Essays on Finance for Start-ups

Abstract

Entrepreneurs play a crucial role for innovation, economic growth, and job creation. The lack of start-up capital has been identified as a major obstacle for entrepreneurs who want to start a new business or expand a current business. Founders of new ventures might be liquidity constrained and have to turn to external financiers for debt and equity capital. There is an asymmetric information between the entrepreneur and potential financier in which the entrepreneur is more informed about the true risks of the firm.

The dissertation contains three papers which aim to examine three different aspects of finance for start-ups. I use mixed-methods in which each study uses a different methodological approach and examine a different type of finance: crowdfunding, bank financing, and start-up subsidies. Each study makes a different contribution to research and policy on finance for start-ups, and together, they highlight the challenges that entrepreneurs face in obtaining necessary financial resources for new venture survival.