Essays in Venture Capital, Reputation and Learning

In chapter 1, I study the experimentation dynamics of a decision maker (DM) in a two-armed bandit setup ([5]), where the agent holds ambiguous beliefs regarding the distribution of the return process of one arm and is certain about the other one. The DM entertains Multiplier preferences a la [27], thus I frame the decision making environment as a two player differential game against nature in continuous time. I characterize the DM’s value function and her optimal experimentation strategy that turns out to follow a cut-off rule with respect to her belief process. The belief threshold for exploring the ambiguous arm is found in closed form and is shown to be increasing with respect to the ambiguity aversion index. I then study the effect of provision of an unambiguous information source about the ambiguous arm. Interestingly, I show that the exploration threshold rises unambiguously as a result of this new information source, thereby leading to more conservatism. This analysis also sheds light on the efficient time to reach for an expert opinion. The results of this chapter has been recently published in [61].In chapter 2, I introduce a dynamic model of random search where ex ante heterogeneous venture capitalists (investors) with unknown abilities match with a variety of startups (projects). There is incomplete yet symmetric information about investors’ types, whereas the projects’ types are publicly observable to all investors. In the unique stationary equilibrium, the matching sets, value functions and steady state distributions are endogenously determined. Interpreting the market posterior belief about the venture capitalists’ ability as their reputation, I study the outcomes of the economy when the success or failure of the projects create feedback effects: innovation spillovers and reputational externalities. When there are positive spillovers from successful early stage projects to late stage business opportunities, I show increased levels of search frictions could save the market from breakdown caused by the neglect of spillover effect. When the reputational externality is at play, namely when the deal flow of each investor is inversely impacted by the distribution of other investors’ reputation, I show the proportion of the high ability inactive investors is inefficiently high, and the projects suffer from early termination.