People Financing Entrepreneurs within and outside the Family: Pandemic Decline and Resilience in Cultures around the World

People may finance entrepreneurs, often family members. Here, the question is: how has the COVID-19 pandemic affected people’s funding of family-related entrepreneurs and non-family-related entrepreneurs? The pandemic predictably reduced the funding of family-related entrepreneurs and especially the financing of non-family-related entrepreneurs. However, a culture supportive of family businesses may alleviate the declining funding of family-related entrepreneurs, predictably, while a secular–rational culture supportive of non-family businesses may alleviate the declining financing of non-family-related entrepreneurs. Similar to a field experiment, a globally representative survey was conducted before and after the disruption in 42 countries, interviewing 266,983 adults either before or after the disruption. The individual-level data are combined with national-level data on culture, amenable to hierarchical linear modeling. People’s financing of family-related entrepreneurs and especially of non-family-related entrepreneurs are found to have declined with the COVID-19 pandemic. However, culture provides resilience, in that the declining funding of family-related entrepreneurs was alleviated where the culture supports family businesses, and the declining funding of non-family-related entrepreneurs was alleviated in societies with a secular–rational culture. The findings contribute to contextualizing business angel financing temporally, as embedded in time before and after the COVID-19 pandemic disruption, and societally, as embedded in culture providing resilience.

Development of Academic Technological Entrepreneurship in Russia

Technology entrepreneurs play a critical role in modern models of economic growth. At the same time, the features and development trajectories of technological entrepreneurship and gazelle firms in Russia differ from countries with mature market economies. The purpose of the article is to assess the state of academic technology entrepreneurship in Russian universities and to develop recommendations for its development. The methods of two-dimensional classification of universities according to two indicators of technological entrepreneurship development, correlation analysis, assessment of intergroup differences according to the Mann-Whitney U-criterion, qualitative analysis of entrepreneurial ecosystems in universities, methods of constructing algorithms were used. As a result, it was found that the number of start-ups and the likelihood of receiving commercial funding are practically not correlated. There is a group of universities that are not among the largest metropolitan universities, but have a high proportion of entrepreneurial projects that have successfully passed the seed stage and received commercial funding (business angel, venture fund). These top performing universities are distinguished not only by their innovative infrastructure, but also by a wide variety of community centers. Taking into account the results obtained an algorithm for the development of academic technological entrepreneurship on the basis of the university as an innovation hub has been developed. Its important elements are: pre-active marketing of scientific research groundwork, development of the social capital of the ecosystem, and collaboration practices. The results may be of interest to technology entrepreneurs themselves, as well as to universities interested in the development of academic entrepreneurship.

Success factors of initial coin offerings

This study furthers recent research on Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) in understanding the set of characteristics that drive ICO performance and reduce information asymmetry. Using data on 166 ICOs and more than 300,000 contribution addresses that sent funds to ICOs in Bitcoins or in Ether between 2013 and 2017, we examined the effect of ICO characteristics on ICO performance. We found that three boundary conditions predict ICO fundraising amount, number of investors, hard cap achievement and token ranking. These are registering ICO and publishing project’s code on GitHub, obtaining VC or Business angel financing before the campaign or during presale, and finally, publishing the whitepaper before the campaign’s start. Other factors such as serial investors, presale of tokens, bonus sales and funders' ownership share explain ICO performance. We offer implications for ICO investors and policymakers.

Women Entrepreneurs and Business Angel: A Difficult Relationship

This article aims to analyze the phenomenon of the business angel, considered one of the main ways of obtaining external financing by women entrepreneurs. Through a search conducted on the Scopus database, 26 articles have been selected that deal with the problem of finding external sources required by women entrepreneurs. It has been shown that women entrepreneurs are discriminated against by business angels for various reasons including the lack of work experience acquired, the level of education and the lack of social networks useful for interacting with them. The business angel phenomenon has been analyzed in China, Japan, and Sweden, therefore, research could be conducted in Italy, given the scarcity. Furthermore, only the business angel was analyzed as a source of external financing so other ways to receive resources from the external environment could be discussed. This is an article that deals with the problem on how women entrepreneurs find themselves having to face when they decide to start their own business.

An institutional approach to the development of business angel networks in Latin American emerging countries

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to analyze the development of business angel networks (BANs) in emerging countries such as Chile and Colombia to understand how institutions affect their development. Design/methodology/approach This is a qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive study based on a comparative analysis between countries, with the BANs in Chile and Colombia as the unit of observation. The comparative analysis was made in relation with the creation, operation and sustainability of the BANs. The study interviews the partners/managers of the active networks in each of the countries, as well as key informants, totalling 12 interviews. Findings BAN activity in Chile and Colombia is quite recent, and the countries are on a similar level of development. However, in the long term, depending on how the cultural aspects evolve in both countries and the interest that the State may have in developing business angel activity, the results could be indeed different. Originality/value Business angel activity in Latin America is quite recent; nevertheless, this activity is increasing in the region. In that sense, this comparative analysis between Colombia and Chile contributes to a better understanding of business angel markets in Latin America and also to obtain better insights into the core challenges that these markets face in emerging countries due to the existence of institutional voids. This paper is a contribution for further knowledge of BANs in emerging countries’ economies from an institutional perspective.