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The lack of a standard definition and data sources makes it hard to compare findings and advance our knowledge in the business angel’s domain. The purpose of this paper is to tackle this problem by presenting a proposal of a potential definition of business angels that it based on ten issues identified in 30 years of business angels’ research.

The paper reviews 24 studies on business angels and classifies definition inconsistencies found in ten different issues. Those differences are compared with methodological choices on sampling and with subsequent results.

The authors observe a connection between definitional and sampling choices, and the results obtained. Inconsistent definitions can lead to results that are more than 400 times higher in terms of investment per project, for example.

The authors believe that the main implication of proposing a standard definition of business angles could help the academia in decreasing the great observed diversity which is actually leading to inconsistent and incomparable results that limit our understanding of this phenomenon.

This paper differs from previous studies as it tackles the problem by identifying the definitional issues and presents a framework in order to build a consensus definition, rather than just comparing definitions.

Purpose – This chapter examines how informal and formal entrepreneurial institutions are influenced by economic crises. These institutions act as the foundation for many, if not all, entrepreneurial activities, but they are highly vulnerable to change during times of crisis.

Design/methodology/approach – This chapter uses a case study of software entrepreneurs in Ottawa, Canada, to better understand the influence of the 2001 and 2008 recessions on the social and economic aspects of entrepreneurship. This case is examined through a set of 39 semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs, investors, and economic development officers.

Findings – While informal entrepreneurial institutions have adapted to a changing economic environment, formal institutions and government programs have so far failed to do this. This results in less effective entrepreneurship support programs.

Research limitations/implications – As with other qualitative case studies, these findings are not generalizable to other regions. This chapter calls for further research is needed to better understand the social forces behind institutional change.

Practical implications – This chapter argues that entrepreneurship support programs must be customized to the informal social institutions that underlie all entrepreneurial behavior and practices. This alignment potentially increases the usefulness of such programs to entrepreneurs.

Originality/value of the paper– While entrepreneurship in Ottawa has been carefully studied, there has been very little work examining how technology entrepreneurship in Ottawa has fared after the decline of the telecommunications market. This chapter is useful to both entrepreneurship scholars as well as practitioners and policy makers interested in how entrepreneurial institutions react to crises.

This paper aims to analyse whether the degree of formal financial access in a country affects love money investment, defined as capital provided to entrepreneurs from family and friends to finance their businesses, in early-stage entrepreneurial activities.

The authors use multilevel mixed-effect regression models and an extensive database of over 700 thousand individuals from 53 countries between 2007 and 2017 taken from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor adult population survey.

This paper finds that a country’s level of accessibility to bank debt and venture capital is positively associated with the likelihood of an individual becoming a love money investor. It also finds that the amount of capital invested by love money investors is positively correlated to the level of access to bank debt and venture capital. The results of this paper confirm the hypothesis of complementarity between the financial system and friends and family financing in the capital market for early-stage entrepreneurs.

This paper contributes to the entrepreneurial finance literature, particularly to a better understanding of the love money investors, an important source of funding and segment of the informal investment that is sparsely studied.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the strategic nature of formal seed capital in Norway as opposed to equally sized venture capital firms.

As the population of Norwegian seed capital firms is embedded in this study, a differential approach is taken when contrasting these seed capital firms with venture capital firms of approximately the same size.

The findings indicate that seed capital firms take higher market risk than their counterparts, and that they diversify to a larger extent than comparable venture capital firms. The latter appears to be a function of the former.

This study reviews previous categorizations of seed capital providers, henceforth building towards an overall taxonomy of seed capital.

Angel investments are increasingly getting specialized. In recent years, start-ups are raising pre-seed funding before seed-stage funding. Investors in pre-seed and seed-stage companies commonly are angel investors. The purpose of this paper is to understand the differences between these two groups of angel investors.

Data for this study obtained from angel funding deals from the sources such as Venture Intelligence, VCCEdge, Keiretsu Forum, Dealcurry and The Chennai Angels. A total of 732 angel investments made by 405 investors during 2014–18 were used in the analysis. Non-parametric tests and regression estimations were used to identify the differences between angel investors investing in pre-seed and seed-stage ventures. An index was developed to measure the extent of syndication in angel investments and used as an independent variable in the regression.

There are significant differences between angel investors investing in pre-seed and seed-stage ventures. The results show that angels with more industry-specific experience make a higher proportion of investment in seed-stage ventures. Seed-stage ventures attract investors from Tier-1 cities, whereas the pre-seed stage has higher investors from smaller cities. Though the investment size is smaller, the extent of syndication is greater in pre-seed stage investments.

To differentiate the angel investments between pre-seed and seed-stage funding, this study uses data from Indian start-ups. Further, this study develops a composite syndication index to measure the extent of syndication in angel investments and assesses its impact on an angel investor’s choice of pre-seed stage investments.

This paper aims to explore the allocation of the exit value of a start-up company in market equilibrium between an angel investor and an entrepreneur in the very early-stage financing market.

The theoretical model is established based on the two-sided random search theory and the model’s ability to match the empirical data is evaluated via simulation.

The model indicates that the allocation of the final investment outcome is not proportional to the initial investments by the angel investor and the entrepreneur. The simulation results show that the continued investment by the entrepreneur and the private benefit acquired by the angel investor have a more profoundly negative influence on the angel investor’s share of the exit value of the start-up company. Moreover, the market search structure represented by the matching probability of an angel investor to an entrepreneur has a more significant impact on the angel investor’s share than the other model parameters.

The importance of market search friction in the very early-stage financing market is emphasized. The concepts of continued investments and private benefits are introduced and quantified for the first time under the framework of angel investment. The impacts of such model parameters as the matching probability of an angel investor to an entrepreneur, the success rate of a start-up company, the bargaining power of an angel investor and the discount rate on the allocation of the exit value of the start-up company are investigated as well.

This study aims to investigate how the language used in US Title II equity crowdfunding campaign descriptions relates to campaign success.

Data on >3,200 equity offerings from 12 Title II platforms was obtained from 2013 to 2016. The aspects of the campaign descriptions that are focused on are tone and two measures of readability: information quantity – the amount of information available to the investor and information quality – the ease of understanding of the passage of text. Tobit regressions with sector-clustered standard errors are used for estimation while controlling for company-specific variables, market sentiment and platform, regional, sector and time effects. Results are robust to alternative estimation approaches.

Inverse U-shaped relationships exist between information quantity, information quality and tone and Title II equity crowdfunding campaign success. Overall, less is more as it appears that an intermediate level of information – quantity, quality and tone – is optimal in terms of being a factor that contributes to equity crowdfunding campaign success.

Extends the use of textual analysis to the equity crowdfunding environment in the USA where such analysis is lacking and provides empirical evidence that the language used (e.g. sentiment) in US Title II equity-based crowdfunding campaign descriptions does influence campaign success. It provides empirical evidence of and extends the concept of information overload to the entrepreneurial finance sub-field and indicates tone may be an additional information attribute to consider in this context as contributing to overload.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how entrepreneurs in emerging economies use their knowledge to help create new businesses and increase their profitability in the international marketplace. Emerging economies are playing an increasingly important part in the global marketplace, particularly in terms of how they use knowledge-based resources and entrepreneurial networks.

The methodological approach of this paper is to analyse the entrepreneurial processes in emerging economies by using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) to evaluate whether the stage of economic development affects intention rates of individuals to start new businesses. Utilising a panel approach to evaluating entrepreneurial intention from 2009 to 2013, a number of hypotheses are tested to see how entrepreneurial knowledge and network knowledge affect the likelihood to engage in new business activity.

These hypotheses are analysed based on the economic development stage of a country. The findings of the hypotheses suggest that entrepreneurial and network knowledge can help determine an individual’s intention to start a business, but although network knowledge is related to economic development, entrepreneurial knowledge is not significant.

The GEM report is helpful in seeing longitudinal changes in entrepreneurship from emerging economies. This helps increase research interest in emerging economies by encouraging more appropriate policy aimed at increasing new business creation.

Implications for entrepreneurs and public policymakers in emerging economies are stated, which suggest that it is important to foster entrepreneurship education. Suggestions for future research linking knowledge-based resources and entrepreneurial intentions in emerging economies are also highlighted.

The findings demonstrate that the propensity of individuals to engage in new business creation in emerging economies is different to those in developed countries because of funding constraints and lack of access to the appropriate skills.

Using the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics II dataset, we examine the role that household income plays in the emergence of consumer-oriented start-ups by individual (solo), family-based (family), and non-family based start-ups (team). In particular, we address the research question: Does household income impact firm emergence, and if so, is emergence impacted differently based on start-up configuration? Our results indicate that household income does have a significant impact on average firm emergence, as well as on emergence growth rates for solo and family firms, playing an especially significant role for family firms. Furthermore, we found that household income is not a significant predictor of start-up activity completion for teams. Results from our study reinforce the extant literature on the benefits of starting a firm with teams, and suggests that these enterprise types may provide a more stable platform on which to launch a start-up. Implications of these findings and opportunities for future research are offered.