The timing dilemma: understanding the determinants of innovative startups’ patent collateralization for loans

The expanding practice of accepting patents as collateral for loans has increasingly caught academic attention and the value of a patent has been verified as an important determinant. In this paper, we focus on validity and uncertainty in the context of innovative startups’ patent pledge valuation, arguing that their interplay poses a timing dilemma to lenders. Our empirical tests utilized a database of Chinese innovative startups and their patents for the period 2008–2015. Using patent age as a proxy for time, our findings demonstrate that timing dynamically influences the collateralization potential of a patent. The results also suggest that lenders can use information cues from third parties, such as venture capital backing from the market and high-tech certification from the government, to cope with this timing dilemma, however in different ways. Thus, we advance existing literature on startups’ debt financing by expanding the range of patent collateralization determinants to include dynamic multilevel factors.