Massimo Colombo

The Impact of Venture Capital Monitoring in Europe

In this paper we aim to empirically test the monitoring effect of Venture Capital financing on portfolio companies. Following Bernstein et al. (2015), we exploit the introduction of a new airline route between investor and investee locations as an exogenous shock lowering the cost of monitoring activities performed by a venture capitalist. Using a sample of 9,564 investments by lead VC investors in Europe, we test how this treatment affects portfolio companies’ performances in terms of the likelihood of being listed or acquired, the number of patents, the number of employees and the amount of sales. Our results show that VC monitoring has a positive and economically relevant effect on European portfolio companies along most of these performance measures, but with different time horizons.

Cambiamenti strategici in risposta alla crisi e crescita delle giovani imprese ad alta tecnologia

As the world economy battles a global crisis of historical breadth and depth, NTBFs (new technology-based firms) are navigating in rough seas. In fact, the radical changes in the competitive arena triggered by the crisis are prompting NTBFs to change their strategies in order to reorient resources and capabilities. The paper adopts the dynamic capabilities perspective to shed light on two research questions: (i) What is the impact on the growth of an NTBF of its dynamic capability to reorient the firm’s strategies to deal with the crisis? and (ii) What are the precursors of this dynamic capability? The paper develops and tests a set of hypotheses using a unique dataset of Italian NTBFs. The econometric results of our analysis show that such dynamic capabilities have a positive effect on NTBF growth and, moreover, that these are positively correlated with the industry-specific technical work experience of the founders of the NTBFs, the NTBFs’ presence as insiders in the international markets, their forging of technological alliances, and their limited resources.

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.