Do networks matter Social capital and public investors - the Austrian perspective

Abstract

The underlying study was concerned with governmental venture capital which is grounded in the assumption of market failure and financing gaps for technological start-ups (Güllmann, 2000; Brettel, 2005). The aim of the study was to examine the venture capital market in Austria at the macro and the micro level. First hand collected survey data and secondary data sources were analysed by means of descriptive statistics in order to examine the effectiveness of the public involvement and the public investors' network, syndication rationales and mentoring procedures. The results revealed financing constraints in the later stages of the Austrian venture capital market again (Gassler et al., 2018; Friedl et al., 2019) and also showed that the public investors maintained comprehensive and diverse networks. Therefore, they should also play a pivotal role for the support of regional innovation ecosystems (Pierrakis and Saridakis, 2019) and not for the provision of financings alone.