Working Papers
Working Papers
Presentations: SFS Cavalcade North America (2025), AFA (2025), Columbia Private Equity Research (2025), ABFER (2025), ACFOW (2024), CICF (2025), FOM (2024), EUROFIDAI-ESSEC Paris December Finance Meeting (2024), Monash Winter Finance (2025), UNSW
Summary at ABFER Digest
Basic science R&D can deter investors due to coordination and appropriability frictions. We study whether a coordinated public funding—supplying basic science as a public good—fosters VC investment. Our quasi-natural experiment is the BRAIN Initiative (BI), a big science program aimed at mapping the human brain. Using machine learning, we first find large spillover effects of BI in neurotech. Our difference-in-differences analysis shows that BI raised the probability of receiving VC, led to larger funding rounds at higher valuations, and resulted in more successful VC exits for neurotech startups. The BI's spillovers explain these results: (1) an expanded supply of skilled academic labor, (2) increased innovation activity and (3) deeper integration with complementary technologies like AI and big data. Our findings suggest that public science institutions supply an essential public good for private investment in innovation.
Venture Capitalists vs. Deep-Pocketed Incumbents: Startup Financing Strategies in the Presence of Competitive Threats
with Peter Pham and Jason Zein
Conditional Acceptance, Review of Finance (Special Issue on Finance and Product Markets)
Presentations: EFA (2022), CICF (2022), SFS Cavalcade Asia-Pacific (2022), WEFI (2022), FMA (2022), FIRN (2022), FMA Asia Pacific (2022), FMCG (2022)
We examine how venture capitalists (VCs) adapt their financing strategies to support startups competing against deep-pocketed incumbents. Employing textual analysis to identify a startup's potential competitors, we show that when the competitors are cash-rich, VCs make their financing less conditional by providing more funding each round and evaluating the startup less on short-term performance. This approach requires VCs to rely more on continuous monitoring and liquidation protection, and is restricted to large funds and those with specialized experience. Our results suggest that, as large firms have gained greater financial power, VCs serve as a counter-balancing force to sustain business dynamism.
Human Capital Structure in VC Partnerships
(Draft Available Upon Request)
Presentations: FMA (2024)
What Does Skewness Teach Us About Venture Capital Managerial Skill? (with Peter Pham, David Robinson, Jason Zein and Hao Zhang)
Performance Measurement of Venture Capital Funds (with David Robinson and Per Strömberg)
Political Connections and Incumbent’s Restrictive Innovation