relations materials, investment information, and
product information were eventually more successful
than others. The observed variance suggests
that many entrepreneurs believe either that
strict conformity to a solicitation protocol is counterproductive
or that such a protocol does not
exist.
First, we created a dummy variable D DOCS to
indicate if a funding request included documents.
To facilitate interpretation and increase parsimony,
we aggregated the request characteristics into three
mutually exclusive categories. If a business plan
or private placement memorandum was included
in the request, the variable BUS PLAN took the
value one and zero otherwise. If an executive summary
was submitted but a business plan or private
placement memorandum was not submitted, EXEC
SUM took the value one and zero otherwise. Those
requests that failed to meet these two conditions
made up the third group of funding proposals.
Note that proposals in this third group may have
included other types of documents.