The Figures that Matter: People-related criteria used by Swedish venture capitals in assessing new technology-based firms

Sammanfattning: Venture Capitals (VCs) are important providers of funds and competence to new technology-based firms (NTBFs) and VC-backed NTBFs are more likely to succeed than those that are not. Past researches into VC selection criteria suggested people-related criteria as being the most important out of all the criteria but as they were focused on ranking certain criteria against each other, they did not describe what they mean and how they are used and could have overlooked other criteria used that were not ranked. This research is addressing such gap by exploring people-related criteria used by VCs through collecting qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with Swedish VC investment managers. The results present 25 people-related criteria; what they mean, when they are used, and how they are assessed. Twelve of these criteria are new and have not been featured in past studies. In the screening stage, only a few people-related criteria are used while all but one people-related criteria identified are used in the assessment stage. The criteria most commonly used in the evaluation stage are new to this study. Themes arising from results are also discussed, such as coachable entrepreneurs as positive criterion and technical-driven NTBF teams as negative criterion. This research extends the knowledge in the area of entrepreneurship studies and provides practical implications for NTBFs seeking to raise funds.