IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jfinqa/v59y2024i6p2733-2761_8.html

Networking Frictions in Venture Capital, and the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship

Author

Listed:
  • Howell, Sabrina T.
  • Nanda, Ramana

Abstract

We find that male participants in Harvard Business School’s New Venture Competition who were randomly exposed to more venture capital (VC) investors on their panel were substantially more likely to start a VC-backed startup post-graduation, indicating that access to investors impacts fundraising independent of the quality of ideas. However, female participants experience no benefit from exposure to male or female venture capitalists (VCs), which appears related to a reduced propensity to reach out to VCs to whom they were exposed. Our results therefore also demonstrate gender-based differences in the degree to which increased exposure to investors can address networking frictions in venture capital.

Suggested Citation

  • Howell, Sabrina T. & Nanda, Ramana, 2024. "Networking Frictions in Venture Capital, and the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 59(6), pages 2733-2761, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jfinqa:v:59:y:2024:i:6:p:2733-2761_8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022109023000819/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thomas Hellmann & Ilona Mostipan & Nir Vulkan, 2019. "Be Careful What You Ask For: Fundraising Strategies in Equity Crowdfunding," NBER Working Papers 26275, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Ye Zhang, 2020. "Discrimination in the Venture Capital Industry: Evidence from Field Experiments," Papers 2010.16084, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    3. Hao, Xuejing & Hu, Feng & Li, Zhu, 2024. "Entrepreneur-investor gender match effects in startup funding: Evidence from an entrepreneurial-themed reality TV show in China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 93(PA), pages 811-832.
    4. Takahashi, Hidenori & Honjo, Yuji & Kato, Masatoshi, 2024. "The gender gap in the first deal: Equity split among founding teams," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    5. Bhairab Talukdar, 2025. "How psychological determinants influence entrepreneurial success behavior? Evidence from migrant entrepreneurship," Future Business Journal, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 1-19, December.
    6. Bhairab Talukdar & Jitu Saikia, 2025. "How sustainability is driven in entrepreneurship? Evidence from apiculture practices," Future Business Journal, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 1-19, December.
    7. Paige Clayton, 2024. "Different outcomes for different founders? Local organizational sponsorship and entrepreneurial finance," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 62(1), pages 23-62, January.
    8. Pavlova, Elitsa & Gvetadze, Salome, 2023. "Female access to finance: A survey of literature," EIF Working Paper Series 2022/87, European Investment Fund (EIF).
    9. Hao, Haixia & Dong, Jianwei & Wang, Han, 2024. "Helping women rise: Foreign venture capital and female entrepreneurship," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    10. Ann L. Owen & Judit Temesvary & Andrew Wei, 2024. "Gender and Professional Networks on Bank Boards," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 66(3), pages 227-262, December.
    11. McSweeney, Jordan J. & McSweeney, Kevin T. & Allison, Thomas H. & Anglin, Aaron H., 2025. "The entrepreneurial pitching process: A systematic review using topic modeling and future research agenda," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 40(5).
    12. Jorge Guzman & Jean Joohyun Oh & Ananya Sen, 2020. "What Motivates Innovative Entrepreneurs? Evidence from a Global Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(10), pages 4808-4819, October.
    13. Ewens, Michael, 2022. "Race and Gender in Entrepreneurial Finance," SocArXiv djf8z, Center for Open Science.
    14. Hong Luo & Laurina Zhang, 2022. "Scandal, Social Movement, and Change: Evidence from #MeToo in Hollywood," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 1278-1296, February.
    15. Zandberg, Jonathan, 2021. "Family comes first: Reproductive health and the gender gap in entrepreneurship," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(3), pages 838-864.
    16. Cao, Ruiqing & Koning, Rembrand & Nanda, Ramana, 2020. "Biased sampling of early users and the direction of startup innovation," SocArXiv g6wjn, Center for Open Science.
    17. Ofir Gefen & David Reeb & Johan Sulaeman, 2024. "Startups’ demand for accounting expertise: evidence from a randomized field experiment," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 3019-3052, December.
    18. Pelucco, Valerio & Vismara, Silvio, 2025. "Where do angels come from?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    19. repec:osf:socarx:t7crk_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Gonzalez-Uribe, Juanita & Hmaddi, Ouafaa, 2022. "The multi-dimensional impacts of business accelerators what does the research tell us?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 115461, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D85 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Network Formation
    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jfinqa:v:59:y:2024:i:6:p:2733-2761_8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jfq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.