This paper explores two broad questions on collaboration between individuals. First, we investigate what personal characteristics affect people's desire to work together. Second, given the influence of these personal characteristics, we analyze whether this attraction enhances or detracts from...

We investigate how personal characteristics affect people's desire to collaborate and whether this attraction enhances or detracts from performance in venture capital. We find that venture capitalists who share the same ethnic, educational, or career background are more likely to syndicate with...

While venture capitalists (VCs) can choose from thousands of potential syndicate partners, many co-syndicate with small groups of preferred partners. We term these groups “VC communities.” We apply computational methods from the physical sciences to three decades of syndication data to...

While VCs can choose from thousands of potential syndicate partners, many prefer to co-syndicate with partners drawn from small groups of preferred partners, whom we term "VC communities." Using computational methods from the physical sciences, we identify communities from three decades of...