Does Impact Investing Help VC Funds to Attract Startups? Experimental Evidence

Although firms' preferences about impact investing affect sustainable investment in equilibrium, little relevant empirical evidence exists to guide the theory. This paper studies whether adopting an impact investing strategy influences startups' intentions to collaborate with venture capitalists through two complementary field experiments that involve real US startup founders and real-world stakes. The first experiment requires entrepreneurs to evaluate multiple randomly generated investor profiles so that they can receive a recommendation list containing real matched investors' information. The second experiment is a novel payment game, which elicits entrepreneurs' taste-driven preferences. Provided with real monetary incentives, entrepreneurs decide whether to pay for a more comprehensive investor recommendation list which contains randomized number of impact investors and is sold at a randomized price. I find the following main results: (i) Environmental initiatives causally reduce venture capitalists' attractiveness to startups while social initiatives improve investors' attractiveness. These preferences are correlated with entrepreneurs' beliefs of the investor's ability, availability, and informativeness. (ii) Sorting occurs in an asymmetric way. Impact ventures prefer approaching impact investors with social initiatives while profit-driven ventures avoid approaching impact investors with environmental initiatives. (iii) Significant heterogeneous effects exist based on entrepreneurs' and investors' backgrounds. Male investors benefit from aiming for social impact while female investors lose aiming for environmental impact. Compared to Democratic entrepreneurs, Republican entrepreneurs are more opposed to impact investors. (iv) Entrepreneurs have taste-driven preferences towards impact investors