Venture Capital: an international journal of entrepreneurial finance

The VC Special Issue Call for Papers

While not seeking to be prescriptive, this special issue of Venture Capital : an international journal of entrepreneurial finance seeks to encourage submissions on four particular themes.

First, much of the research on venture capital (and private equity) ignores the time dimension. However, the venture capital market would appear to be a very different place today compared with the late 1990s. We therefore encourage papers which examine the changing investment environment – e.g. fund raising, investment focus, investment criteria, nature of investment opportunities, valuations, terms and conditions and deal structures, post-investment relationships with investee companies, and portfolio management issues.

It is also unclear how recent events have affected the angel market place – what has been the effect of the dot.com collapse and stock market decline on business angels? US evidence points to the growing importance of structured angel groups – or angel syndicates. Papers which explore emerging trends in the angel market place are also welcome.

Second, we are also interested in receiving papers that examine geographical aspects of the venture capital market. Potential topics include finer grained spatial mapping of venture capital investments to identify ‘hot spots' and ‘cold spots', regional differences in the size, structure and operation of angel markets, interactions between venture capital and place (e.g. attitudes of VCs to investing in particular [types of] location), interventions in the US and UK to promote venture capital investing in areas of above average poverty, and evaluations of initiatives to promote venture capital in VC-deficient regions.

Third, scholars have largely ignored the increasing global characteristics of the venture capital industry. Venture capital funds are increasingly raising pan-national funds from both domestic and foreign financial institutions which they will invest in various countries either through syndication with local funds or via their own foreign offices. We therefore welcome papers which explore this increasingly complex flow of capital, which examine the emergence of venture capital industries in developing countries, and which investigate the internationalisation process of venture capital firms.

Fourth, in order to counter-balance the plethora of papers on the supply-side, we welcome papers which examine aspects of the demand for venture capital. In view of the increasing popularity of ‘investment readiness' programmes amongst government agencies papers which evaluate this form of intervention would be particularly appropriate.

We also welcome papers that develop new methodological approaches to study the venture capital market.