The influence of media coverage on venture capital performance and evaluation: Evidence from post-IPO media coverage of portfolio startups and the venture capital firm’s subsequent fundraising

Management scholars have long been interested in the socio-cognitive perspective of organizational evaluation. This approach is of particular value in entrepreneurship, where strictly analytical and economic tools are insufficient in making resource allocation decisions. I apply this approach to examine whether and how VC firms derive benefit from their associations with startups that they invested in the past. I suggest a unique role of the media through which it enhances the accessibility of VC firms perceptually associated with the media-spotlighted startup protégés and so enhances those firms’ performance. In doing so, I model an inverse and reciprocal influence of association (i.e., one that flows from protégé to endorser) that has not been explored in prior research. The empirical setting is the U.S. VC industry from the years 1980 to 2018. My methodology is also distinct in that it used big data strategies to construct and validate a dataset of roughly 700,000 newspaper articles identified at the organization level covering 2,176 VC firms and 2,301 startups that successfully went through IPO exits. My results support the main prediction that association with protégé’s that gain high media coverage enhances VC firm performance. I discuss implications and further research questions raised by the dissertation.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Business Administration

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2021

Author dc:creator

• Kim, Hyunsun

Contributors dc:contributor

• Love, E. Geoffrey
• Kraatz, Matthew S.
• Bednar, Michael K.
• Schijven, Mario
• Lammers, John C.

• Entrepreneurship
• media effects
• venture capital
• startups

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2021 Hyunsun Kim

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/110694

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F110694