Early Ventures Research Articles

Early Ventures and Ideas Leading to The Greek Festival of Ancient Drama

Early Ventures and Ideas Leading to The Greek Festival of Ancient Drama

How Unique is VC’s American History?

VC: An American History, by Tom Nicholas, offers a compelling chronicle of the development of professional venture capital (VC) in the United States—from VC-like fore-bearers as diverse as eighteenth-century cotton manufacturing and nineteenth-century whaling up to the state of the modern VC market at the turn of the millennium. The book emphasizes America’s enduring advantage in VC as a consequence of these early developments and as a practical governance solution for investing in the long-tailed returns of risky new ventures. In this essay we discuss similar historical precedent and governance arrangements in the spice-trading voyages of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, calling into question the uniqueness of early American VC ancestors. Moreover, far from being a distinguishing feature of early ventures, long-tailed returns exist even in public equities, suggesting that the VC governance structure is about more than the distribution of returns. We conclude that the reasons for American dominance of contemporary VC remain unclear. Picking up where the book leaves off, we summarize facts and trends in twenty-first-century VC. (JEL G24, M13, N20, O16, O31)

Knowledge Diversity and Venture Growth: The Contingent Effects of Early Planning and Experimentation

AbstractDrawing on an information processing perspective, we explore to what extent early venture activities allow founding teams to leverage their diverse knowledge to achieve venture growth. Using data from 103 young ventures, we find that early planning enables founding teams to better exploit the diverse knowledge resulting from their heterogeneity in educational background. However, venture growth is highest when diverse teams simultaneously plan and experiment in the early venture phase. This study challenges extant explanations of when early behaviours shape the efficient usage of existing venture resources. We discuss the contribution of these findings to the literature on founding teams, planning and experimentation, and team diversity.

The Effect of Online Discussion Boards on Equity Crowdfunding Dynamics

ABSTRACT Equity crowdfunding platforms provide investors the opportunity to engage with entrepreneurs and each other through online discussion boards. However, little is known about the effects of such discussion boards on crowdfunding dynamics. Based on the analysis of 264 campaigns comprising 5,916 funding day observations, we use the instrumental variable approach and establish a robust causal effect of discussion threads on fundraising dynamics. The effect is positive and loses its significance with an increasing number of discussion threads. Unlike prior research, our results show that the overall effect does not differ by discussion topics. However, interactions exist between discussion topics and venture characteristics. Product-focused discussions appear to be more influential for early stage ventures that have yet to generate sales. We discuss the implications of our results for entrepreneurs and investors as well as crowdfunding platforms and provide suggestions for future research.

Wandalgarius’ Letters of the Law: Figural Initials and Book Culture in the Late Eighth Century

Abstract Long sidelined by art historians, the Wandalgarius Codex is a compendium of legal texts dated to 793 that represents an early venture in a trend associated with the 790s: populating initial letters with lively figures. This article centers the Wandalgarius Codex in discussion of experimental book illumination in the late eighth century. The decade saw re-definition of the visual organization of books, the uses illumination could serve, and the ways manuscripts in many genres reflected and shaped projects of education and reform. The essay sets Wandalgarius’ approach to initials in conversation with the well-known Gellone Sacramentary, and investigates the scribe-draftsman’s characterization of his own work as an ambitious contemporary book-maker.

How Unique is VC’s American History?

VC: An American History offers a compelling chronicle of the development of professional venture capital (VC) in the United States, from VC-like forebearers as diverse as 18th century cotton manufacturing and 19th century whaling up to the state of the modern VC market at the turn of the millennium. The book emphasizes America’s enduring advantage in venture capital as a consequence of these early developments and as a practical governance solution for investing in the long-tailed returns of risky new ventures. In this essay we discuss similar historical precedent and governance arrangements in the spice trading voyages of the 16th and 17th century Dutch Republic, calling into question the uniqueness of the early American VC ancestors. Moreover, far from being a distinguishing feature of early ventures, long-tailed returns exist even in public equities, suggesting that the VC governance structure is about more than the distribution of returns. We conclude that the reasons for American dominance of contemporary VC remain unclear. Picking up where the book leaves off, we summarize facts and trends in 21st century venture capital.

“Wholly an Australian Industry”? Establishing British Multinational Manufacture at the Bryant & May Empire Works, 1909–1914

The Bryant & May company is well known for its operations in Britain. Historians have paid less attention to the actions of the company overseas. The opening of a new Australian subsidiary factory in 1909 marked an early venture in multinational manufacturing within the British Empire. This article uses business records and newspapers from both the British and Australian archives to examine the day-to-day operations of this multinational, with a particular focus on the human dimension of the interactions between London and Melbourne. The Bryant & May case study reveals the evolving, sometimes tense, relationship between the “home” and “subsidiary” branches in the context of British imperialism and Australian federation in the years preceding World War I. Business, personal, and imperial relationships intertwined. While business historians have developed theoretical frameworks to understand why companies embark on multinational operations, work remains to be done on the longer-term operations of companies in particular political, social, and cultural contexts. We examine the building of the Empire Works match factory in Melbourne, the nature of transnational management, labor relations, and key production challenges up to the Interstate Commission of 1914. We reveal how Melbourne managers, sometimes against the inclinations of the London directors, were prepared to drive a hard bargain with local politicians and workers. Bryant & May successfully, and sometimes controversially, gained competitive advantage as a “local” company with access to preferential tariffs. This placed the firm in an ideal position to prosper when international trade was disrupted during World War I.

Pluripotent Digital Ventures and Their Paths to Product-Market Fit in New Markets

Ventures are pluripotent in their early years. Pluripotentiality refers to the absence of fixed developmental potentialities (i.e. ventures can take multiple paths to different outcomes). Entrepreneurs have to coordinate many choices across multiple domains to find product-market fit (PMF). While PMF has been discussed in the practitioner literature, it is not clear how ventures coordinate the market and product choices to find PMF in the early years. This is important given the degrees of freedom but limited resources early ventures have. Using a multiple-case study of five digital ventures in the U.S. healthcare ecosystem, our analysis reveals three paths ventures take to structure their search for PMF. We discuss the flexibility afforded by digital products and the duality between choice and commitment. We contribute to research on entrepreneurial choice in strategy formulation and link these observed paths to “adjacent conversations” in the broader strategy literature.

History, Sovereignty, Capital: Company Colonization in South Australia and New Zealand

AbstractThis article takes a fresh look at the history of private colonial enterprise in order to show how companies influenced British settlement and emigration to South Australia and New Zealand in the 1830s, thus connecting the settler revolution to global capitalism. Bringing into a single analytical frame the history of company colonization in the antipodes and its Atlantic predecessor, it examines how and why the actors involved in the colonization of South Australia and New Zealand invoked North American precedent to justify their early nineteenth-century colonial ventures. The article shows how the legitimating narratives employed by the colonial reformers performed two key functions. On the one hand, they supplied a historical and discursive tradition that authorized chartered enterprise in the antipodes. On the other hand, they furnished legal arguments that purportedly justified the appropriation of Aboriginal Australian and Māori tribal land. In illuminating how language and time shaped the world-making prophesies of these colonial capitalists, the article aims to extend recent work on corporations in global context.

A Methodology for Software Cost Estimation Using Machine Learning Techniques: International conference on Recent Trends in Artificial Intelligence, IOT, Smart Cities & Applications (ICAISC-2020)

Now a day’s many different organization expends billions of dollars on software development and maintenance annually. Many organization software projects are fail to be completed, or it is over budget, due to the inability of current software cost-estimation techniques to estimate effort and cost, at early venture organize, the degree of exertion required for an undertaking to be finished. One explanation is that present programming cost-estimation models will in general perform ineffectively when applied outside of barely characterized spaces. Machine learning offers an elective way to deal with the present models. In Machine learning, the area explicit information and the computer can be coupled to make a motor for information revelation. Using genetic programming, neural networks and genetic algorithms, alongside a distributed programming project data set. Several cost estimation models were developed. Testing was conducted using a COCOMO 81 data set. Every one of the three procedures demonstrated degrees of execution that show that every one of these systems can furnish software project managers with capacities that can be utilized to get better software cost estimates.

Progress in treating inherited retinal diseases: Early subretinal gene therapy clinical trials and candidates for future initiatives.

Due to improved phenotyping and genetic characterization, the field of 'incurable' and 'blinding' inherited retinal diseases (IRDs) has moved substantially forward. Decades of ascertainment of IRD patient data from Philadelphia and Toronto centers illustrate the progress from Mendelian genetic types to molecular diagnoses. Molecular genetics have been used not only to clarify diagnoses and to direct counseling but also to enable the first clinical trials of gene-based treatment in these diseases. An overview of the recent reports of gene augmentation clinical trials by subretinal injections is used to reflect on the reasons why there has been limited success in this early venture into therapy. These first-in human experiences have taught that there is a need for advancing the techniques of delivery of the gene products - not only for refining further subretinal trials, but also for evaluating intravitreal delivery. Candidate IRDs for intravitreal gene delivery are then suggested to illustrate some of the disorders that may be amenable to improvement of remaining central vision with the least photoreceptor trauma. A more detailed understanding of the human IRDs to be considered for therapy and the calculated potential for efficacy should be among the routine prerequisites for initiating a clinical trial.

‘Connecting the unconnected’: a critical assessment of US satellite Internet services

An estimated 4 billion people worldwide still lack reliable access to the Internet, with the majority concentrated in developing countries. It is within this context that a significant expansion of the satellite Internet industry is taking place, bringing grand visions of social and economic growth through connectivity. Previously dismissed as a limited technology due to high operating costs and latency, as well as the failure of early ventures like Teledesic, satellite Internet has re-emerged in recent years as a viable alternative to the time and energy-intensive practice of laying thousands of miles of fiber optic cable. Utilizing innovative non-synchronous orbit constellations of small, mass-produced satellites that lower production costs and improve latency to better compete with broadband, new Silicon Valley–related companies such as OneWeb, SpaceX, and O3b have promised cheap, high-speed Internet access throughout the world. Drawing upon industry research, site visits, and interviews with technical specialists, development experts, and other actors, this article briefly explores the history of satellite Internet services, analyzes the promises of emerging satellite Internet companies, and argues that without serious commitments from governments and the private sector to follow through on this rhetoric, satellite Internet technology could fail to reach the communities that need it most.

Mapping Senegambia: Legacies of Ambition and the Failure of an Early Colonial Venture

Britain's short-lived Province of Senegambia (1765–1783) was part of an expansion effort in the region driven by a desire to secure access to the gum trade of the Senegal river. Drawing on Britain's knowledge of France's dealings with the Upper-Senegal region it was complemented by the adoption of French cartography, edited to illustrate a new colonial identity. It is argued here that there was an additional motive of developing closer contact with the African interior. This pre-dates the establishment of the African Association in 1788 and its subsequent and better-known expeditions to the River Niger. In contrast to the French, however, the British struggled to engage with the region. This paper approaches the topic from a perspective of cartographic history. It highlights Thomas Jeffery's map of ‘Senegambia Proper’ (1768), copied from Jean Baptiste Bourguingnon d'Anville's ’Carte Particuliére de la Côte Occidentale de l'Afrique' (1751) and illustrative of several obstacles facing both British map-making and colonial expansion in mid-eighteenth century Africa. It is argued that the later enquiries and map-making activities of the African Association, which were hoped to lead to the colonisation of West Africa, built upon these experiences of failure in Senegambia.

Early Stage Venture Strategy and the Survival of Nascent Entrepreneurial Firms: A Sand Cone Model Approach

Early stage firms often face conflicting pressures on where and how to prioritize their efforts. In this paper, we aim to shed light on the benefits of different competitive priorities, using a sand cone model of operations strategy specifically applied to the context of early stage new ventures. In particular, we examine the relationship between strategy and the survival of these nascent entrepreneurial firms using data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics II. We find that a competitive priority of serving customer needs is associated with a greater probability of survival in nascent ventures. Innovation and traditional marketing activities were not significantly related to survival. The paper concludes with implications for practitioners and future research.

Entrepreneurial pivoting as organizational search: Defining pivoting in early stage ventures.

This paper explores the role of pivoting in the performance and growth of early stage entrepreneurial ventures. Despite its wide adoption by practitioners, and its often-quoted association with ent...

The Many Paths to Success: Early Resource Configurations and Venture Exit

The early portfolio of resources that new firms have are likely to be powerful determinates of their success. However, no theory exists to predict if or how the configurations of resources affects ...

Dimensions of Dependence: An Analysis of Entrepreneurial Ventures Ties to Established Corporations

This study focuses on the antecedents to the formation of ties between privately- held ventures and incumbent corporations. We focus specifically on the role of the resource needs of ventures and how these resource needs affect the relatedness of the CVC investors with whom they choose to partner. Two forms of resource need are thus investigated: operational and social. We find that the need for complementary assets in research and development leads ventures to establish ties to more related CVC investors. This effect is found strongest in early stage ventures. In the later stages, ventures become less driven by operational resources and more by the social context in which they operate. The increased formation of independent ventures in public offerings leads ventures to seek greater legitimacy by forming ties to related CVC investors, all while increased intensity of takeover activities leads ventures to less related CVCs.

Assessing resources of early stage social ventures: A signaling theory perspective

Venture philanthropy-oriented foundations have an increasing impact in social venture funding. However, we still know little about which aspects of social ventures effectively work as a positive si...

“We were unheeding in those days”: An interview with Ashok Shahane

Ashok Shahane is one of the very important figures in the publishing of Marathi literature, both in terms of his involvement in the little magazine movement, and through the Bombay publishing house Pras Prakashan, which has brought out the work of many of the most significant Marathi writers. In this interview, conducted in Marathi in 2015 and 2016, and translated into English by his interviewer Anjali Nerlekar, he describes his admiration for Bengali literature and his early ventures in magazine publishing in Bombay in the 1960s. He goes on to discuss his collaborations with Bhalchandra Nemade and Arun Kolatkar, his own work as a literary critic, and his association with Allen Ginsberg during and after the American poet’s 1962 visit to India. Shahane also discusses his little magazine Aso, and the work of Pras Prakashan.

Ambassadors and Administrators: The Role of Clerics in Early French Colonies in Guiana

Of all of France’s early modern colonial ventures, the least studied and most obscure are the French efforts to establish settlements, missions, and plantations in Guiana. Still, the seventeenth-century French colonies in Guiana had much in common with the sixteenth-century French efforts to colonize Florida and Brazil, and their trajectories were every bit as dramatic and their outcomes equally dismal. Although not sponsored as Huguenot refuges in the New World from Catholic oppression in the Old, and thus not burdened with the fierce competition between Protestant and Catholic colonists that plagued the sixteenth-century ventures, the Guiana colonies were also prey to deep internal divisions over piety and morality, and even more over power and the purpose of the colony. Were they primarily missions to the Native peoples, plantations, or commercial ventures focused on locating sources of precious metals or establishing plantations? This paper examines the role of clerics in the genesis, financing, trajectories, and collapse of the earliest French colonies in Guiana, in particular two colonies founded about ten years apart, in 1643 and 1652. I will the argue that whereas historians have often assumed that missionaries and evangelizing were often little more than an encumbrance to early colonial ventures, useful mostly for raising funds in France, in reality clerics played a central role in shaping chartered colonial companies and the colonies they founded, for good and for ill.