A Personality Perspective on Business Angel Syndication

Abstract

The decision to syndicate investments in entrepreneurial finance has been explained through financial, networking, and resource-based perspectives. We posit that a personality perspective exists next to these three perspectives and hypothesize that the personality of business angels influences syndication behavior. Using data from 3,234 syndication decisions of 1,348 business angels, we find evidence for some of our predictions. By measuring personality through a comprehensive language analysis based on digital footprints in Twitter statements of business angels, we show that extraversion makes syndication more likely, whereas conscientiousness reduces the likelihood of syndication. Several sensitivity analyses underline the robustness of our main results. Further exploratory analyses assess the relationship between personality and syndicate composition as well as that between personality and venture success. Our study contributes to the entrepreneurial finance literature by adding and validating a new perspective to explain syndication behavior. In addition, our study contributes to research on the personality of business angels.

Keywords: Syndication, Business Angels, Personality, Twitter Data, Digital Footprints

JEL Classification: G23, G24, O16, D91