[Brown Bag] Curse or Blessing? A Dynamic Exemplar-Based Model on Investor Evaluation of New Ventures in a Nascent Market by Prof. Qian (Cecilia) GU, Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University

We had the pleasure of hosting Prof. Qian (Cecilia) Gu from the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University on 6 Nov 2024, for an insightful brown bag research seminar.

Prof. Gu presented her recent study on how the similarity between firms and exemplars in nascent markets affects their attractiveness to venture capitalists (VCs). She distinguished between two dimensions of similarity: innovation-based and market-based.

Her findings revealed that a moderate level of similarity between both types of exemplars maximizes the likelihood of receiving VC investments. Notably, the impact of innovation-based similarity is particularly significant during the early stages of new ventures, while the influence of marketing-based similarity remains stable over time.

Using advanced Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), Prof. Gu carried out an empirical analysis in the IT industry, leveraging a longitudinal dataset from 1999 to 2015. This research contributes greatly to the literature on optimal distinctiveness, nascent categories, and VC investments.

Thank you to everyone who attended and engaged in the discussion!