Do Venture Capital Investors Learn from Public Markets?
51 Pages Posted: 19 May 2016 Last revised: 7 May 2021
Date Written: May 7, 2021
Abstract
We examine whether venture capital (VC) investors learn information contained in public market stock prices. VCs are less likely to stage finance startups and syndicate with other VCs when stock prices are more informative. An instrumental variable approach suggests that the relation is likely causal. The startup’s IPO prospect is the plausible information contained in stock prices learnt by VCs. The effect of VC learning on staging and syndication is more pronounced when collecting information is more costly and the information they learn is more reliable. Evidence from a survey to VC investors confirms that they actively learn information from the public market. VCs’ learning from the public market significantly affects their investments across startup firms. Our paper sheds new light on the real effects of financial markets and suggests that the informational role of security prices is much broader than what we have thought.
Keywords: Learning; Venture capital; Staging; Syndication; Price informativeness
JEL Classification: G24, G18, G14
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation