Venture Capital Contracting and the Valuation of High-technology Firms

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 27, 2004)
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536 pages
Venture capitalists are specialized intermediaries that channel capital to firms and professional services to companies that might otherwise be excluded from the corporate debt market and other sources of private finance. Venture capital financing is used to invest mainly in small and medium size firms with good growth and exit potential. Typically, venture capital firms concentrate in industries with a great deal of uncertainty, where the information gaps among entrepreneurs and venture capitalist are commonplace. Venture capital firms are active in sectors with a high informational opacity and agency costs. These ventures are identified as financially constrained. Start-up firms rely on venture capital as one of their main sources of funding. Recent empirical research has found that the effect of venture capital on the success of these ventures is considerable. The value of venture capital investment is borne out by the figures which show that venture capital backed-firms grow on average twice as fast as those not backed by venture capital firms. The debate on the development of an efficient venture capital market has forced us to consider which financial instruments, legal rules, labour laws, contracts, and other institutional structures are necessary to create a venture capital market. The contributions to this book have offered insights on the structure of venture capital fund financial contracts, the screening, monitoring and staging of potential investments, the importance of partnership and other legal business forms for investors and start-up firms, the funding of innovation, the valuation of investments, and the exit routes for venture capitalists. The essays in this volume, which draw upon international evidence and ideas from financial economics and law, contribute to further research on the relationship between venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. This collection analyses the main legal and contracting structures in the venture capital cycle. Exploring the differences between the US and European venture capital markets, it focuses on diverse organizational and contractual techniques, such as staged finance, convertible securities, board functions and other forms of control, and the role of exit. Theoretical chapters examine the valuation of entrepreneurial firms and the liquidiation preference in convertible securities. Finally, the book assesses the importance of the IPO market for entrepreneurs, investors and venture capitalists alike.

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