Venture Capital Decision Making after the High Tech Downturn - Considerations Based on German E-Business Investment Cases

In the course of the tremendous downturn in global financial markets, it has become significantly harder for newly founded ventures to receive venture capital funding. Especially ventures from the electronic business sector face never before experienced financing challenges. In order to understand how the changed economic situation has influenced the decision making of venture capitalists, ten case studies were conducted among electronic business ventures from three German speaking countries (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) which received funding after March 2000. The qualitative content analysis of this rich data set provides evidence of changes in venture capitalists' management of the investment procedure