Introduction
In high technology industries, product development is often an extremely time- and moneyconsuming
process. For example, the development of biopharmaceutical products requires several
hundreds of millions $US and more than 10 years, with most product candidates failing during the
R&D process (DiMasi, 1995; DiMasi et al., 2003). Therefore it is one of the major challenges for
technology venture managers to acquire sufficient capital to finance the product development process
(Fildes, 1990; Nosella et al., 2006). Since most high-technology ventures turn to the venture capital
(VC) market to finance their R&D activities (Gompers and Lerner, 2004) the scope of this research is to
J. Eng. Technol. Manage. 27 (2010) 131–147
A R T I C L E I N F O
JEL classification:
L25
L26
Keywords:
Venture capital
CEOs
Human capital
Acquisition of venture capital
New technology ventures
Biopharmaceutical industry
A B S T R A C T
We combine signalling and human capital theory to analyze how
competencies of new venture CEOs impact the amount of money
technology ventures acquire in venture capital (VC) financing
rounds. Using data on 117 financing events in the biotechnology
industry, we show that education in management, founder-based
firm-specific experience, international experience, and industryspecific
experience of the CEO impact the VCs’ financial commitments.
Moreover,we find that the effects of management education
and industry experience are moderated by the size of the venture’s
top management team. We discuss the implications of these
findings for the research literature on technology ventures and
venture capital.
2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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E-mail address: patzelt@tum.de.
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Journal of Engineering and
Technology Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jengtecman
0923-4748/$ – see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jengtecman.2010.06.001