Business angels and accelerators : do they look for the same criteria when investing in early stage ventures?

• Autor(a) principal: Marçal, Bernardo Miguel Camilo
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/29261
• topic: Entrepreneurship; New venture; Early stage ventures; Business Angel (BA); Accelerator; New value creation; Venture capital; Private investors; Empreendedorismo; Novas empresas; Criação de valor; Capital de risco; Investidores privados; Start-ups; Investimento; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

Entrepreneurship has been a crucial field for the advancement of the worldwide economy as the entrepreneurial ecosystem is responsible for a large part of the innovation produced globally. However, for ventures in their infant stages, access to capital is a limitation. At the very initial stage, the ventures really on bootstrapping but these funds are often limited. Therefore, in order to make ventures grow, firms need to raise external capital since, as these firms are just starting, recurring to debt and specially banks is very difficult. Two of the most commonly used financing sources at this stage are Business Angels and Accelerators. Thus, it is very important to understand what are the criteria these two investment vehicles consider more relevant when investing, as the majority of the ventures fail at this stage of development. After reviewing the existent literature, a survey was conducted in order to understand the criteria Business Angels and Accelerators consider more important. The survey had a total of 39 participants. The results of the study indicate that the entrepreneur and the team are very important factor however, it was not possible to prove that it is the most important for early stage investors. Nonetheless, it was proved the financial information related to the venture is highly value for Business Angels and Accelerators.