Venture Debt Financing: Determinants of the Lending Decision

25 Pages Posted: 15 Aug 2011 Last revised: 2 Oct 2012

See all articles by Timo Fischer

Timo Fischer

Technische Universität München (TUM) - TUM School of Management

Gaétan de Rassenfosse

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

Date Written: October 2, 2012

Abstract

We provide the first empirical evidence on the determinants of the lending decision of venture debt firms, specialized institutions that provide loans to finance growth of high-tech startups. Building on existing field interviews and case studies, we design a choice experiment of the lending decision and conduct experiments with 55 senior venture lenders. We find support for the hypothesis that backing by venture capital firms substitutes for startups’ cash flow. Furthermore, we illustrate the signaling effect of patents and their role as collateral to facilitate the lending decision.

Keywords: high-growth startups, intangible assets, patent signaling, venture debt, new venture financing

JEL Classification: L26, O34, G24

Suggested Citation

Fischer, Timo and de Rassenfosse, Gaétan, Venture Debt Financing: Determinants of the Lending Decision (October 2, 2012). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1909602 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1909602

Timo Fischer

Technische Universität München (TUM) - TUM School of Management ( email )

Munich
Germany

Gaétan De Rassenfosse (Contact Author)

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) ( email )

Station 5
Odyssea 1.04
1015 Lausanne, CH-1015
Switzerland

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