IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/dew/wpaper/2018-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Entrepreneurial Discovery Capital

Author

Listed:
  • Raymond C. Niles

    (Department of Economics and Management, DePauw University)

Abstract

This paper identifies how capital losses are unavoidably incurred in the discovery of viable entrepreneurial ventures. Losses are proportional to the novelty and perceived profit potential of a prospective venture, exemplified by the high risk/high return nature of high technology start-ups. Venture capitalists internalize the costs and benefits of this discovery process, and set up portfolios where the majority of funded ventures unavoidably fail or earn subpar returns. They incur these losses in order to discover the one Winner venture whose outsize returns will compensate for the capital losses in the failed ventures. The investment in failing ventures is unavoidable and necessary to discover the Winner because the winning business model cannot be determined ex ante. I call this investment “Entrepreneurial Discovery Capital.” This paper hypothesizes that many industry and economy-wide cycles may be the result of such a process that occurs at a much larger scale than a single fund. Venture capital in microcosm provides a model of an economy-wide process where the decisions of myriad market participants are coordinated “as if by an invisible hand” by signals from the capital markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Raymond C. Niles, 2018. "Entrepreneurial Discovery Capital," Working Papers 2018-03, DePauw University, School of Business and Leadership and Department of Economics and Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:dew:wpaper:2018-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.depauw.edu/site/learn/dew/wpaper/workingpapers/DePauw2018-03-Niles-EntrepreneurialDiscoveryCapital.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William R. Kerr & Josh Lerner & Antoinette Schoar, 2014. "The Consequences of Entrepreneurial Finance: Evidence from Angel Financings," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(1), pages 20-55, January.
    2. Paul Gompers & Josh Lerner, 2006. "The Venture Capital Cycle, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262572389, April.
    3. Carlota Perez, 2009. "The double bubble at the turn of the century: technological roots and structural implications," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 33(4), pages 779-805, July.
    4. William R. Kerr & Ramana Nanda & Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, 2014. "Entrepreneurship as Experimentation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(3), pages 25-48, Summer.
    5. Gompers, Paul A. & Gornall, Will & Kaplan, Steven N. & Strebulaev, Ilya A., 2020. "How do venture capitalists make decisions?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(1), pages 169-190.
    6. Shepherd, Dean A. & Douglas, Evan J. & Shanley, Mark, 2000. "New venture survival: Ignorance, external shocks, and risk reduction strategies," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 15(5-6), pages 393-410.
    7. Tim Loughran & Jay Ritter, 2004. "Why Has IPO Underpricing Changed Over Time?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 33(3), Fall.
    8. Sahlman, William A., 1990. "The structure and governance of venture-capital organizations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 473-521, October.
    9. Paul Gompers & Josh Lerner, 2001. "The Venture Capital Revolution," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 145-168, Spring.
    10. White, Eugene N, 1990. "The Stock Market Boom and Crash of 1929 Revisited," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 67-83, Spring.
    11. Gornall, Will & Strebulaev, Ilya A., 2015. "The Economic Impact of Venture Capital: Evidence from Public Companies," Research Papers 3362, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    12. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:5:p:2177-2210 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Carlino, Gerald & Kerr, William R., 2015. "Agglomeration and Innovation," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 349-404, Elsevier.
    2. William H. Janeway & Ramana Nanda & Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, 2021. "Venture Capital Booms and Start-Up Financing," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 13(1), pages 111-127, November.
    3. repec:bof:bofrdp:urn:nbn:fi:bof-201512111472 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. repec:zbw:bofrdp:urn:nbn:fi:bof-201512111472 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Carlino, Gerald & Kerr, William R., 2015. "Agglomeration and Innovation," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 349-404, Elsevier.
    6. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2015_027 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. 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.
    8. Bhanot, Karan & Kadapakkam, Palani-Rajan, 2022. "Pay for performance, partnership success, and the internal organization of venture capital firms," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    9. Y. Sekou Bermiss & Benjamin L. Hallen & Rory McDonald & Emily C. Pahnke, 2017. "Entrepreneurial beacons: The Yale endowment, run‐ups, and the growth of venture capital," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 545-565, March.
    10. 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.
    11. Hellmann, Thomas & Thiele, Veikko, 2015. "Friends or foes? The interrelationship between angel and venture capital markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(3), pages 639-653.
    12. Hellmann, Thomas & Montag, Alexander & Tåg, Joacim, 2024. "Tolerating Losses for Growth: J-Curves in Venture Capital Investing," Working Paper Series 1500, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    13. Kim Claes & Balagopal Vissa, 2020. "Does Social Similarity Pay Off? Homophily and Venture Capitalists’ Deal Valuation, Downside Risk Protection, and Financial Returns in India," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(3), pages 576-603, May.
    14. Michael M. Moedl, 2021. "Two’s a company, three’s a crowd: Deal breaker terms in equity crowdfunding for prospective venture capital," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 927-952, August.
    15. Howell, Sabrina T., 2020. "Reducing information frictions in venture capital: The role of new venture competitions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(3), pages 676-694.
    16. Lahr, Henry & Mina, Andrea, 2016. "Venture capital investments and the technological performance of portfolio firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 303-318.
    17. Jason Roderick Donaldson & Giorgia Piacentino & Anjan Thakor, 2021. "Intermediation Variety," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(6), pages 3103-3152, December.
    18. Pontus Braunerhjelm & Simon Parker, 2010. "Josh Lerner: recipient of the 2010 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 35(3), pages 245-254, October.
    19. Ali-Yrkkö, Jyrki & Hyytinen, Ari & Liukkonen, Johanna, 2001. "Exiting Venture Capital Investments: Lessons from Finland," Discussion Papers 781, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    20. Kaminski, Jermain & Hopp, Christian & Tykvová, Tereza, 2019. "New technology assessment in entrepreneurial financing – Does crowdfunding predict venture capital investments?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 287-302.
    21. Onesun Steve Yoo & Tingliang Huang & Kenan Arifoğlu, 2021. "A Theoretical Analysis of the Lean Start-up Method," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(3), pages 395-412, May.
    22. Iftekhar Hasan & Haizhi Wang, 2008. "The US bankruptcy law and private equity financing: empirical evidence," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 5-19, June.
    23. Croce, Annalisa & Martí, José & Murtinu, Samuele, 2013. "The impact of venture capital on the productivity growth of European entrepreneurial firms: ‘Screening’ or ‘value added’ effect?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 489-510.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    venture capital; business cycle; Schumpeter; discovery; innovation; high technology; entrepreneurship; cognitive;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E71 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on the Macro Economy
    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage
    • G41 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making in Financial Markets
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • M13 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - New Firms; Startups
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:dew:wpaper:2018-03. 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: Humberto Barreto (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/emdepus.html .

    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.