Venture Capital Investment in the Clean Energy Sector

We examine the extent to which venture capital is adequately positioned for the rapid commercialization of clean energy technologies in the United States. While there are several startups in clean energy that are well-suited to the traditional venture capital investment model, our analysis highlights a number of structural challenges related to VC investment in the sector that are particularly acute for startups involved in the production of clean energy. One of key bottlenecks threatening innovation in energy production is the inability of VCs to exit their investments at the appropriate time. This hurdle did exist in industries such as biotechnology and communications networking that faced a similar problem when they first emerged, but was ultimately overcome by changes in the innovation ecosystem. However, incumbents in the oil and power sector are different in two respects. First, they are producing a commodity and hence face little end-user pressure to adopt new technologies. Second, they do not tend to feel as threatened by potential competition from clean energy startups, given the market structure and regulatory environment in the energy sector. We highlight that the problem is unlikely to get solved without the active involvement of the government. Even if it does, historical experience suggests it may take several years.

Patent collateral, investor commitment, and the market for venture lending

This paper investigates the market for lending to technology startups (i.e., venture lending) and examines two mechanisms that may facilitate trade within it: (1) the ‘salability’ of patent collateral; and (2) the credible commitment of existing equity investors. We find that intensified trading in the secondary patent market is strongly related to the annual rate of startup lending, particularly for startups with more redeployable patent assets. Moreover, we show that the credibility of venture capitalist commitments to reinvest in their startups’ next round of financing can be critical for startup debt provision. Utilizing the crash of 2000 as a severe and unexpected capital supply shock for VCs, we show that lenders continue to finance startups with recently funded investors better able to credibly commit to refinance their portfolio companies, but withdraw from otherwise-promising projects that may have needed their funds the most. The findings are consistent with predictions of incomplete contracting and financial intermediation theory.Accepted manuscrip

German crowd-investing platforms: Literature review and survey

This article presents a comprehensive overview of the current German crowd-investing market drawing on a data-set of 31 crowd-investing platforms including the analysis of 265 completed projects. While crowd-investing market still only represents a niche in the German venture capital market, there is potential for an increase in both market volume and in average project investment. The market share is distributed among a few crowd-investing platforms with high entry barriers for new platforms although platforms that specialise in certain sectors have managed to successfully enter the market. German crowd-investing platforms are found to promote mainly internet-based enterprises (36%) followed by projects in real estate (24%) and green projects (19%), with the median money raised 100,000 euro

A Progression Model of Software Engineering Goals, Challenges, and Practices in Start-Ups

Context: Software start-ups are emerging as suppliers of innovation and software-intensive products. However, traditional software engineering practices are not evaluated in the context, nor adopted to goals and challenges of start-ups. As a result, there is insufficient support for software engineering in the start-up context. Objective: We aim to collect data related to engineering goals, challenges, and practices in start-up companies to ascertain trends and patterns characterizing engineering work in start-ups. Such data allows researchers to understand better how goals and challenges are related to practices. This understanding can then inform future studies aimed at designing solutions addressing those goals and challenges. Besides, these trends and patterns can be useful for practitioners to make more informed decisions in their engineering practice. Method: We use a case survey method to gather first-hand, in-depth experiences from a large sample of software start-ups. We use open coding and cross-case analysis to describe and identify patterns, and corroborate the findings with statistical analysis. Results: We analyze 84 start-up cases and identify 16 goals, 9 challenges, and 16 engineering practices that are common among start-ups. We have mapped these goals, challenges, and practices to start-up life-cycle stages (inception, stabilization, growth, and maturity). Thus, creating the progression model guiding software engineering efforts in start-ups. Conclusions: We conclude that start-ups to a large extent face the same challenges and use the same practices as established companies. However, the primary software engineering challenge in start-ups is to evolve multiple process areas at once, with a little margin for serious errors

From Lab Bench to Innovation: Critical Challenges to Nascent Academic Entrepreneurs

University research laboratories are important sources of the inventions and discoveries that become significant innovations with broad economic and societal impact. Invention alone is not innovation; innovation is the long, hard work of taking new technologies and bringing them to commercialization.There are many pathways for the dissemination of new knowledge that arises from basic research at universities, ranging from traditional methods such as publication and training students to licensing technology to established firms or new ventures.One way to transform new knowledge into valuable innovations is for university researchers to undertake the creation of new firms based on their discoveries through academic entrepreneurship. The problem is that university scientists and inventors with a discovery made at a laboratory bench face challenges beyond those experienced by traditional high-technology venture founders: they must finish creating the technology before they can begin using it.Academics typically start with inventions so immature that their commercial success cannot be predicted Academic entrepreneurship is an emerging and developing phenomenon, and there is a growing body of literature about new ventures based on university academic. However, limited research has been directed toward nascent academic entrepreneurs (NAEs) to understand the key challenges of bringing innovations to market. The majority of this work has focused on the institutional experience rather than the academic entrepreneurs and their individual experiences . Within the broader fields of entrepreneurship and innovation, it has been argued that high-potential startups such as academic ventures should receive particular attention from scholarsThe following research addressed this gap.Nascent academic entrepreneurship involves more than transforming an invention into a commercialized innovation. It is about the genesis of ideas and the emergence of opportunities, the birth of new organizations, their evolution into new companies, and the transformation of scientists into leaders. It also is about providing the foundation for future innovation by others. Though nascent academic entrepreneurship is increasing in frequency, it is not well understood. The dissertation examines this important topic

Impact of Leadership for Startup Companies

Startups play a vital role in employment opportunities, creating new markets, and economic developments in a nation. However, several challenges, such as financial and scalability factors, confront startups at the initial stages because of the highly uncertain startup business environment. Recent research has confirmed that the development of startups is indeed connected to leadership. A literature review revealed that entrepreneurial leadership, as opposed to mainstream leadership theories, is more suitable to explain the complex leadership process in startup growth and development. A qualitative, single case study was conducted to investigate the leadership characteristics of successful startup founders to explain the impact of leadership on startup performance. The researcher adopted the primary data collection method to include interviews with 17 founders and leaders from four startup companies. Four data themes were identified: The impact of leadership behavior on startup culture; Leadership approaches driving startup success; Developing emerging leadership behavior because of changing startup business environment; and Improved organizational performance driven by leadership development. Compared to an extensive literature review and anticipated themes, the finding the impact of leadership behavior on startup culture was the most significant, followed closely by Developing emerging leadership behavior because of changing startup business environment. Overall, the emerging leadership styles, including entrepreneurial leadership and humble leadership, appeared to have a positive impact on startup performance. However, the humble leadership style was not explored in the literature review because of its infancy in the academic circle. As a result, it does not contribute significantly to the existing body of knowledge

Diachronic profile of startup companies through social media

Peixoto, A. R., Almeida, A. D., António, N., Batista, F., & Ribeiro, R. (2023). Diachronic profile of startup companies through social media. Social Network Analysis and Mining, 13(1), 1-18. [52]. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-023-01055-2 --- Funding: Open access funding provided by FCT|FCCN (b-on). This work was partially supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT) namely by ISTAR Projects: UIDB/04466/2020 and UIDP/04466/2020; UIDB/04152/2020 (MagIC/NOVA IMS); and UIDB/50021/2020 (INESC-ID).Social media platforms have become powerful tools for startups, helping them find customers and raise funding. In this study, we applied a social media intelligence-based methodology to analyze startups’ content and to understand how their communication strategies may differ during their scaling process. To understand if a startup’s social media content reflects its current business maturation position, we first defined an adequate life cycle model for startups based on funding rounds and product maturity. Using Twitter as the source of information and selecting a sample of known Portuguese IT startups at different phases of their life cycle, we analyzed their Twitter data. After preprocessing the data, using latent Dirichlet allocation, topic modeling techniques enabled the categorization of the data according to the topics arising in the published contents of the startups, making it possible to discover that contents can be grouped into five specific topics: “Fintech and ML,” “IT,” “Business Operations,” “Product/Service R&D,” and “Bank and Funding.” By comparing those profiles against the startup’s life cycle, we were able to understand how contents change over time. This provided a diachronic profile for each company, showing that while certain topics remain prevalent in the startup’s scaling, others depend on a particular phase of the startup’s cycle. Our analysis revealed that startups’ social media content differs along their life cycle, highlighting the importance of understanding how startups use social media at different stages of their development.publishersversioninpres

German crowd-investing platforms: Literature review and survey

This article presents a comprehensive overview of the current German crowd-investing market drawing on a data-set of 31 crowd-investing platforms including the analysis of 265 completed projects. While crowd-investing market still only represents a niche in the German venture capital market, there is potential for an increase in both market volume and in average project investment. The market share is distributed among a few crowd-investing platforms with high entry barriers for new platforms although platforms that specialise in certain sectors have managed to successfully enter the market. German crowd-investing platforms are found to promote mainly internet-based enterprises (36%) followed by projects in real estate (24%) and green projects (19%), with the median money raised 100,000 euro

The Role of Technology Pivots in Software Startups: Antecedents and Consequences

Software startups implement and deploy innovative software-based products and services, for which they are in search of a viable and scalable business model. In the well-established Lean Startup Approach, pivoting – testing new fundamental hypotheses about a product, strategy, or engine of growth – is a standard method applied in this process. Failing to pivot at the right time and for the right reasons can substantially jeopardize a startup’s chance to develop into a viable business. Given the alleged importance of pivots, surprisingly little is known about the events leading up to and resulting from pivots. Our study starts to fill this gap in theoretical knowledge by empirically investigating the circumstances under which it is beneficial to perform pivots and what to expect from them for product development, business model development and innovation. Focusing on technology pivots – one specific type of pivot – we use an embedded inductive multi-case research design to propose a preliminary model that identifies three prerequisites, five antecedent and nine consequence categories of technology pivots. Lastly, we discuss the impact of technology pivots on individual business model dimensions