1,721,028 research outputs found

    Backing the horse or the jockey? Agency costs, information and the evaluation of risk by business angels

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    This paper explores the argument that business angel investors are more concerned with managing and minimising agency risk than market risk. Based on a survey of business angels in the UK, the paper concludes that business angels do view entrepreneur characteristics and experience as having the greatest impact on the perceived riskiness of an investment opportunity. Further, they emphasise personal and informal over formal sources of information in the due diligence process, and seek information on both the entrepreneur and the venture in determining valuation. Indeed, the reliance of business angels on short-term and subjective information to value investment opportunities leads to the conclusion that their approach to valuation is not a function of the conventional protocols of financial analysis, but of personal relations and assessment

    Investing in technology ventures: what do business angels look for at the initial screening stage?

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    Many businesses fail to raise external equity finance because they are not “investment ready.” One of the key aspects of being investment ready is the ability to effectively present their opportunity to investors. This paper examines the role of impression management skills on investor decisions by means of a case study of a presentation by an entrepreneur who was seeking funding for a software venture. The real-time reactions of business angels who watched the presentation on video were captured. Presentation-related issues dominated their reactions. Most investors were critical of the style, content and structure of the presentation. The failure of the entrepreneur to “sell” the opportunity raised doubts in the minds of investors about the ability of the company to sell their product. The implication is that entrepreneurs to develop their impression management skills so that potential investors draw the preferred conclusions. Policy-makers should consider developing initiatives to help entrepreneurs overcome these deficiencies

    Venture capital market complementarities: the links between business angels and venture capital funds

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    The nature and extent of complementarities between the informal and formal venture capital markets has been the subject of limited research. In the United States, complementarity has been demonstrated in terms of both size of investment and stage of business development: angel investors dominate in financing rounds of less than $500,000 and at seed and start-up stages. More recent research questions the generalisability of the findings: in the UK a small scale study found no evidence of complementarity for technology based firms, and a more recent US study concluded that the relationships between business angels and venture capital firms appeared to be weaker in the 1990s. In this paper we explore systematically complementarities between the formal and informal venture capital markets, and identify, where possible, the opportunities for additional collaboration. Five types of complementarities are identified: co-investing in deals; sequential investing in ventures; business angels as investors in venture capital funds; deal referring; and fund raising by business angels for ventures in which they have invested. <br/

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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