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Journal Article
Corporations and the financing of innovation: The corporate venturing experience
During the past forty years, the media and academics have frequently maligned corporate investments in venture capital and highlighted visible failures. Many corporations' best ideas have languished, whether because of internal resistance or an inability to execute on the initial insight. In other cases, more nimble companies, often venture-backed start-ups, have turned corporations' innovative ideas into commercial successes. So how can companies best stimulate innovation in a corporate setting and replicate the success of the venture capital industry? ; This article explores the history, ...
Working Paper
Getting Schooled: The Role of Universities in Attracting Immigrant Entrepreneurs
We study immigrant founders of venture-capital backed firms using a new and detailed data set that we assemble on the backgrounds of founders. Immigrant founders have been critical to the entrepreneurial ecosystem, accounting for roughly 20% of all venture capital-backed founders over the past 30 years. We document the channels through which immigrant founders arrive in the United States and how those channels have changed over time. Higher education has served as the primary entry channel for immigrant founders. The share of foreign-educated immigrant founders who initially arrive for work ...
Working Paper
Failing Just Fine: Assessing Careers of Venture Capital-backed Entrepreneurs via a Non-Wage Measure
This paper proposes a non-pecuniary measure of career achievement: seniority. Based on a database of over 130 million resumes, this metric exploits the variation in how long it takes to attain job titles. When non-monetary factors influence career choice, assessing career attainment via non-wage measures, such as seniority, has significant advantages. Accordingly, we use our seniority measure to study labor market outcomes of VC-backed entrepreneurs. Would-be founders experience accelerated career trajectories prior to founding, significantly outperforming graduates from same-tier colleges ...