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Recent entrepreneurship research discusses numerous potential obstacles on the path towards business formation. The acquisition of resources, especially external finance, constitutesaformidablechallengefoundershavetomeet.Substantialrejectionratesof potential investors create external selection pressures on new ventures in that they contributetofailuresorinfluencethegrowthofsurvivingyoungcompanies.However, the founders themselves take an active role in the search for financial resources by addressing various potential financiers and taking decisions on the direction and continuation of their search for investors. Similarly, the results of the large US Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics point at the importance of adjustments in founders' fund-raising intentions in the course of early stage financial development of new ventures. The work at hand focuses on this process of solving problems during the search for external funding in emerging new ventures. The author explicitly does not analyze which factors of success will allow to convince potential investors with certainty. Regarding the search for funding as an open-ended process for epistemological reasons,heratheraimsatthereconstructionofsearchprocessesandthederivationof explanatorypatternsfortheactionsofventurefoundersinsearchofexternalfunding.
List of contents
Outline of problem and overview.- Epistemological concept: entrepreneurs as human agents.- New ventures: definition, financing needs, and legitimacy.- Financiers' legitimacy demands and the evolution of entrepreneurs' fund-raising intentions.- Multiple case studies of fund-raising processes in new ventures.- Conclusions and implications for research and practice.
About the author
Dr. Marc Grünhagen ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter von Prof. Dr. Lambert T. Koch am Lehrstuhl für Unternehmensgründung und Wirtschaftsentwicklung an der Universität Wuppertal.
Summary
Acquiring the necessary funding from discerning investors and lenders is regarded as a notorious problem for new ventures in Germany. Entrepreneurs’ deciding to adjust capital requirements or terminate the fund-raising struggle altogether affect the sustainable growth of new ventures. Yet, entrepreneurship research knows relatively little about the actual course of entrepreneurs’ fund-raising attempts during the start-up process.
Marc Grünhagen examines the evolution of fund-raising struggles in eleven in-depth case studies of seed and early stage ventures. In particular, the book zooms in on potential influence factors triggering changes in entrepreneurs’ fund-raising intentions over time. The empirical analysis offers a novel model of task-specific entrepreneurial intentions and their cognitive antecedents in the context of investors’ demands for new venture legitimacy. The findings suggest two core recommendations for supporting growth-oriented fund-raising processes: a) to build legitimizing potential and b) to ensure sufficient financial scope for flexible adaptations throughout the financing struggle.
