Decision-making of Entrepreneurs and VCs
Paper Session
Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (EST)
- Song Ma, Yale University
Due Diligence and the Allocation of Venture Capital
Abstract
How do investors choose the intensity of their due diligence, and how does that choice affect investment outcomes? Using cell phone signal data, we measure the duration of pre-investment meetings between venture capitalists (VCs) and startup employees. This measure captures one important component of VC due diligence. Less due diligence is associated with hotter deals and markets, busier investors, and greater distance, consistent with a theory of costly learning. Also consistent with that theory, less due diligence is associated with more volatile investment performance, as VCs allocate capital under greater uncertainty. Overall, VCs appear to trade off the costs of due diligence with its improvements to capital allocation.Venture Capital and Scientists' Selection into Entrepreneurship
Abstract
Using a newly digitized historical dataset of over 450,000 U.S. scientists, this paper examines whether venture capital (VC) facilitates the commercialization of innovative ideas through new business formation. I exploit the reform of the "prudent man" rule as a quasi-natural experiment that positively shocks the supply of VC funding. Across the full sample, scientists with intangible work specialties—who would ex ante be more likely to benefit from VC—experienced a 6% increase in business formation relative to those with tangible specialties, an effect that was concentrated in counties with VC presence. Among the subsamples of scientists employed in the private sector, earning higher wages, and named as inventors on patents, the relative increase was as high as 26%. I rationalize the results through an occupational choice model in which VC funding alleviates financial constraints for those with higher productivity. These individual-level effects contributed to the growth of intangible industries at the county level and persisted through the end of my sample period.How do Venture Capitalists (Actually) Make Investment Decisions? Internal Evidence from a Private Startup Accelerator
Abstract
Using a proprietary dataset detailing all startup applications, internal judging scores, judges’ writtencomments, and even audio recordings of interviews involving one of the largest VC-backed startup
accelerators in the United States, we open the ‘black box’ of VC investment decision-making. To
do so, we study the entire internal VC investment selection process from the evolution of judging
scores across interview stages to the voting rules applied for making final portfolio firm decisions.
We first find that the evaluation of the same startup applicant by the same VC partner can differ by
up to 25% depending on whether the partner is judging autonomously (‘solo evaluation’) vs. in
collaboration with their colleagues (‘group evaluation’). We trace part of these ‘within-applicant’
judging disagreements to the presence of significant VC judge-startup founder ‘homophily’ biases
that are amplified in solo judging environments. Second, we document the value implications of
different judging policies for VC fund performance. We find that group evaluations consistently
outperform solo evaluations, while ‘single champion’ decision rules produce investment outcomes
with much higher variance compared to ‘consensus’-based decision rules. Finally, we show that
one of the key mechanisms explaining the outperformance of group evaluations is that collaborative
Q&A sessions encourage judges to ask interview questions and submit written explanations of
scores that focus more on startup firm “fundamentals” rather than affinity-based founders’ traits.
Discussant(s)
Melanie Wallskog
,
Duke University
Allen Hu
,
University of British Columbia
Filippo Mezzanotti
,
Northwestern University
Will Gornall
,
University of British Columbia
JEL Classifications
- G2 - Financial Institutions and Services