Federal ID: 91-6001537
ISSN: 0022-1090 (Print) | 1756-6916 (Online)
Networking Frictions in Venture Capital, and the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship
Sabrina T. Howell and Ramana Nanda
♦ We find that male participants in Harvard Business School’s New Venture Competition who were randomly exposed to more VC investors on their panel were substantially more likely to start a VC-backed startup post-graduation, indicating that access to investors impacts fundraising independent of the quality of ideas. However, female participants experience no benefit from exposure to male or female VCs, which appears related to a reduced propensity to reach out to VCs to whom they were exposed. Our results therefore also demonstrate gender-based differences in the degree to which increased exposure to investors can address networking frictions in venture capital.
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