Venture Boards - Empirical Evidence from Venture Capital-backed Start-Ups in the U.S.

While startup financing via angel financing and venture capital has received considerable attention in the academic literature, organizational issues such as the creation of boards at the early stage and their structure are not well-understood. Our main research question thereby is: Why do venture boards matter and what is their role in the context of corporate governance?

In order to provide a description of the venture capital industry’s best practice with respect to the implementation of venture boards, we specifically look at

− the timing of the creation of these boards (e.g. in the context of the funding history of and the life-cycle of the start-up),

− the composition of both boards of directors and advisory boards according to their functions (start-up managers and founders, venture capital investors, industry experts, etc.

− the skills and experiences of the board members and the complementarities with the skills of the founding team

− the evolution of boards over time (i.e. who leaves and/or joins the board, at which stage).

We use a hand-collected dataset of venture capital-backed technology ventures in the U.S. Thereby we merge firm data with detailed biographical information about the founders, key executives and board members.

Data work has been completed; a first related paper has been written and submited to SAFE WP/Journal

Main paper: still work in progress to be completed by the end of 2015.