Economic frictions pervade the founding, financing, growing, and exiting of high-growth entrepreneurial firms. This article considers one friction that currently affects a small, but important, set of entrepreneurs: racial and gender discrimination. I first collect facts from a large empirical...

This paper studies if and how individual-level patenting activity changes as an employee transitions to entrepreneurial firm founder. Using a large database of employment and innovative histories of over 1110 spinoff firm founders, the empirical strategy tracks both founders and her co-inventors...

We study how technological shocks to the cost of starting new businesses have led the venture capital model to adapt in fundamental ways over the prior decade. We both document and provide a framework to understand the changes in the investment strategy of venture capitalists (VCs) in recent...

The US entrepreneurial finance market has changed dramatically over the last two decades. Entrepreneurs who raise their first round of venture capital retain 30% more equity in their firm and are more likely to control their board of directors. Late-stage start-ups are raising larger amounts of...

Although an extensive literature shows that startups are financially constrained and that constraints vary by geography, the source of these constraints is still relatively unknown. We explore intermediary financing constraints, a channel studied in the banking literature, but only implicitly...

Staged financing of venture capital-backed firms is valuable to both investors and entrepreneurs, but comes with a potential cost: hold-up. With asymmetric information and strong control rights, financial intermediaries may earn rents on their inside knowledge. We find that environments where...