Assetization and the Logic of Venture Capital, or Why Facebook Does not ‘Feel’ Like a Monopoly to Zuckerberg

Balzam, Guy; Yuran, Noam

doi:10.1080/09505431.2021.1990874

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 21 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“… Kenney & Zysman, 2019 ; Owen & Hopkins, 2016 ; Pisano, 2006 ; Shapin, 2008 ). Indeed, VC plays an inordinately influential role in configuring the financing of technoscience ( Balzam & Yuran, 2022 ; Cooiman, 2021 ; Hellman, 2022 ; Sauter, 2020 ), largely as a mode of valuation configured by specific stories and financial frameworks. VC is a distinctive source of private finance, contrasting not only with public finance from equity or capital markets but also with other forms of private financing that ranges from the 3Fs – or ‘friends, family, and fools’ – through business angels or wealthy individuals to contractual or collaborative partnerships with other, often larger, firms ( Birch, 2016 ).…”

Section: Venture Capital As a Mode Of Valuationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Reflexive expectations in innovation financing: An analysis of venture capital as a mode of valuation

Birch

2022

Soc Stud Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Social studies of expectations are premised on the notion that the future is brought into the present, and thereby expectations about the future come to shape our actions, decisions, and practices in ways that performatively bring about the imagined future. In this article, I examine how social actors themselves understand, construct, and deploy future expectations in innovation financing, focusing specifically on the venture capital industry financing of the life sciences sector. I do so to analyse how these reflexive efforts configure the valuation and investment decisions of these social actors and others. I build on analytical perspectives in STS and adjacent fields such as organization studies and economic sociology that analyse the role of expectations – manifested as stories, narratives, and accounts – in social action. To do so, I unpack how reflexivity comes to configure valuation and investment decisions, and the goals (e.g. exits) they rationalize.

show abstract

Section: Venture Capital As a Mode Of Valuationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This VC logic has led to a more recent focus on scaling up startups quickly to become dominant firms in their market; first as unicorns, then as public corporations ( Balzam & Yuran, 2022 ; Pfotenhauer et al, 2022 ). Expectations are an important component of this VC logic.…”

Section: Venture Capital As a Mode Of Valuationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reflexive expectations in innovation financing: An analysis of venture capital as a mode of valuation

Birch

2022

Soc Stud Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Within the social studies of finance, VC is tied to the asset form to explain platform companies’ tendency toward monopolistic business models (Balzam and Yuran, 2022) and exit-oriented innovation landscapes (Birch, 2017). Generally, the asset form is understood as a legal construct, which comes with “distinct modes of ownership and control” and involves rentiership (Birch, 2017: 469 f.; Birch and Muniesa, 2020: 5 f.).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imprinting the economy: The structural power of venture capital

Cooiman

2022

Environ Plan A

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article analytically links asset management and the digital economy by analyzing the structural power of venture capital (VC) investors. Therefore, I propose the notion of imprinting, which describes how financial actors, enabled by their structural position, shape businesses according to their specific logic. Concretely, I argue that VCs’ logic is one of assetization, whereby VCs turn startups into assets for themselves and their capital providers. To do so, VCs seek hypergrowth, selecting only companies with the potential to grow fast and large and decouple financial value from business fundamentals. Instead of the threat of exit, VCs establish direct and indirect channels of control: legally, via preferred shareholder rights, board seats, and payout conditionality; and as participatory capital, offering operational advice and access to their network. The article contributes to a nuanced understanding of financial sector power in contemporary capitalism.

show abstract

Big Tech

Birch

Bronson

2022

Science as Culture

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Assetization and the Logic of Venture Capital, or Why Facebook Does not ‘Feel’ Like a Monopoly to Zuckerberg

Cited by 4 publications

References 21 publications

Reflexive expectations in innovation financing: An analysis of venture capital as a mode of valuation

Reflexive expectations in innovation financing: An analysis of venture capital as a mode of valuation

Imprinting the economy: The structural power of venture capital

Big Tech

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About