalists’ Investment Criteria in Poland: Entrepreneurial Opportunities, Entrepreneurs, and Founding Teams," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-30, October.
    7. Alexandra Moritz & Walter Diegel & Joern Block & Christian Fisch, 2022. "VC investors’ venture screening: the role of the decision maker’s education and experience," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 92(1), pages 27-63, January.
    8. Hoenig, Daniel & Henkel, Joachim, 2015. "Quality signals? The role of patents, alliances, and team experience in venture capital financing," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(5), pages 1049-1064.
    9. Franke, Nikolaus & Gruber, Marc & Harhoff, Dietmar & Henkel, Joachim, 2006. "What you are is what you like--similarity biases in venture capitalists' evaluations of start-up teams," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 802-826, November.
    10. Will Drover & Matthew S. Wood & G. Tyge Payne, 2014. "The Effects of Perceived Control on Venture Capitalist Investment Decisions: A Configurational Perspective," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 38(4), pages 833-861, July.
    11. Kollmann, Tobias & Kuckertz, Andreas, 2010. "Evaluation uncertainty of venture capitalists' investment criteria," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(7), pages 741-747, July.
    12. Patzelt, Holger & zu Knyphausen-Aufseß, Dodo & Fischer, Heiko T., 2009. "Upper echelons and portfolio strategies of venture capital firms," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 558-572, November.
    13. M. Knockaert & T. Vanacker, 2011. "The Association between Venture Capitalists’ Selection and Value Adding Behavior: Evidence from Early Stage High Tech Venture Capitalists," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 11/741, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    14. Shepherd, Dean A. & Zacharakis, Andrew & Baron, Robert A., 2003. "VCs' decision processes: Evidence suggesting more experience may not always be better," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 381-401, May.
    15. Guenther, Christina & Özcan, Serden & Sassmannshausen, Dirk, 2022. "Referrals among VCs and the length of due diligence: The effect of relational embeddedness," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 37(5).
    16. Mirjam Knockaert & Tom Vanacker, 2013. "The association between venture capitalists’ selection and value adding behavior: evidence from early stage high tech venture capitalists," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 493-509, April.
    17. Colombo, Massimo G. & Grilli, Luca, 2010. "On growth drivers of high-tech start-ups: Exploring the role of founders' human capital and venture capital," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 610-626, November.
    18. Kourosh Shafi, 2021. "Investors’ evaluation criteria in equity crowdfunding," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 56(1), pages 3-37, January.
    19. Dohyeon Kim & Su Yong Lee, 2022. "When venture capitalists are attracted by the experienced," Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 1-18, December.
    20. Achleitner, Ann-Kristin & Lutz, Eva & Mayer, Judith & Spiess-Knafl, Wolfgang, 2011. "Disentangeling gut feeling: Assessing the integrity of social entrepreneurs," CEFS Working Paper Series 2011-03, Technische Universität München (TUM), Center for Entrepreneurial and Financial Studies (CEFS).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:sae:entthe:v:32:y:2008:i:3:p:459-483. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.