We find that VC-backed firms receiving their initial investment in hot markets are more likely to go bankrupt, but conditional on going public are valued higher on the day of their IPO, have more patents and have more citations to their patents. Our results suggest that VCs invest in riskier and...

We examine how investors' tolerance for failure impacts the types of projects they are willing to fund. We show that actions that reduce short term accountability and thus encourage agents to experiment more simultaneously reduce the level of experimentation financial backers are willing to...