中文摘要
本文考察建议在企业早期发展与成长中的作用,数据来自一个全球性项目,在该项目中,天使投资人与风险资本家(VCs)在数月间为创始人提供导师指导。利用导师因个人日程冲突而在支持初创企业方面形成的可得性差异,我发现建议显著改善了初创企业未来的市场表现。为探究建议如何塑造企业早期发展,我构建了一种新的初创企业活动类型学,发现导师建议的一个标志性要素是“少做多学”。尽管天使投资人与风险资本家在这一信息上立场一致,但在选择何时就实现商业目标向初创企业提供建议方面,二者存在显著差异。与风险资本家相比,天使投资人更可能帮助创始人设计和执行产品市场实验,而风险资本家则在商业分析与规划任务上提供更多辅导支持。我发现的证据与如下假说一致:实验是一种通过“干中学”培养的技能,而天使投资人由于拥有更多运营经验,在该领域具有技能优势。
Abstract
This paper examines the role of advice in early firm development and growth, drawing on detailed data from a global program where angel investors and venture capitalists (VCs) mentored founders over several months. Leveraging variation in mentors’ availability to support start-ups because of personal scheduling conflicts, I find that advice significantly improves start-ups’ future market performance. To explore how advice shapes early firm development, I develop a novel typology of start-up activities, finding that a defining element of mentors’ advice is to do less and learn more. Although angels and VCs are consistent in this message, they differ significantly in when they choose to advise start-ups in achieving their business objectives. Angels are more likely than VCs to help founders design and execute product market experiments, whereas VCs provide more mentoring support on business analysis and planning tasks. I find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that experimentation is a skill developed via learning-by-doing, and angels have a skill advantage in that domain because of having more operational experience.