Abstract
PurposeAccelerators and roadshows provide valuable scenarios for studying the embeddedness and dynamic effect of gender. Drawing on status theory and signaling theory, the study explores how investors’ implicit bias and the cohort effects in roadshows affect financing performance regarding investor drivers.Design/methodology/approachExperiment 1 recruited 220 financial practitioners in China and asked them to make investment judgments on two actual pitching materials of women- and men-led startups in the Internet health industry after manipulating past funding scenarios. Experiment 2 considers project-specific features to invite 211 Chinese financial practitioners to read the roadshow materials of women- or men-led startups in the Internet health or children’s education industry. Experiment 3 adopts the health monitoring and clothing manufacturing industries’ roadshow materials to recruit 238 financial practitioners in the United States (US) for the study.FindingsFindings show that (1) women are at a financing disadvantage in the roadshows, (2) investors’ double standards reduce women entrepreneurs’ financing performance and (3) the mediating effect of double standards is moderated by the financing performance of women or men entrepreneurs that investors have approached in past investment activities.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the gender gap and accelerator literature by combining status theory and signaling theory to study the dynamic and embeddedness of entrepreneur gender effects in roadshows from investor drivers. The findings inform the participation of women entrepreneurs in accelerators, the selection of potential investors, and shifting investors’ perceptions toward women entrepreneurs at the early financing stage.
Published Version
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