Three essays on investor behaviour and entrepreneurial resource-acquisition

Sarkar, Sayan (2021) Three essays on investor behaviour and entrepreneurial resource-acquisition. Doctoral thesis, University of London: London Business School.

Abstract

Securing resources, such as financing, is key to ensuring the growth and survival of all organizations, and especially that of new ventures, engines of innovation in today’s knowledgebased economy. And resource-acquisition success of entrepreneurial firms is driven by investors making decisions in the face of high uncertainty and relative lack of information prevalent in the entrepreneurship landscape. In order to march forward with investment decisions despite these challenges, investors are liable to use information or cues that are extraneous to entrepreneurial strategy, or subjectively construct investment opportunities in their minds. Advancing knowledge of performance variance among ventures therefore calls for advancing what we know about how investors process uncertainty along these lines. This dissertation – comprising three interlinked yet distinct studies - is a step towards that direction, with the eventual aim of contributing to the broader strategy & entrepreneurship field. In the first study, drawing on insights from information processing and judgement & decision-making, I examine how properties of entrepreneurial strategy gives rise to investor disagreement, and the performance implications. I study this in the context of investor disagreement on social media at the point of ventures going public, i.e., doing IPOs in the United States. In the second study, I look at the role transient, contextual shocks can play in determining ventures’ funding outcomes. Drawing on affect-as-information theory, I postulate that sunnier days improve investors mood, resulting in greater likelihood of investment. Support is found from an archival study of European accelerator demo day programmes, and an experimental study. The third and final study is based on a nuanced perspective on how entrepreneurial metaphors in pitches influence investors. Going beyond existing literature that mostly groups metaphors together (and finding unclear evidence of how they influence the investor), I contend that different metaphors will have differential effects in shaping investors response to a venture’s prospects. Empirical support is drawn from a qualitative study of online crowdfunding campaigns and an experimental study.