We show that venture capitalists' (VCs) on-site involvement with their portfolio companies leads to an increase in (1) innovation and (2) the likelihood of a successful exit. We rule out selection effects by exploiting an exogenous source of variation in VC involvement: the introduction of new airline routes that reduce VCs' travel times to their existing portfolio companies. We confirm the importance of this channel by conducting a large-scale survey of VCs, of whom almost 90% indicate that direct flights increase their interaction with their portfolio companies and management, and help them better understand companies' activities.
We examine whether male investors are biased against female entrepreneurs. To do so, we use a proprietary dataset from AngelList covering fundraising startups. We find that female founders are less successful with male investors compared to observably similar male founders. In contrast, the same female founders are more successful than male founders with female investors. The results do not appear to be driven by differences across founder gender in startup quality, sector focus, or risk. Given that investors are predominately male, our results suggest that an increase in female investors is likely necessary to support an increase in female entrepreneurship.
for research assistance and are grateful to Shai Bernstein and attendees of the Harvard Business School "COVID and entrepreneurship" brown-bag lunch for helpful comments. Lerner has received compensation from advising institutional investors in venture capital funds, venture capital groups, and governments designing policies relevant to venture capital. Lerner and Nanda thank the Division of Research and Faculty Development at HBS for financial support. All errors are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.
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