The market for entrepreneurial equity finance has significantly evolved over the past decades and has grown ever more complex. Different investor-types, namely the crowd, business angels and venture capitalists contribute to the market, and their characteristics, investment behavior and...

Firms invest in Corporate venture capital (CVC) for strategic reasons. Consistent with maintaining financial flexibility to fund CVC driven innovation and acquisitions, CVC investing firms hold less debt and more cash. Our results are more pronounced among the highest CVC investors and...

This paper investigates the bank financing policy of new small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), its evolution and its relevance during early growth stages over their first 10 years. We use a large European panel dataset on early-stage SMEs founded in 2007–2015. The study provides useful...

The valuation of start-up firms is challenging, yet highly relevant for entrepreneurs and financiers alike. We reverse-engineer fair-value multiples by comparing the firm value at the time of financing with the firm value at the time of exit. Our framework produces reliable valuation multiples...

We propose a model of startup staged financing where entrepreneurs choose between ICO and traditional entrepreneurial finance sources such as Venture Capital (VC). While in early stages token sales allow startups to leverage network externalities by building a large customer base, VC's...

One in three deals in the early-stage financing market involves an investor and founder from the same alma mater. We show that founders' connections to early-stage investors through shared education networks are more important than school academic quality or shared geography in facilitating...

The present report is a case study on crowdfunding as a finance instrument for SMEs and entrepreneurs. The report aims to examine the characteristics, diffusion and uptake by new firms and existing SMEs, assessing its effectiveness in supporting innovative or potentially high-growth firms to...