Why business angels reject investment opportunities: Is it personal?

A major focus of research on business angels has examined their decision-making processes and investment criteria. As business angels reject most of the opportunities that they receive, this article explores the reasons informing such decisions. In view of angel heterogeneity, investment opportunities might be expected to be rejected for differing reasons. Two sources of data are used to examine this issue. Face-to-face interviews with 30 business angels in Scotland and Northern Ireland provided information on typical ‘deal killers’. This was complemented by an Internet survey of United Kingdom that attracted responses from 238 UK business angels. The findings confirm that the main reason for rejection relates to the entrepreneur/management team. However, angel characteristics do not explain the number of reasons given for opportunity rejection nor do they predict the reasons for rejecting investment opportunities. This could be related to the increasing trend for business angels to join organised groups which, in turn, leads to the development of a shared repertoire of investment approaches. We suggest the concept of ‘communities-of-practice’ as an explanation for this finding

Promoting interventions of mental health literacy of teenagers: A systematic review

CONTEXTO: O conceito de literacia em saúde mental foi definido como o conhecimento e as crenças sobre distúrbios mentais que ajudam no seu reconhecimento, gestão ou prevenção. Quer internacionalmente, quer nacionalmente os estudos evidenciam reduzida literacia em saúde mental dos adolescentes e a necessidade de serem desenvolvidas intervenções em contexto escolar para aumentar o seu nível de literacia em saúde mental. OBJETIVO: Foi realizada uma revisão sistemática da literatura com o objetivo de identificar a evidência científica atual e disponível sobre as intervenções promotoras da literacia em saúde mental dos adolescentes. METODOLOGIA: Foi formulada a questão de investigação segundo a mnemónica PICO: Que intervenções (I) promovem a literacia em saúde mental (O) dos adolescentes (P)? e definidos os critérios de selecção dos estudos. Seguidamente foram selecionadas as palavras-chave que permitiram realizar a pesquisa. Foram efetuadas as pesquisas em bases de dados electrónicas durante os meses de Abril e Maio de 2013, para resultados de 2008 a 2013. RESULTADOS: Resultaram 15 artigos em texto completo, dos quais 12 artigos foram excluídos. Foram incluídos 3 artigos submetidos posteriormente à avaliação da sua qualidade metodológica. CONCLUSÕES: Os estudos indicam a necessidade de serem desenvolvidas, validadas e avaliadas intervenções que promovam a literacia em saúde mental dos adolescentes. No entanto, a complexidade das intervenções de promoção da literacia em saúde mental dos adolescentes exige que essas sejam investigadas através de um processo de desenvolvimento, viabilidade/pilotagem, avaliação e implementação

Solving the SME finance puzzle: an examination of demand and supply failure in the UK

Following economic instability after the Global Financial Crisis, the financing of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) growth and productivity has become central to UK government policy for sustainable economic development, evidenced by the establishment of the British Business Bank and Regional Investment Funds. This paper considers demand-side and supply-side failures in the contemporary UK SME finance market. Adopting mixed methods, binary logit regression analysis of the 2015 UK Small Business Survey of 15,502 SMEs is sense-checked using qualitative participatory findings from 6 SME finance support advisors. Findings confirm the importance of SME size, age, management capability and use of appropriate, timely external advice. They support the resource-based view of SME access to finance, contributing to borrower discouragement and under investment, suggesting the need for improved support to upskill entrepreneurs’ financial management and investment readiness and the concept of an ‘holistic entrepreneurial finance ecosystem’ approach to assist UK SME finance

Describe all or just a few? The influence of verbal descriptors on Likert-type variables on items’ and scales’ distribution

The aim of this study is to examine whether and how the use of verbal descriptors at all categories or just at the extremes of 5-point Likert-type items influences the results. Each participant was requested to mark his/her level of agreement with 18 items concerning beliefs on mathematics, using one of the following forms: with verbal descriptors at all categories or just at the extremes. Respondents were found to use more intensively the extreme categories when only these were verbally described. However, these differences were not significant when using summated scales, except in case of severe skewness.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Phase retrieval by hyperplanes

We show that a scalable frame does phase retrieval if and only if the hyperplanes of its orthogonal complements do phase retrieval. We then show this result fails in general by giving an example of a frame for $\mathbb R^3$ which does phase retrieval but its induced hyperplanes fail phase retrieval. Moreover, we show that such frames always exist in $\mathbb R^d$ for any dimension $d$. We also give an example of a frame in $\mathbb R^3$ which fails phase retrieval but its perps do phase retrieval. We will also see that a family of hyperplanes doing phase retrieval in $\mathbb R^d$ must contain at least $2d-2$ hyperplanes. Finally, we provide an example of six hyperplanes in $\mathbb R^4$ which do phase retrieval

Blockchain and other innovations in entrepreneurial finance: implications for future policy

More than a decade after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007–08, entrepreneurial finance has exhibited enormous changes, notably in the rise of alternative nonbank financing. This has been most acutely experienced in the provision and delivery of early stage and innovative business finance—the focus of this special issue. The ensuing innovations in entrepreneurial finance have taken place in developed and developing economies, presenting considerable challenges to policymakers. This editorial paper reviews the special issue articles on this subject and their implications for future research, practice and policy

Patient capital in entrepreneurial finance: a reassessment of the role of business angel investors

The debate on patient capital, particularly in the varieties of capitalism literature, concentrates on institutions and public markets. In this paper we take an entrepreneurial finance perspective to examine the investment attitudes and behaviours of business angels. These represent the biggest source of external risk capital for new and young growing companies and therefore play a critical role in entrepreneurial ecosystems. Drawing on both a detailed review of previous research on business angel investment time horizons, investor engagement and exit behaviour and new survey evidence we conclude that only a minority of angels could be defined as being exit-centric investors. It can be concluded that the vast majority of angels are patient investors in terms of investment intentions, engagement and exit behaviour, largely by default rather than intent. Most do not consider the exit at the investment appraisal stage nor the need for patience

Comparing the linear and non-linear principal component analysis over Likert-type items: An empirical study based on balanced bootstrap

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the similarity of results obtained with linear and nonlinear PCA over Likert-type items. As part of a wider project about students' perceptions of mathematics, this study analyses two dimensions: the usefulness of mathematics and the importance of understanding the concepts. Each dimension is theoretically structured by six items, three with a positive connotation and three with a negative connotation (adaptations of Fennema and Sherman, 1976 and Kloosterman and Stage, 1992). Each item is a statement that seeks to register the intensity of agreement on a 5-point scale. Four questionnaires were constructed: in the first two (A and B) the statements are evaluated by marking the response on a line segment (Visual Analogue Scale), labelled in the extreme and at the midpoint (A) or only at the extremes (B). In the third (C), Likert-type items with five labelled points are used (completely disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree and totally agree), while in D only the extremes are labelled. This work concerns only questionnaires type C and D. Since the variables of this type are structurally ordinal variables (Gob et al, 2007), the use of a nonlinear principal components (e.g. CATPCA) is a possibility for its interdependency analysis. However, the use of linear techniques (PCA) has been widespread as a form of preferential treatment of such data. Do both techniques lead to similar results? If not, then the linearity of the treatment of such items can be questioned. Drawing on the data collected in the study mentioned, and using the balanced bootstrap as proposed in Linting et al (2007), several confidence intervals are built for the objects scores, either obtained through PCA or CATPCA, and for the correlation coefficient between paired dimensions. With these confidence intervals we expect to have a perception of the comparability of the linear and non-linear solutions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Women on the edge of a breakthrough? A stereotype threat theory of women's angel investing

The extent to which women participate in the angel investment market has become an important topic of research and policy interest. Based on UK survey data, we demonstrate that there are systematic but not unequivocal differences between women and men investors on a number of key investor and investment characteristics. We also report indicative evidence that members of women-only networks do differ from women who join mixed networks. Drawing on these results, we develop a stereotype threat theory perspective on women’s angel investing which highlights the cues, consequences, outcomes and responses to stereotype threat. Specifically, we theorise that stereotype threat influences women’s widely reported lower participation in the angel investment market. In addition, stereotype threat theory helps explain both women’s overall active involvement in the angel investment market and their participation in women-only investor networks. We conclude that there is a case for women-only angel networks and training programmes to mitigate the performance and participation consequences of stereotype threat

The effect of shape: Comparing different presentations of response

The aim of this field based work is to study in what measure different presentations of Likert-type items (including “continuous” options, i.e. marking the option on a straight line, with or without middle point and the use of all anchors vs extreme-only labels) induce different behaviours in items or scales distributions. In different areas of knowledge is necessary to know and explore indicators of attitude or motivation, in order to support the decision. To measure these non-measurable quantities, rating scales have been proposed, which intend to gather the “degree of affection” of an individual on a particular object or value. Several studies have evaluated and compared the behaviour of different rating scales. Some focus how to treat the items that compose the scales, others where the main goal is to analyse the scales' shape. As part of a wider project about perceptions of mathematics, four questionnaires were constructed: in the first two (A and B) the statements are evaluated by marking the response on a line segment (Visual Analogue Scale), labelled in the extreme and at the midpoint (A) or only at the extremes (B). In the third (C), Likert-type items with five labelled points are used (completely disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree and totally agree), while in D only the extremes are labelled. We used theoretically-defined summated scales. The responses are compared at a scale level. The performance evaluation was made using location and shape measures, including robust variations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio