Angel Investors Around the World

Angel investors finance small high growth entrepreneurial firms in exchange for equity. Unlike private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) funds, which invest capital from institutional investors, angels invest with their own money. We compare the impact from legal and cultural conditions on disintermediated angel finance versus intermediated PE/VC finance. We use PitchBook's comprehensive data collection of over 5,000 angel deals and 80,000 PE/VC deals from 96 countries from 1977 to 2012. The data indicate that relative to PE/VC funds, angel investors are more sensitive to stock market conditions, legal environments, and Hofstede's cultural conditions (specifically, higher levels of individualism and risk intolerance). The data further indicate that investee firms funded by angels are less likely to successfully exit in either an IPO or acquisition, on average, whether those angels are involved in the first round or later stages. Our test results are robust to propensity score matching methods, as well as clustering standard errors, among other approaches. In addition, we perform difference-in-differences tests and find evidence that more stringent disclosure regulation and more forgiving bankruptcy laws spawn entrepreneurial activities induced by both angels and PE/VC funds