ABSTRACT Cross-border venture capital (CBVC) research is becoming increasingly important due to globalisation and its role as a key economic driver of development. As a result, the interest in the domain has been steadily growing in recent years and attracted much attention from top scholars worldwide. Our research provides a comprehensive overview of the growing body of academic research regarding cross-border venture capital. Based on a thorough screening and selection process of literature and an in-depth analysis, we review, summarise, compare, and evaluate the literature on a wide array of topics related to CBVC and identify existing general and theoretical trends over the past three decades. At last, we discuss research gaps and propose avenues for future research.

ABSTRACT Rich research on the sources of entrepreneurial capital has gradually been developed in the field of entrepreneurial equity financing. However, diverse and segmented research approaches hinder our understanding of the overall development of early-stage entrepreneurial equity financing in this context. Supplementing the previous methods for conducting research reviews and exploiting visual networks, this study uses a combination of bibliometrics and textual analysis to review the scope and evolution of early-stage entrepreneurial equity financing-related research. Our primary sample of 3,713 studies includes 108,385 secondary documents; these documents comprise the references cited by our primary sample records. We visually describe the field distribution, conceptual structure, and network connections of early-stage entrepreneurial equity financing-related publications over the 36-year period from 1987 to 2022. This paper also maps out hot topics and burgeoning trends through an analysis of the evolution of keywords in relevant publications. Our study contributes to the early-stage entrepreneurial equity financing literature by systematically reviewing the knowledge landscape in this field and identifying and articulating promising new research directions.

ABSTRACT The impact of COVID-19 on Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) has been devastating. Digitization has been one of the core strategies to cushion the impact of the pandemic. Based upon a questionnaire distributed in October 2020 to a sample of 345 US, 100 UK and 100 Indian MSMEs, we empirically investigate the determinants of MSMEs’ digitization as a strategy to confront the pandemic. Prior digital experience and company size seem to be predictive of the ability to implement new digital strategies during the pandemic. Our data also show that digital MSMEs expected lower sales drop caused by COVID-19. As policy implications, governments should target non-digital, smaller MSMEs to help them engage in digital transformation.

ABSTRACT Building on recent developments in the literature, we investigated whether the practice of repeatedly investing with the same partners impacts outcomes for venture capital syndicates. Research shows that European venture capitalists have different attitudes to their American counterparts, which might result in a different ability in benefiting from prior co-investing activities. Hence, we analysed how successful prior collaborations and the concentration of prior ties in an investment syndicate affects the probability of successfully exiting an investment. We also examined the role of prior ties as a determinant of the time to successful exit. From an analysis of 922 first-ever syndicated rounds in Europe between 2000 and 2009, we find that prior ties are not a significant determinant of successful exits. However, prior successful collaborations do play a significant role, as does the concentration of prior ties. We also find that a U-shaped relationship links prior co-investments with the to time to exit. These results should be helpful for managers involved in inter-organisational investment collaborations and to policymakers looking for ways to spur the European venture capital ecosystem.

ABSTRACT Entrepreneurs must overcome various hurdles that pose a threat to starting or growing their businesses. For example, women entrepreneurs face challenges including gender differences, entrepreneurial financing, innovation processes, and commercialization of technology. One avenue to enhance the accessibility of financial support and promote entrepreneurship via digitalization is to counteract or diminish the biases seen in traditional sources of funding for entrepreneurs belonging to ethnic or gender minority groups, including women-owned small and medium-sized enterprises. We propose that additional research is needed to account for the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and multi-level factors that may influence a women entrepreneur’s decision to obtain financing including digital skills and women-focused resource groups. We outline a typology of attributes and subsequent impacts for how to obtain financing and extend the discussion of how the evolving entrepreneurial ecosystem include a multitude of financing alternatives. Future research and policies should incorporate the evolving and expansive investment opportunities within the context of the digital entrepreneurial environment to help the advancement of women-led businesses.

ABSTRACT Economic policy uncertainty (EPU) has significant effects on the real economy. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effects of economic policy uncertainty on venture capital, a special financing form. In this study, the effects of economic uncertainty on venture capital for 14 OECD countries are investigated between 2007 and 2020 years. The results show that the increase in economic uncertainty in the long term increases venture capital investments in developed countries. The contributions of the study are demonstrating how venture capital reacts to economic policy uncertainty and using up-to-date methods that allow soft transitions to studying long-term relations between series.

ABSTRACT Amid a growing interest in venture capital research, little attention has been given to exploring the influence of digital empowerment on this domain. Particularly in the midst of heightened uncertainty factors contributing to global financial fragility and instances of capital retreat, these matters demand comprehensive examination. Drawing on resource-based theory and information asymmetry theory, this study collected extensive data from 1,985 Chinese manufacturing listed enterprises in the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) from 2016 to 2020. Leveraging the hierarchical regression technique, the research delved into the intricate relationship between digital empowerment and enterprise venture capital, while also considering the mediating role of innovation input and the moderating effect of government subsidies. The findings demonstrate that digital empowerment and innovation input yield a significantly positive impact on venture capital. Moreover, innovation input partially mediates the connection between digital empowerment and venture capital. Furthermore, government subsidies positively moderate the relationship between digital empowerment and innovation input. These research conclusions not only contribute to the advancement of venture capital theory but also furnish a theoretical foundation for enterprises seeking to secure additional venture capital and for governments to promote innovation and entrepreneurship strategies.

ABSTRACT It is advised that entrepreneurs should keep the language of venture descriptions short and simple. However, knowledge about the conditions under which language in crowdfunding communications impacts investment behavior is limited. We propose that the use of sophisticated language in crowdfunding venture descriptions creates perceptions of venture distinctiveness that, in turn, increase the amount invested. We test this proposed mechanism across a controlled experiment and present evidence from 886 crowdfunding campaigns that increasing the linguistic sophistication of campaign descriptions can result in a 20% increase in the amount raised by a campaign and greater campaign success. Furthermore, we show that the impact of lexical sophistication on the amount raised is moderated by investor experience whereby experienced investors invest more in ventures with sophisticated language compared to inexperienced investors. Our work contributes to research on communication in crowdfunding by highlighting the significance of lexical sophistication in influencing funding behaviour.

ABSTRACT From the perspective of matching, this paper explores the impact mechanism of entrepreneurial competency and entrepreneurial model matching on entrepreneurial performance. Then this paper uses cluster analysis and independent sample t-test to carry out the empirical analysis. The research results show the following relationship. (1) Entrepreneurs whose risk aversion psychology, entrepreneurial learning cognition, organizational management functions, and genetic network application capabilities are matched with survival-driven entrepreneurial models can improve the survival performance of new ventures. (2) Entrepreneurs whose risk propensity psychology, knowledge conversion cognition, strategic decision-making functions, and industrial network application capabilities are matched with the opportunity-driven entrepreneurial model, which can improve the survival and growth performance of new ventures. (3) Entrepreneurs’ self-potency psychology, technology transformation cognition, R&D innovation function, and network management capabilities are matched with the innovation-driven entrepreneurial model, which can improve the innovation performance of new ventures. Through empirical analysis, it was found that there were 22 matching samples, accounting for 61.11% of samples. There were 14 mismatched samples, accounting for 38.89% of samples, indicating a higher matching degree between entrepreneurial capability cluster and innovation-driven entrepreneurial model.

ABSTRACT This study investigates how business angels (BAs) add sustainability value to green ventures and how these value-adding activities are dependent on the BAs’ sustainability characteristics, i.e., motivation to invest, sustainability competence, and sustainability investor activity. This explorative qualitative study is based on interviews with 14 BAs from Germany and the Nordics. A cross-case analysis of the interview data reveals that different groups of BAs invest in green start-ups: green angels and light green angels. These BAs differ in their motivation for investing in green start-ups, with some wanting to contribute to the sustainability transition and others investing to be a part of the shift of capital and talent toward green ventures. The BAs offer different sustainability-value-adding activities to their start-ups. Green angels provide activities that are aimed at enhancing the sustainability performance of their investees. Light green BAs add value very similar to conventional BAs. This study contributes to the green entrepreneurial finance literature by exploring the specificity of green angels. By shedding light on how BAs add sustainability value as investors for green ventures, the study places green angels more distinctly in the ecosystem of early-stage financing for green start-ups.