Massimiliano Guerini

Crowdfunding in Europe: Determinants of Platform Creation across Countries

While the crowdfunding phenomenon has attracted considerable practitioner and scholarly attention, existing research predominantly reflects a U.S.-centric perspective. This article examines crowdfunding platform creation in 15 European countries. Despite the omnipresent reach of the internet, national boundaries shape the evolution of the European crowdfunding industry. Specifically, crowdfunding platform creation varies across countries and distinct national patterns emerge for crowdfunding activity in general. Moreover, econometric analyses suggest that country-level factors influence platform creation in European countries, with interesting variations across four crowdfunding models: Donation, Reward, Lending, and Equity.

How university and industry knowledge interact to determine local entrepreneurship

This article discusses and empirically investigates whether and how university knowledge and industry knowledge interact to determine the creation of knowledge-intensive firms (KIFs) in a geographic area. In line with the knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship (KSTE), we find that both knowledge types matter for stimulating local entrepreneurship. However, our findings document that university knowledge exerts an effect just in areas where industry knowledge is low. In other words, the two types of knowledge do not generate synergetic gains, but are substitutes.

How Universities Contribute to the Creation of Knowledge Intensive Firms: Detailed Evidence on the Italian Case

Using information on new knowledge intensive firms (KIFs) and universities in Italy, this chapter explores whether and how new KIFs creation at the local level depends on university presence. We evaluate the impact on new KIFs creation of: i) the different knowledge inputs offered by universities to geographical areas in which they are embedded and ii) the field of science in which universities are specialized. Moreover, we study whether and how the impact of university presence on new KIFs creation in a geographical area depends on economic development. After having classified data into geographical units (NUTS 3 level, Italian provinces), according to the location of new KIFs and universities, we estimate negative binomial regression models, where the dependent variable is the number of new KIFs in each Italian province. Results suggest that new KIFs creation at the local level is influenced by university presence. Furthermore, university specialization in the field of engineering and medical sciences positively influences new KIFs creation at the local level. Finally, we find a strong and significant effect of university presence in southern less developed provinces. Conversely, our data document that university presence does not affect new KIFs creation in northern, well developed provinces. We interpret these findings in light of the Italian North-South divide.

Angel Financing and the Performance of High-Tech Start-Ups

In this paper, we investigate what drives the performance of high‐tech start‐ups receiving angel financing, while taking a closer look at the capabilities (i.e., experience) and investment behavior of business angels (BAs). We exploit a new data set (extracted from Crunchbase), which consists of 1,933 high‐tech start‐ups that received at least one financing round from a BA. The results indicate that the experience of BAs in early stage investments is positively associated with additional receipt of follow‐on rounds of financing and sequential capital injections from venture capitalists (VCs). Later‐stage experience is positively associated with the start‐ups success (i.e., probability to be listed or acquired), but reduces the need for new VCs to invest in the start‐up. Furthermore, we find consistent evidence that start‐ups that combine BA and VC financing experience higher levels of funding amounts, additional VC financing, and an improved likelihood of success. Finally, we find that the co‐localization of BA investors and start‐ups in the same area facilitates the attraction of VC financing.

Crowdfunding in Italy: state of the art and future prospects

The article presents the status of the crowdfunding market in Italy and discusses its future prospects. After defining the crowdfunding phenomenon and highlighting its main elements, we present the results from the Italian Crowdfunding Observatory, managed by the three authors at the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering of Politecnico of Milano.

Is the Italian Government effective in relaxing the financial constraints of high technology firms

The present work analyses the effect of public finance on firm investments in a longitudinal sample of 293 Italian unlisted owner-managed, new technology-based firms (NTBFs), observed over a 10-year period from 1994 to 2003. We find that large, old NTBFs and those located in the north of Italy are not financially constrained, while small, young NTBFs and those located in the south of Italy rely significantly on internal capital to finance their investments. Public finance may play a prominent role for these latter firms. Indeed, empirical evidence shows that receipt of public subsidies by financially constrained NTBFs results in a reduction of investment–cash flow sensitivity in the long run. We interpret these results as an indication of the relaxation of financial constraints. Moreover, we find that, after receiving public finance, young and small firms increase their investment rate while NTBFs located in the southern regions do not. Nonetheless, small and young NTBFs benefit greatly from public intervention, but are less likely to obtain public support than their larger and older peers. Italian policy measures have also paid particular attention to NTBFs located in the south of Italy, but we find that public finance has no effect on the investment rate for southern NTBFs. This evidence raises some doubts about the overall efficacy of Italian governmental intervention in this domain.

Does informal risk capital relax the financial constraints of high-tech entrepreneurial ventures?

This work analyses the effect of informal risk capital financing on a firm’s investment/cash flow sensitivity (ICFS) in a sample of 498 Italian privately held high-tech entrepreneurial ventures (HTEVs) observed from 1996 to 2008. To detect financial constraints, we resort to an error correction model (ECM). We find that the receipt of informal risk capital in the seed stage results in reduced ICFS, indicating a persistent relaxation of financial constraints.

How and When Venture Capital Affects the Investment of Portfolio Firms

This work studies how and when venture capital (VC) affects the investment of its portfolio firms. We estimate an Error Correction Model that takes into account the non-linearity of the investment curve on a sample of 361 young high-tech firms in 6 European countries. The direct effect of VC on firms investment is positive and significant only when internal financial constrains are limited. The indirect effect of VC determines a structural change in the investment curve through the reduction of external financial constraints. This effect is particularly significant when firms receive follow-on rounds.

The Effectiveness of Public Venture Capital in Supporting the Investments of European Young High-Tech Companies

This work studies the extent to which the investments of young high-tech companies in Europe are supported by public venture capital (PVC) financing. We estimate an investment equation derived from a sales accelerator model, and benchmark PVC to the most well-known category of venture capital: independent venture capital (IVC). To take into account unobserved firm heterogeneity and the endogenous nature of VC financing, we resort to a system generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM) including external instruments for PVC and IVC variables. The sample includes a panel of 1,312 young high-tech manufacturing companies from six European countries. Our results confirm that European young high-tech companies are financially constrained and that IVC is effective both in increasing firms investments and in alleviating their dependence on current cash flows. The impact of PVC is, instead, very limited. PVC-backed firms increase their investments right after a financing round, but no effect is observed in the long term. Moreover the investments of PVC-backed firms are still affected by their current cash flows.

The Enlargement of the Managerial Ranks of Entrepreneurial Ventures: The Case of High-Tech Start-Ups

In this paper, we consider the first enlargement of the managerial ranks of entrepreneurial ventures since firm foundation. This can occur either by taking on board a new owner-manager or by appointing a salaried manager who reports to the entrepreneurial team. In order to analyze this phenomenon we propose a novel interpretative framework that acknowledges the presence of multi-level drivers. We provide a series of hypotheses and investigate them empirically through the estimates of survival data analysis and competing risks models on a sample of Italian New Technology-Based Firms observed over the 1994-2003 year period. The empirical analysis indicates that the addition of a new owner-manager and the appointment of a salaried manager are two faces of the same coin, having several common antecedents at different levels. However, it also reveals some specific drivers of the two events.