This paper investigates how patent applications and grants held by new ventures improve their ability to attract venture capital (VC) financing. We argue that investors are faced with considerable uncertainty and therefore rely on patents as signals when trying to assess the prospects of...

This study examines the consequences of loan denials for the investment performance of small and medium-sized German enterprises. As a consequence of a loan denial, innovative companies experience a smaller drop in the share of actual to planned investment than non-innovative companies. The...

This paper examines the role of venture capital on a firm's innovation activities by using a data set of German technology-based firms founded between 1996 and 2005. Innovation is proxied by patent counts and an index of innovativeness which reflects the degree to which a young firm has...

Martin Heibel analyzes founder turnover in German venture capital backed start-up companies. He develops two unique data sets specifically assembled through an experiment and an online survey. His in-depth analyses cover antecedents and performance implications of founder turnover. They combine...

Marko Bender analyzes the impact of spatial proximity between venture capitalists and new ventures throughout the investment process. He elaborates a comprehensive theoretical framework and empirically validates resulting hypotheses concerning the observed spatial proximity and the impact of...

We present evidence on venture capitalists' (VCs) impact on turnover of executives for a sample of nearly 47,000 German high-tech start-ups between 1995 and 2004. We confirm that the presence of VCs increases the probability of a change in the initial executive team. Additionally, we take a...