Venture Capital and Startup Agglomeration
93 Pages Posted: 6 Sep 2021 Last revised: 25 Oct 2024
Date Written: September 2021
Abstract
The paper studies venture capital’s (VC) role in the geographic clustering of high-growth startups. We exploit a rule change that disproportionately impacted U.S. regions that historically lacked VC financing via a restriction of banks to invest in the asset class. A one-standard-deviation increase in VCs’ exposure to the rule led to a 20% decline in fund size and a 10% decrease in the likelihood of raising a follow-on fund. Startups were not wholly cushioned: financing and valuations declined. Startups also moved out of impacted states after the rule change, likely exacerbating existing geographic disparity in entrepreneurship.
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