Fortune favors the experienced: entrepreneurs’ Internet-Era Imprint, digital entrepreneurship and venture capital

Abstract

This study focuses on entrepreneurs’ Internet-era imprint and its effect on the level of digital entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial firms’ venture capital. From the perspective of imprinting theory and signaling theory, we find that entrepreneurs with Internet-era imprint are more willing to use digital technologies in their entrepreneurial process, which raises the level of digital entrepreneurship within a firm. Imprint-driven digital entrepreneurship acts as a quality signal to increase the success rate of access to venture capital from financial institutions. In addition, venture capital providers do not value the entrepreneurs’ personal socioeconomic status for easier access to external resources, but rather their Internet-era imprint, which is more relevant to the success of digital entrepreneurship. Our hypotheses are supported using data from the Chinese private entrepreneurial firms in 2016. Overall, our efforts to extend imprinting theory to digital entrepreneurship literature suggest that the Internet-era imprint persists in the digital entrepreneurial process. Moreover, this study enriches the signaling mechanisms in entrepreneurial venture capital research by conceptualizing digital entrepreneurship as a signal.