Early-stage fundraising of university spin-offs: a study through demand-site perspectives

Abstract

University spin-offs have increasingly received attention from academia, governments and policy-makers. However, there are only a limited number of studies within the university spin-off context which fully understand the contribution made by the founding team to fundraising, specifically how they use their social networks and capabilities. Employing resource-based theory and social networks approach, this paper examines whether a founding team exploits its social networks and capabilities to signal the value of a university spinoff. Capabilities are analysed through a set of constructs -technology, strategy, human capital, organizational viability and commercial resource -that have been derived from previous literature. The contribution made by social networks is evaluated using three dimensions -structure, governance and content -which form the construct of relationships within a network. Based on data from 181 university spin-offs in Spain, this paper empirically demonstrates that by exploiting social networks a founding team can improve its capabilities which, in turn, enhance its fundraising ability.

On the 50-Year Research Landscape of Entrepreneurial Finance: A Sign of Western Ideological Homogeneity?

“…Notably, another main research topic is about the effect of social capital and social network on entrepreneurial finance Frömmel 2019, Madrazo-Lemarroy et al 2019). This approach is often employed to study how academic entrepreneurs finance for university spin-offs (Huynh 2016(Huynh , 2019. Thematic mapping is built based on the co-occurrence of authors' keywords for presenting seven major research domains in entrepreneurial finance: "venture capital", "crowdfunding", "SMEs finance", "social entrepreneurship finance", "financial risk", "microfinance", and "human-social-financial capital".…”

University spin-off's performance: Capabilities and networks of founding teams at creation phase

“…Such university support, particularly in the earliest stages of spin-off development, can alleviate some of the problems associated with resource scarcity (Rasmussen & Wright, 2015). It is therefore important that, prior to incorporation, within the context of university spin-offs, that technology transfer officers combine the endowments from academics with the host university's resources and social capital to strengthen the capabilities of the new entity (Shane & Stuart, 2002;Clarysse et al, 2007;Geuna & Muscio, 2009;Huynh, 2016). Combining resources and networks in this way has the potential to improve leadership, offer access to funding streams and enhance managerial, technology and commercial skills (Helfat & Peteraf, 2003); positioning a firm on a different growth trajectory (Shane & Stuart, 2002).…”

On the 50-year research landscape of entrepreneurial finance: A sign of Western ideological homogeneity?

“…Notably, another main research topic is about the effect of social capital and social network on entrepreneurial finance Frömmel 2019, Madrazo-Lemarroy et al 2019). This approach is often employed to study how academic entrepreneurs finance for university spin-offs (Huynh 2016(Huynh , 2019.…”