Communicating Entrepreneurial Passion: Personal Passion vs. Perceived Passion in Venture Pitches

Abstract

Research problem: Entrepreneurial passion has been shown to play an important role in venture success and therefore in investors' funding decisions. However, it is unknown whether the passion entrepreneurs personally feel or experience can be accurately assessed by investors during a venture pitch. Research questions: (1) To what extent does entrepreneurs' personal passion align with investors' perceived passion? (2) To what cues do investors attend when assessing entrepreneurs' passion? Literature review: Integrating theory and research in entrepreneurship communication and entrepreneurial passion within the context of venture pitching, we explain that during venture pitches, investors make judgments about entrepreneurs' passion that have consequences for their investment decisions. However, they can attend to only those cues that entrepreneurs outwardly display. As a result, they may not be assessing the passion entrepreneurs personally feel or experience. Methodology: We used a sequential explanatory mixed methods research design. For our data collection, we surveyed 40 student entrepreneurs, video-recorded their venture pitches, and facilitated focus groups with 16 investors who viewed the videos and ranked, rated, and discussed their perceptions of entrepreneurs' passion. We conducted statistical analyses to assess the extent to which entrepreneurs' personal passion and investors' perceived passion aligned. We then performed an inductive analysis of critical cases to identify specific cues that investors attributed to passion or lack thereof. Results and conclusions: We revealed that there was a large misalignment between entrepreneurs' personal passion and investors' perceived passion. Our critical case analysis revealed that entrepreneurs' weak or strong presentation skills led investors either to underestimate or overestimate, respectively, perceptions of entrepreneurs' passion. We suggest that entrepreneurs should develop specific presentation skills and rhetorical strategies for displaying their passion, yet at the same time, investors should be wary of attending too closely to presentation skills when assessing passion.

Empirical Literature on the Business Pitch: Classes, Critiques and Future Trends

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“…Some of the purposes of Table 2 emphasize the persuasive nature of the pitch (Clark, 2008;Verma, Mohammed, & Bhargava, 2016;Pollack, Rutherford, & Nagy, 2012, Lucas et al, 2016. This genre attribute is expressed in sequences such as 'To successfully persuade investors […] to 'get their bums off their seats'; create a strong first impression, to entice an investor, persuasive appeal' (Clark, 2008).…”

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Articulating Problems and Markets: A Translation Analysis of Entrepreneurs’ Emergent Value Propositions

“…Second, it emphasizes material interactions and resistance, whereas practice theory tends to describe intangibles such as knowledge, needs, rules, principles, and norms. Third, it has been used and developed in rhetoric and writing studies, providing better integration with the concerns of this field, both in the rhetoric of entrepreneurship (e.g., Belinsky & Gogan, 2016; Galbraith, McKinney, DeNoble, & Ehrlich, 2014; Lucas, Kerrick, Haugen, & Crider, 2016) and in the field as a whole.…”

Innovate within product lines or outside of them? An ethnographic study of corporate innovation in a corporate venture makerspace.

“…Qualitative methods have been heavily used in makerspace research (Cross, 2017;DeRosa, 2016;Lacy, 2016;Lahana, 2016;Litts, 2015), entrepreneurship research (Baker & Nelson, 2005;Lucas, Kerrick, Haugen, & Crider, 2016;Sarasvathy, 2001;Shane, 2000), innovation research (Hargadon & Douglas, 2001;Hargadon & Sutton, 1997), and institutional logics research (Battilana & Dorado, 2010;Currie & Spyridonidis, 2016;Dacin, Munir, & Tracey, 2010;Dalpiaz et al, 2016;Haveman & Rao, 1997;Smets et al, 2012;Thornton & Ocasio, 1999). Indeed, over half of the articles on institutional logics use qualitative data (Reay & Jones, 2016).…”