Financial Distancing: How Venture Capital Follows the Economy Down and Curtails Innovation

Sabrina T. Howell; Josh   Lerner; Ramana  Nanda; Richard  Townsend

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2020

Financial Distancing: How Venture Capital Follows the Economy Down and Curtails Innovation

by Sabrina T. Howell, Josh Lerner, Ramana Nanda and Richard Townsend

Abstract

Although late-stage venture capital (VC) activity did not change dramatically in the first two months after the COVID-19 pandemic reached the U.S., early-stage VC activity declined by 38%. The particular sensitivity of early-stage VC investment to market conditions—which we show to be common across recessions spanning four decades from 1976 to 2017—raises questions about the pro-cyclicality of VC and its implications for innovation, especially in light of the common narrative that VC is relatively insulated from public markets. We find that the implications for innovation are not benign: innovation conducted by VC-backed firms in recessions is less highly cited, less original, less general, and less closely related to fundamental science. These effects are more pronounced for startups financed by early-stage venture funds. Given the important role that VC plays in financing breakthrough innovations in the economy, our findings have implications for the broader discussion on the nature of innovation across business cycles.

Keywords: innovation; recessions; Venture Capital; Innovation and Invention; Patents; Business Cycles; Economic Slowdown and Stagnation;

Language: English

Format: Print

56 pages

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Citation:

Howell, Sabrina T., Josh Lerner, Ramana Nanda, and Richard Townsend. "Financial Distancing: How Venture Capital Follows the Economy Down and Curtails Innovation." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 20-115, May 2020.

We use investment-level data to study performance persistence in venture capital (VC). Consistent with prior studies, we find that each additional IPO among a VC firm's first ten investments predicts as much as an 8% higher IPO rate on its subsequent investments, though this effect erodes with time. In exploring its sources, we document several additional facts: successful outcomes stem in large part from investing in the right places at the right times; VC firms do not persist in their ability to choose the right places and times to invest; but early success does lead to investing in later rounds and in larger syndicates. This pattern of results seems most consistent with the idea that initial success improves access to deal flow and that preferential access raises the quality of subsequent investments, perpetuating performance differences in initial investments.

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Venture capital is associated with some of the most high-growth and influential firms in the world. Academics and practitioners have effectively articulated the strengths of the venture model. At the same time, venture capital financing also has real limitations in its ability to advance substantial technological change. Three issues are particularly concerning to us: 1) the very narrow band of technological innovations that fit the requirements of institutional venture capital investors; 2) the relatively small number of venture capital investors who hold, and shape the direction of, a substantial fraction of capital that is deployed into financing radical technological change; and 3) the relaxation in recent years of the intense emphasis on corporate governance by venture capital firms. While our ability to assess the social welfare impact of venture capital remains nascent, we hope that this article will stimulate discussion of and research into these questions.

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Financial Distancing: How Venture Capital Follows the Economy Down and Curtails Innovation

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