Publications

This paper uses a survey dataset of 51 Venture Capital Companies to address a segmentation of the venture capital industry. Our paper yields two specific contributions. First, we analyze in a Continental European bank-based system the most important investment criteria identified by previous empirical literature. Second, we show that existing differences in the use of the investment criteria depend on the specific characteristics of the venture capital companies. Therefore, the same business proposal might obtain different decisions depending on the venture company that the entrepreneur approaches. Our paper provides a better insight into the screening process of venture capitalists and the results have clear implications for entrepreneurs and venture capital companies. The knowledge of what investment criteria are most important to venture capitalists might help entrepreneurs to elaborate better proposals, addressing them to the most suitable venture capital company.