Who Gets Access to Venture Capital?

Bachelor Thesis, Master Thesis or Project Study

📌 Key facts

• Mission: Find out who receives how much venture capital, their characteristics, and from whom. • When: Start anytime. Applications are open! • How to apply: Send us an e-mail (at the end of this page) with your CV and a grade report and a tentative research idea (research question, data and methods, possible outcomes with a tentative outline all in word as *.docx)

Contents

💡 Background
🦾Who We Are
🎯 Goals
🎓 Profile
🧠 Topics of Interest
📚 Further Reading
📄 Requirements to any Work
📬 How to Apply

💡 Background

What do you need to get venture capital for your start-up? Most venture capital goes to companies founded by men. Just 7% of VC-backed founders are women, and the numbers are even worse for Black and Latinx founders — only 1% of VC-backed founders are Black, and less than 2% are Latinx. Companies founded by women also get less money—an average of $77 million compared with $100 million for male-led startups.

How does education affect the investment decisions? How gender? How ethnicity? How previous companies? How skills? How previous start-ups? It is your job to find out how the global flows of venture capital are directed, who gets the most, and who the least? And maybe: Who achieves most with the funding they get? For that you can use out LinkedIn and Crunchbase accesses.

🦾Who We Are

The Chair for Strategy and Organization is focused on doing research with impact. This means we do not want to repeat old ideas and base our research solely on the research people did 10 years ago. Instead, we currently research topics that will shape the future. Topics such as Agile Organizations and Digital Disruption, Blockchain Technology, Creativity and Innovation, Digital Transformation and Business Model Innovation, Diversity, Education: Education Technology and Performance Management, HRTech, Leadership and Teams. We are always early in noticing trends, technologies, strategies and organizations that shape the future, which has its ups and downs.

🎯 Goals

Desk research on international venture funding by education, nationality, ethnicity, gender etc.
Research Crunchbase for companies with funding
Research their founders on LinkedIn to identify their education, jobs, and other backgrounds
Interviews with VCs, founders, and opinion leaders (contacts available)
Measure and visualize the global VC funding flows

🎓 Profile

Reliable and self-driven
Enthusiasm for entrepreneurship / VC / diversity / data visualization
Ability to do sophisticated internet, desk research, and connect with practitioners
Passion to learn more about the future and do research with impact

🧠 Topics of Interest

Female–founded startups
Diverse founders
Founders by nationality
Founders by university
Founders by education
Founder teams by team characteristics
Founder teams by background and work experience
etc.

📚 Further Reading

The Unequal Geographic Distribution of Venture Capital

While venture capital has been the fuel that powers innovation in America, it has long been concentrated in select major cities across the country. Given that the country's most powerful and fastest-growing companies are clustered in hubs like the Silicon Valley, New York City, and Seattle, it's not surprising that venture capital shares a similar concentration.

elevate.vc

The Unequal Geographic Distribution of Venture Capital

State of Venture Capital Industry in 2019 (with Infographic)

What are the objective factors that have contributed to the growth of the venture capital industry over the past decade? With funding having increased at an annual rate of 17% to $254 billion, the macroeconomic headwinds that have helped fuel the rise may also be contributing to a radical fracturing of the market.

www.toptal.com

State of Venture Capital Industry in 2019 (with Infographic)

Diversity in Venture Capital - NVCA-Deloitte Human Capital Survey Dashboard | Deloitte US

How was the study conducted? An email was distributed to 1,428 active VC firms, including NVCA members, asking them to participate in the study. Firms had the option to complete the assessment one of two ways: through a web-based survey, or through an identical spreadsheet.

www2.deloitte.com

Institutional Investors Must Help Close the Race and Gender Gaps in Venture Capital

Research repeatedly shows that companies with diversity in senior leadership significantly outperform their all-white, all-male counterparts. Diverse leadership generates better financial performance, stronger innovation, and higher levels of startup success. Yet, despite compelling performance data, venture capital isn't following the opportunity.

hbr.org

Institutional Investors Must Help Close the Race and Gender Gaps in Venture Capital

www.hbs.edu

You're More Likely to Get Startup Funding If You Went to One of These Schools

This book gives you the essential guide for easy-to-follow tips and strategies to create more financial success. 3 min read Test scores and acceptance rates are only one measure of a school's prestige. What students do achieve once they have their diplomas in hand is another way to think about what makes a university education worth the investments of time and tuition.

www.entrepreneur.com

You're More Likely to Get Startup Funding If You Went to One of These Schools

www.bloomberg.com

Yale's David Swensen Puts Money Managers on Notice About Diversity

America's most prominent endowment chief has a message for the firms that manage the school's money: Hire more women and minorities, or possibly lose the university's backing. David Swensen is the veteran investment chief of Yale University's $31.2 billion endowment.

www.wsj.com

Yale's David Swensen Puts Money Managers on Notice About Diversity

📄 Requirements to any Work

We do not want your research to gather dust in some corner of a bookshelf but make it accessible to the world. Thus, we warmly encourage you to create some or all of the following:

Infograph - visually represent some of your work (find examples here)
Slide Deck - summarize your research and possibly present it
Extract most important sequences from podcasts, videos, and other media
3-4 Tweets about the most important findings and summarizing the topic
optional: Medium Article - let people outside university know about your research and start your personal brand

📬 How to Apply

If you are interested, please contact Prof. Dr. Isabell Welpe (e-mail below) by submitting your CV and grade report. Please also briefly outline your tentative research idea (research question, data and methods, possible outcomes with a tentative outline all in word as *.docx)

We're greatly looking forward to hearing more about you!

👉 welpe@tum.de