Money as a weapon: Financing a winner-take-all competition

Abstract

We investigate the capital structure of pioneering startup firms, which are frequently credited with opening new markets and niches in the digital era and often face the threat of the potential entry of successful, cash-rich firms from adjacent markets. Our analysis is made in the context of a winner-take-all competition in the form of an all-pay auction for the monopolistic position in a new market. We show that a pioneer's optimal capital structure exhibits widespread diversity and is determined by a tradeoff between entry deterrence and post-entry competition intensification. A pure-equity (a mixture of equity and risky debt) structure is optimal when (1) barriers to entry are small (large), (2) the future prospect of the new market is fairly certain and/or, (3) the new market is likely (unlikely) to create large externalities on the potential entrant's existing business. The post-entry competition is likely to engender large losses to both the winner and the loser.