Bank or venture capitalist? : a case study of two funding alternatives for entrepreneurs in service- and knowledge businesses

Sammanfattning: During the last decades we have seen a growing number of new start-ups in the service/knowledge sector. These types of companies often have no fiscal assets to secure loans with. What types of financing alternatives are there in those situations? I will in this thesis show that there are two directions to choose between to get financial support. By gathering of information I have been able to show that there are more than one alternative to consider when needing funding and that using different alternatives will lead to different results. I will not say which one is the right one, but that there are different ways and there will be different outcomes depending on which one you choose. The study also shows that there are a lot of things you need to take into consideration before using a venture capitalist. An empirical study is made between two companies that decided to use different ways to get the financial support they required. The result shown in this study is that the entrepreneurs own financial situation affect what direction the entrepreneur will take.