Existing literature suggests that entrepreneurs with prior firm-founding experience have more skills and social connections than novice entrepreneurs. Such skills and social connections could give experienced founders some advantage in the process of raising venture capital. This paper uses a...

Research shows that most ventures fail, yet it has devoted limited attention to the consequences of entrepreneurs' past failure for investors' decisions. Our motivating insight is that failure can be due to bad luck, lack of skill or both. Therefore, failure conveys ambiguous information about...