Although the national media has given increased attention to the venture capital process, misconceptions continue to proliferate. One often hears about the incredible capital gains of IPO share prices. This paper refutes the myth that investors demand very high rates of return to compensate for...

The nature and role of early stage equity financing in the development of emerging entrepreneurial ventures in the software industry is examined. To provide an understanding of the relationship between the suppliers of capital and the ventures they bankroll, issues concerning equity positions...

The close link between the personal financial affairs of a small business owner and his or her firm has been noted in prior research. This article compares attitudes toward risk on the part of small business owners (SBOs) and non-small business owners (NSBOs). In addition, it compares the...

This paper contains a review of issues pertaining to the valuation of privately held businesses, noting significant inconsistencies in the rationale and approaches taken in the valuation process. In addition to suggesting that appraisers stay with the "tried and true" rather than testing the...

This paper attempts to extend the Certification Paradigm--mainly used in the literature as an explanation for IPO underpricings--to provide guidelines to entrepreneurs in their efforts to secure funding for new ventures. After extending the model to cases of pre-venture-capital start-up firms,...

Every year 400,000 entrepreneurs fail and 60,000 file for personal bankruptcy. The option to declare bankruptcy provides entrepreneurs with insurance against the financial consequences of business failures. However, it comes at the cost of worsened credit market conditions. In this paper, we...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the phenomenon of ethnic female entrepreneurship in urban economic life. The focus of the research is on the attitude and behaviour of Turkish female entrepreneurs in Amsterdam. The main fascinating question is: Are ethnic female entrepreneurs special...

The decision to become an entrepreneur is in essence an individual decision. But even when the endowments of inhabitants are taken into account, some regions have persistently higher entrepreneurship rates than others. Proposed explanations for this regional variation are numerous: market...

The role of R&D investment on firm's performance is not clear from a theoretical perspective. While the effort in R&D activities conducted internally helps firms to develop the ability to identify, assimilate and apply external knowledge successfully (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990), such activities...

We investigate the impact of start-up rates on regional economic development. We argue that in line with Schumpeter's view this effect is mediated by a process of creative destruc-tion: Start-ups spark a process of creative destruction which in turn leads to regional eco-nomic development....