Business Commons^™

Evaluating Venture Technical Competence In Vc Investment Decisions, Rohit Aggarwal, David Kryscynski, Harpeet Singh

Faculty Publications

While much research emphasizes the importance of venture technical-competence for venture success and, therefore, the importance of venture technical-competence in VC investment decisions, we know little about why some VCs may be better than others at assessing the technical-competence of ventures. We gathered unique and proprietary data from 33 VCs and 308 ventures that sought series A funding from those VCs. We show that VC assessment of ventures predicts VC investment, and venture technical-competence predicts subsequent venture failure. This means that VCs that over-assess ventures are more likely to invest in firms that are more likely to fail. We then …