Firms’ responses to private- and government sponsored venture capital

Abstract

There is major political interest in promoting enterprise, entrepreneurship and economic growth, and the same goes for the significance of capital provision in this context However, interest on the part of society in facilitating small and medium-sized companies’ financing situation is far from new.

This report analyses actual outcomes of government and private venture capital investments (venture capital, VC) and real effects on employment, turnover and investments in real capital in portfolio companies. It also examines whether the effects differ between government and private VC, and which companies and phases the public actors invest in compared with the private actors.

The results do not demonstrate any dramatic differences between public and private VC investors in terms of growth effects, even though there are some tendencies towards a stronger growth effect via private venture capital. Further, the public VC companies do not differ from private investors when it comes to their propensity to invest in the earliest phases. A somewhat surprising result as it is the lack of venture capital in the earliest phases which is often used as an argument to justify the government’s role as an actor in the VC market. The public VC companies also seem to be more disposed to stay the course with, and continue to invest in, stagnant companies which do not take off and grow.