Networking Frictions in Venture Capital, and the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship / Sabrina T. Howell, Ramana Nanda.

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Howell, Sabrina T

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Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w26449.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: Exploiting random variation in the number of venture capitalist (VC) judges assigned to panels at Harvard Business School's New Venture Competition (NVC) between 2000 and 2015, we find that exposure to more VC judges increases male participants' chances of founding a VC-backed startup after HBS much more than this exposure increases female participants' chances. A survey suggests this is in part because male participants more often proactively reach out to VC judges after the NVC. Our results suggest that networking frictions are an important reason men benefit more than women from exposure to VCs. Such frictions can help explain part of the gender gap in entrepreneurship, and also have implications for how to design networking opportunities to facilitate financing of the best (rather than just the best networked) ideas.

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Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w26449 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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November 2019.

Exploiting random variation in the number of venture capitalist (VC) judges assigned to panels at Harvard Business School's New Venture Competition (NVC) between 2000 and 2015, we find that exposure to more VC judges increases male participants' chances of founding a VC-backed startup after HBS much more than this exposure increases female participants' chances. A survey suggests this is in part because male participants more often proactively reach out to VC judges after the NVC. Our results suggest that networking frictions are an important reason men benefit more than women from exposure to VCs. Such frictions can help explain part of the gender gap in entrepreneurship, and also have implications for how to design networking opportunities to facilitate financing of the best (rather than just the best networked) ideas.