Beggars or choosers? Lead venture capitalists and the impact of reputation on syndicate partner selection in international settings

摘要

We investigate the importance of reputation for lead venture capitalists' choice of international and domestic syndicate partners for domestic deals. Our study is based on a novel dataset of global syndicated investments covering the period 2005 to 2014 and comprising 46,101 triads among lead investors, syndicate partners, and portfolio firms. We find reputation to be more relevant in selecting cross-border co-investors than local co-investors. The results are consistent for our international and domestic reputation scores as well as for single reputation components such as equity invested, number of investments, or number of IPO exits. In addition, we show that the reputation of the lead investor matters in international syndicate partner selection. Highly reputed venture capitalists seem to follow an intricate decision model in which they carefully choose cross-border partners over domestic ones. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.