Aproximació a la figura dels Business Angels

Els business angels són persones físiques que inverteixen una part dels seus diners en empreses joves, tot just acabades de crear, en alguns casos fins i tot ajuden a crear-les. El nom d’àngels té el seu origen en els rics filantrops de Nova York que finançaven les obres que s’estrenaven a Broadway. Aquests filantrops invertien els seus diners en una obra de teatre, pel plaer de contribuir a la cultura, molt sovint no arribaven a recuperar mai aquests diners. Els business angels, no són filantrops, inverteixen esperant guanyar diners, però al igual que els àngels de Broadway, els mou alguna cosa més que els diners, ja que està àmpliament documentat que darrera d’aquestes inversions hi ha també raons no financeres, com ara fomentar l’esperit emprenedor o fins i tot la cerca de diversió. Podríem dir que el terme “business angel” es va encunyar a principis dels 80 als EUA, per tant aviat farà 30 anys, no obstant, encara avui, la majoria de catalans no coneixen el significat d’aquest terme. A Catalunya i Espanya anem terriblement retardats en l’estudi i la promoció d’aquesta figura en relació a països com els EUA i el Regne Unit, però també massa enrera en relació a països com Finlàndia, Suècia, Noruega i Alemanya. L’objectiu d’aquest treball és doncs oferir una complerta aproximació a aquesta figura del business angel, una figura que entenem clau en el desenvolupament empresarial i per tant una figura que cal potenciar a tots els nivells. Per tal de contextualitzar aquesta important figura, el treball parteix de l’anàlisi de la relació existent entre emprenedoria i creixement econòmic, s’endinsa després en el capital risc, per presentar finalment qui és i que fa el business angel. El treball intenta també mostrar l’abús d’usos i la inconsistència de les definicions que es donen del terme “business angel” i per tant la gran confusió que tot això genera.

Business angels: a forma como o empresário, o investidor e a empresa influenciam o montante investido

Este estudo pretende determinar a influência das características do empresário, das características do investidor e das características da empresa sobre o montante inicialmente investido pelos BA. Para esse efeito, recorreu-se a uma amostra extraída da base de dados da Kauffman Foundation, cujos dados dizem respeito a BA dos E.U.A.. Analisaram-se as estatísticas descritivas e as hipóteses foram testadas através de seis modelos de regressão linear múltipla. Os resultados obtidos mostram que seis dos nove fatores identificados dizem respeito ao empresário e à equipa de gestão; ABSTRACT: This study aims to determine the influence of entrepreneur characteristics, investor characteristics and the characteristics of the company on the amount initially invested by BA. For this purpose, we used a sample extracted from Kauffman Foundation database, whose data refer to BA from the United States of America. We performed descriptive statistics and hypotheses were tested through six models of multiple linear regression. The results show that six of the nine factors identified are related to the entrepreneur and management team.

El efecto producido por la presencia de "business angels" en la empresa

El creciente interés por fuentes de financiación alternativas, como son los business angels (BA) y el capital riesgo, ha producido la necesidad de estudiar los efectos que la presencia de este tipo de inversores produce en las empresas. Son muchas las investigaciones realizadas sobre el impacto generado por el capital riesgo en sus empresas participadas. Sin embargo, las características de los BA, entre las que destacan el anonimato y preferencia por la privacidad, dificultan considerablemente la elaboración de estudios e investigaciones sobre los efectos producidos por su actividad. Es por ello que el objetivo de este trabajo no es otro que analizar el efecto que la presencia de los BA produce en las empresas participadas. Para la consecución del objetivo establecido, la investigación se centra en analizar el efecto que la participación de los BA produce en la supervivencia de los proyectos empresariales. Además, se toman como referencia las ventas y el número de empleados para estudiar el impacto que la implicación de este tipo de inversores produce en el crecimiento de las mismas. En concreto, a través de la metodología aplicada se han obtenido resultados que muestran que la presencia de BA en empresas de reciente creación genera un impacto positivo en las dos variables propuestas: ventas y número de empleados. Además de lo anterior, se aprecia que las empresas en las que este tipo de inversores se encuentran implicados presentan tasas de supervivencia superiores respecto a las que no disponen de su respaldo. Por lo tanto, las conclusiones obtenidas a través de este trabajo sirven de base para dar comienzo a un estudio más profundo, que verifique que al igual que el capital riesgo, los BA también impactan positivamente en la evolución de las empresas participadas.

Financing innovative start-ups in Portuguese context: what is the role of business angels networks?

Business angels provide both financing and managerial experience, which increase the likelihood of the survival of innovative start-ups. Over the last years, European countries with developing informal venture capital markets have seen governments support the creation of business angels networks (BANs) to increase and consolidate these markets. Using the Portuguese context to carry out the empirical work, this paper provides an assessment of value added provided by angels’ networks. A total of 88 useable responses were received and analysed using non-parametric statistical techniques. This paper demonstrates that is evidence of positive contribution of BANs in terms of bringing together investors and linking them with entrepreneur’s seeking finance. BANs played an important role in financing innovative start-ups also in peripheral regions. Results lead us to conclude that government support BANs would appear to be an effective mechanism to stimulate the angel market in developing informal venture capital markets. The conclusions of this paper are likely to have relevance for countries where there is growing interest in the potential of business angels as a means of financing innovative start-ups.

Formalization of the informal venture capital market - Business angel networks and syndicates

Business angels are natural persons who provide equity financing for young enterprises and gain ownership in them. They are usually anonym investors and they operate in the background of the companies. Their important feature is that over the funding of the enterprises based on their business experiences they can contribute to the success of the companies with their special expertise and with strategic support. As a result of the asymmetric information between the angels and the companies their matching is difficult (Becsky-Nagy – Fazekas 2015), and the fact, that angel investors prefer anonymity makes it harder for entrepreneurs to obtain informal venture capital. The primary aim of the different type of business angel organizations and networks is to alleviate this matching process with intermediation between the two parties. The role of these organizations is increasing in the informal venture capital market compared to the individually operating angels. The recognition of their economic importance led many governments to support them. There were also public initiations that aimed the establishment of these intermediary organizations that led to the institutionalization of business angels. This study via the characterization of business angels focuses on the progress of these informational intermediaries and their ways of development with regards to the international trends and the current situation of Hungarian business angels and angel networks.

Da ideia inovadora ao projecto de negócio: metodologia para concepção de negócios que pretendam angariar capital de risco baseada na teoria axiomática do projecto

Dissertação para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica

Return on entrepreneurial passion: A study of funding success and timely delivery in crowdfunding

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Expertise and finance: Mergers motivated by technological change

This paper argues that a large technological innovation may lead to a merger wave by inducing entrepreneurs to seek funds from technologically knowledgeable firms -experts. When a large technological innovation occurs, the ability of non-experts (banks) to discriminate between good and bad quality projects is reduced. Experts can continue to charge a low rate of interest for financing because their expertise enables them to identify good quality projects and to avoid unprofitable investments. On the other hand, non-experts now charge a higher rate of interest in order to screen bad projects. More entrepreneurs, therefore, disclose their projects to experts to raise funds from them. Such experts are, however, able to copy the projects and disclosure to them invites the possibility of competition. Thus the entrepreneur and the expert may merge so as to achieve product market collusion. As well as rationalizing mergers, the model can also explain various forms of venture financing by experts such as corporate investors and business angels.

The effectiveness of financial innovation support tools. Comparative study of Latvia and Finland

In the Innovation Union Scoreboard of 2011, Latvia ranked last amongst the EU countries in innovation performance. Even though there is sufficient scientific and technological basis, the results remain modest or low in most of the indicators concerning innovations. Several aspects influence the performance a national innovation system. In Latvia, the low effectiveness is often attributed to lack of financial support tools. As a comparison, Finland was chosen because of its well-established and documented innovation system. The aim of this study is to research the efficiency and effectiveness of the current financial innovation support tool system in Latvia from the point of view of an innovating company. It also attempts to analyze the support tool system of Latvia and compare to the relevant parts of the Finnish system. The study found that it is problematic for innovative companies in Latvia to receive the necessary funding especially for start-ups and SMEs due to the low number of grant programs, funds and lacking offer from banks, venture capital and business angels. To improve the situation, the Latvian government should restructure the funding mechanisms putting a bigger emphasis on innovative start-ups and SMEs. That would lay a foundation for future growth and boost research and scientific activities in Latvia.

Bisnesenkelien sijoituskriteerit aikaisen vaiheen yrityksiin

Diplomityössä tutkitaan bisnesenkelien sijoituskriteereitä aikaisen vaiheen yrityksiin. Työn tavoitteena on selvittää, mitkä ovat keskeiset tekijät, jotka vaikuttavat bisnesenkelien sijoituspäätöksiin aikaisen vaiheen yrityksiin. Työssä tarkastellaan myös bisnesenkelien sijoitusaktiivisuutta. Tutkimuksen tuloksena kävi ilmi, että sijoituspäätökseen vaikuttavat merkittävimmät tekijät olivat yrityksen ydintiimi, tuotteen tai palvelun innovatiivisuus, markkinoiden kasvu ja skaalautuvuus sekä markkinoilla oleva kilpailu. Sijoituskriteerien ymmärtäminen on keskeistä aikaisen vaiheen yritysten hakiessa ulkopuolista rahoitusta.

Bisnesenkeleiden ei-taloudelliset investoinnit startup-rahoituksessa: Näkökulmia Suomesta

Tämä tutkimus on kvalitatiivinen tutkimus bisnesenkelisijoittamisen ei-taloudellisesta osuudesta suomalaisessa startup-rahoitus kontekstissa. Tutkimus on toteutettu suorittamalla kirjallisuuskatsaus aiempaan alan kirjallisuuteen, sekä täydentämällä tätä kolmella puolistrukturoidulla enkelisijoittajan haastattelulla. Tutkimuksessa pyritään vastaamaan seuraaviin tutkimuskysymyksiin: mitä bisnesenkeleiden ei-taloudelliset investoinnit käytännössä ovat? Mitä tutkimusta bisnesenkeleiden ei-taloudellisista investoinneista on aikaisemmin tehty? Käyttääkö bisnesenkeli omia osaamisalueitaan ei-taloudellisissa investoinneissa? Onko olemassa jotain uniikkia suomalaista toimintatapaa tai erityispiirrettä ei-taloudellisille investoinneille?

Crowdfunding as a new funding alternative for early stage start-ups

Attracting outside capital is a common problem for start-up companies. Capital markets define the funding options for companies and firms which suffer the most from these capital market imperfections are small start-up companies. Therefore it is important to study any new funding model which can offer a new solution to this inefficiency of capital markets. This study explains the traditional funding models for start-ups such as founders, friends & family, banks, business angels and venture capitalist. After giving background to traditional start-up funding this study delves into crowfunding (CF) and introduces it as a new funding method. The objective of the thesis is to answer one broad research question: Why and how should start-up companies use CF as an alternative funding method? To properly delve into this, this question has the following sub-questions: What kind of funding alternatives do start-up companies have? What are the pros and cons of CF compared to other funding options? How can start-ups benefit from CF? This study gives background on the rise of CF and the reasons why this new model is needed. Author will explain the different components of CF such as platforms, crowdfunders and projects. Also benefits and challenges of the crowdfunding model are investigated. As a new funding model CF has had to clear out many obstacles from its way. These are, for example, legal and regulatory issues as well education of crowd investors to understand this new investment option. . Start-up entrepreneurs can gain valuable insight from this study. The author has attempted to form best practices and guidelines of how to operate in the CF environment. This study was conducted by performing expert interviews, collecting data from previous studies and performing a content analysis of successful crowdfunding cases. Main findings from the study were that CF has huge potential in funding entrepreneurial projects. It is still a niche way for funding but growing rapidly. CF is earning its place among traditional funding options and has potential to fund projects which otherwise would struggle to find funding. With CF entrepreneur can tap into geographically diverse audience. It is a powerful validation tool for products and ideas and has the power to bring democratic elements to entrepreneurial funding.

Análisis de las estrategias de comunicación de las startups españolas. Estudio de casos

El fenómeno emprendedor ha experimentado una importante evolución en los últimos años. En este ecosistema surgen unas iniciativas marcadas por la innovación, que se denominan startups. Se trata de empresas emergentes que buscan emprender o montar un nuevo negocio. Muchos son los espacios dedicados a analizar y promover el entorno emprendedor –encuentros, congresos, aceleradoras, incubadoras, inversores, business angels-. Los medios desempeñan una labor muy importante como agentes difusores de historias de éxito empresarial. Cada vez se dedica más espacio en medios -generalistas, económicos y especializados en radio, TV, prensa, revistas, digitales, blogs- a hacerse eco de iniciativas innovadoras tanto por el tipo de producto o servicio que ofrecen, como por la manera de trabajar o porque satisfacen necesidades impensables hace poco tiempo. Si bien ya se han realizado varios estudios y algunos artículos científicos que muestran la radiografía de las startups (tipología de empresas, perfil de los emprendedores, internacionalización, claves de éxito), hasta el momento no se ha estudiado en profundidad su estrategia de comunicación. Esta tesis analiza la estrategia de comunicación en las startups españolas, el grado de profesionalización y perfil del responsable de comunicación, las principales actividades, las semejanzas o diferencias respecto a otra tipología de empresas, los canales o herramientas utilizados (si son específicos de este ámbito) y la medición de resultados. El ámbito de la investigación son las principales startups en España de todos los tamaños y sectores de actividad, ubicadas en el territorio español...

A reference business process for ecological niche modelling

Ecological niche modelling combines species occurrence points with environmental raster layers in order to obtain models for describing the probabilistic distribution of species. The process to generate an ecological niche model is complex. It requires dealing with a large amount of data, use of different software packages for data conversion, for model generation and for different types of processing and analyses, among other functionalities. A software platform that integrates all requirements under a single and seamless interface would be very helpful for users. Furthermore, since biodiversity modelling is constantly evolving, new requirements are constantly being added in terms of functions, algorithms and data formats. This evolution must be accompanied by any software intended to be used in this area. In this scenario, a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an appropriate choice for designing such systems. According to SOA best practices and methodologies, the design of a reference business process must be performed prior to the architecture definition. The purpose is to understand the complexities of the process (business process in this context refers to the ecological niche modelling problem) and to design an architecture able to offer a comprehensive solution, called a reference architecture, that can be further detailed when implementing specific systems. This paper presents a reference business process for ecological niche modelling, as part of a major work focused on the definition of a reference architecture based on SOA concepts that will be used to evolve the openModeller software package for species modelling. The basic steps that are performed while developing a model are described, highlighting important aspects, based on the knowledge of modelling experts. In order to illustrate the steps defined for the process, an experiment was developed, modelling the distribution of Ouratea spectabilis (Mart.) Engl. (Ochnaceae) using openModeller. As a consequence of the knowledge gained with this work, many desirable improvements on the modelling software packages have been identified and are presented. Also, a discussion on the potential for large-scale experimentation in ecological niche modelling is provided, highlighting opportunities for research. The results obtained are very important for those involved in the development of modelling tools and systems, for requirement analysis and to provide insight on new features and trends for this category of systems. They can also be very helpful for beginners in modelling research, who can use the process and the experiment example as a guide to this complex activity. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

On compliance of business processes with business contracts

This paper addresses the problem of ensuring compliance of business processes, implemented within and across organisational boundaries, with the constraints stated in related business contracts. In order to deal with the complexity of this problem we propose two solutions that allow for a systematic and increasingly automated support for addressing two specific compliance issues. One solution provides a set of guidelines for progressively transforming contract conditions into business processes that are consistent with contract conditions thus avoiding violation of the rules in contract. Another solution compares rules in business contracts and rules in business processes to check for possible inconsistencies. Both approaches rely on a computer interpretable representation of contract conditions that embodies contract semantics. This semantics is described in terms of a logic based formalism allowing for the description of obligations, prohibitions, permissions and violations conditions in contracts. This semantics was based on an analysis of typical building blocks of many commercial, financial and government contracts. The study proved that our contract formalism provides a good foundation for describing key types of conditions in contracts, and has also given several insights into valuable transformation techniques and formalisms needed to establish better alignment between these two, traditionally separate areas of research and endeavour. The study also revealed a number of new areas of research, some of which we intend to address in near future.