Is a VC Partnership Greater Than the Sum of its Partners?

Michael Ewens Matthew Rhodes-Kropf

Working Paper
12-097 April 14, 2012

Copyright 2012 by Michael Ewens and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf Working papers are in draft form. This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and discussion only. It may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. Copies of working papers are available from the author.

Is a VC Partnership Greater Than the Sum of its Partners?

MICHAEL EWENS CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
AND

MATTHEW RHODES-KROPF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Draft: April 14, 2012

Venture capital rms ability to repeatedly make top performing investments suggests the importance of some aspect of organizational or human capital. However, it is an unanswered question as to what extent the important attributes of performance are a part of the rms organizational capital or embodied in the human capital of the people inside the rm. We examine the performance at the partner-investment level to determine the extent of persistence in individual partners ability to IPO, achieve outsized exits or fail, and to what extent that performance is attributable to the rm or the partner. Shedding light on the sources of performance in venture capital rms will help us make progress on a fundamental question in economics as to whether a rm is more than the sum of its parts. JEL: G24, G30 Keywords: Venture Capital, Investing, Persistence

Venture capital investments are an important engine of innovation and economic growth, but extremely risky from an individual investors point of view. Sahlman (2010) reports that 85% of returns come from just 10% of investments. And from 1987 until 2010 only 13% of investments have achieved and initial public offering.1 Furthermore, there are large differences in fund performance between top quartile and bottom quartile venture capital funds. In spite of the rarity of top investments Kaplan
Preliminary, please do not cite or quote. Ewens: Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business 5000 Forbes Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15213, mewens@cmu.edu. Rhodes-Kropf: Harvard University, Rock Center 313 Boston Massachusetts 02163, mrhodeskropf@hbs.edu. We thank Ramana Nanda, Thomas Hellmann, and Bill Kerr for fruitful discussion and comments and Correlation Ventures and VentureSource for access to the data. All errors are our own. 1 13% of the investments included in the Venture Source data base can be found to have eventually completed an initial public offering.

APRIL 2012

and Schoar (2005) uncover persistence in fund performance. They nd that, unlike in other asset classes, such as mutual funds, venture capital rms that have a fund that outperforms the industry are likely to outperform with their next fund. The ability to consistently produce top performing investments implies that there is something unique and time-invariant about venture capital rms. For example, Sorensen (2007) argues that deal ow is an important feature of fund performance in the cross section, while Hochberg, Ljungqvist and Lu (2007) and Ljungqvist, Hochberg and Lu (2010) report that VC experience and networks can explain much of the cross section of fund performance. Hellmann and Puri (2002) report that VCs with industry experience are better, and Gompers, Kovner and Lerner (2009) nd that VC parter specialization can explain cross-sectional differences in performance. There could also be rm policies or complementarities among partners or other attributes that allow consistent top performance. However, it is an unanswered question as to what extent the important attributes of performance are a part of the rms organizational capital or embodied in the human capital of the people inside the rm. An extreme possibility is that attributes are embedded in the rm and the people are substitutable, or alternatively a venture rm is simply a collection of people. An analogy to universities, another human capital intensive environment we all know well, will provide insight. The question we aim to answer is similar to asking to what extent an academic performs better at a top institution or are top institutions just collections of top academics. One might think that the greater resources, reduced teaching, better students, better colleagues, etc would all make any researcher more productive at a better institution. This would imply a large effect from organizational capital. Alternatively, one might think that better research is about human capital specic differences and good researchers would perform well anywhere. In venture capital rms, features such as brand, resources, reputation, rm deal ow, rm network investment processes, better colleagues, etc would all help a part-

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

ner perform better. Alternatively, an individual might have reputation, network, deal ow and a great ability to nd, identify or make great investments. Furthermore, just as we might think that university quality was more important to researchers who did particular types of research, we similarly might think that the rm was more important to investors involved in IPOs rather than acquisitions. We examine both of these questions. Shedding light on the sources of performance in venture capital rms will help us make progress on a fundamental question in economics as to whether a rm is more than the sum of its parts. Williamson and Winter (1993) credit Klein (1988) with distinguishing physical from human asset specicity. They note that Klein (1988), in a response to Coase (1988), lecture 3, was the rst to argue that an organization is embedded in the human capital of the employees at the rm, but is greater than the sum of its parts. The employees come and go but the organization maintains the memory of past trials and the knowledge of how to best do something. (p. 220) This suggests that the venture rm holds some of the knowledge of how to make a great investments. Hart (1989) argues that the observation that the whole of organizational capital is typically greater than the sum of its parts is equivalent to the observation that the total output of a group of workers typically exceeds the sum of the workers individual outputs, to the extent that there are complementarities. (p. 1772) Complementarities would imply that partners should match on quality and thus rms should contain partners of similar ability as complementarities imply assortative matching (see Becker (1981), Kremer (1993), Burdett and Coles (1997) and Shimer and Smith (2000) for work on complementarities and matching). Venture capital investing is a particularly interesting arena in which to examine these ideas both because of the importance of venture capital to the economy and to investors but also because we can assign individual investments to particular partners and follow them across time and as they move between rms. Thus, we have the

APRIL 2012

ability to econometrically attribute performance to partners and rms and determine the relative importance of each. We begin by examining persistence at the individual partner-investment level. We use the full VentureSource database of venture capital investments from 1987 to 2006 (to allow time to see outcomes) augmented with hand collected data.2 We nd remarkable support for Kaplan and Schoar (2005)s fund persistence results but at the partner-investment level. For example, controlling for observable rm, partner and investment characteristics such as time, industry, dollars invested, VC experience, investment round number, rm founding date, etc, we nd that among investors who made at least 3 investments those with one standard deviation greater percentage of IPOs in the rst two investments are 14% more likely to IPO their third investment. Given the rarity of IPOs, the strength of persistence at the partner-investment level is remarkably strong.3 We also investigate persistence in the ability to achieve a top exit through acquisition as well as persistence in the ability to fail (20% of investments neither fail, IPO nor achieve a top exit and thus, either achieve a low exit, an unreported exit or have not yet exited).4 We nd strong persistence in the ability to achieve a top exit as well as persistence in failure. Thus, on average the same people who have IPOd will continue to IPO, those who achieve top exits through M&A will continue to do so and those who fail will continue to fail. Combining all types of exit we also nd persistence in exit valuation. Overall it seems that partners have exit styles in so far as they make investments that tend to exit in the same way. Next, we include the past performance of the rm by the other partners. We nd that a rms past ability to IPO also correlates with a partners probability of achieving
2 We thank Correlation Ventures for allowing us to use the extensive data have been collecting on historical investments, partners and outcomes. 3 In a complementary paper, Gompers et al. (2010) use similar data to address whether the entrepreneurs receiving VC have performance persistence. They nd an explanation for the source of persistence, while we attempt to separate the importance of the rm and person in outcomes. 4 IPOs are correlated with performance in venture capital because the best exits tend to be IPOs. Furthermore, on average the largest acquisitions are more likely to have reported values because they must be reported if material to a public acquirer.

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

an IPO on his next investment. But, of course, we cannot tell if this is because similar quality partners join together to form a rm (in which case past rm performance is just more information about partner quality) or if better rms make it more likely that a partner will IPO. When we include rm cohort xed effects we still nd signicant persistence. That is, even comparing partners in the same rm investing at the same time, we nd persistence in their relative ability to IPO, achieve top M&A exits or fail. This nding demonstrates the strength of the persistence but also demonstrates that partners within the same rm are not the same. Thus, venture capital rms do not seem to simply be collections of similar quality partners. Results from looking directly at the average persistence of venture capital partners highlights the potential importance of the partner but cannot tell us the relative importance of the rm or partner. In order to separate the rm and partner we can exploit the fact that some partners move between rms. By following partners across rm moves we can examine the performance of both partners that move and those who stay to extract the impact of the rm. To the extent that partners change performance as they move rms, ability will be allocated to the rm as due to complementarities, policies, brand, etc. And to the extent the moving partners do not alter their own or partners performance, ability will be allocated to the partner. Bertrand and Schoar (2003) employ a similar idea when they examine CEOs who move rms and separate out manager effects on rm policies, while Graham, Li and Qui (2011) use executives who move to determine the relative importance of rm and person in determining executive compensation. We employ the method developed by Abowd, Kramarz and Margolis (1999) (hence forth AKM) and promoted by Graham, Li and Qui (2011) to separate out partner and rm effects on the performance of venture capital investments. We nd that the partner xed effects are jointly signicant across IPO, failure and exit valuation outcomes. In contrast, the estimates cannot reject the null that the VC

APRIL 2012

rm xed effects are all zero. The ability of these two xed effects to explain crosssectional variation in exit valuation is just as stark. The partner xed effect estimates explain four times the variation in the size of an exit than VC rm xed effects. Thus, performance seems to be almost entirely attributable to the partner and rm characteristics seem to matter little in venture capital investing. The estimates of partner xed effects also demonstrate signicant heterogeneity in partner type, with the top and bottom quartile partner separated by a predicted $140m difference in exit value (whose mean is $100m and median $0m). The use of movers in this part of the analysis clearly restricts our sample to partners at rms where someone transferred to or away from the rm. However, the excluded sample covers 40% of rms who are less active and smaller. The included sample is more representative of the important part of the venture capital community. The use of movers also introduces the concern that endogenous moving is effecting our results. We discuss the potential types of endogenous moving and their impact further in the body of the paper. However, what we nd is that each concern should articially attribute too large an effect to the rm. Thus, since our main nding is that the partner is extremely important and the average rm has a very limited impact, these concerns reinforce our main conclusion. The implication from our ndings, that rm attributes are relatively unimportant to partner performance or persistence, provides insight into another unexplained aspect of venture capital. The optimal venture capital rm size seems to be a few hundred million in assets under management. Only a few venture capital rms are larger and many top rms cap the amount of money they will accept even though demand from investors is much higher. Typical explanations suggest that partner time is the limiting resource but this does not explain why rms dont simply increase the number of partners. Why are there not a few huge venture capital rms with hundreds of partners instead of many rms with a few partners? Furthermore, why dont we see mergers or acquisitions between venture capital rms? Zingales and Rajan (1998) ar-

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

gue that without a critical rm asset there is nothing to hold a rm together or make it larger than just what is needed to overcome Coasian frictions. Our ndings suggest that the organizational capital inside a venture capital rm is limited. This would imply limited size rms. If brand, process, deal ow, etc. were critical rm level characteristics then venture capital partnerships would naturally increase their size like other large human capital organizations such as investment banks or law rms. Our analysis also helps solve a problem for investors. Whenever a partner or group of partners leaves a venture rm to start another rm, investors must decide both whether to continue to invest in their old rm as well as whether to invest in the new rm.5 This decision requires investors to disentangle individual partner impacts on performance from the possibility that the performance was due to the rm organizational capital or partners left behind. Our results show that partners will be relatively unaffected by movement and in turn, individual partner past performance is a good predictor of future performance. Overall our work provides strong support for the persistence ndings of Kaplan and Schoar (2005) as well as new insights into the allocation of performance to the rm or partner. We nd that partners seem to have a style of exit and are more likely to IPO, have a high value exit, fail or do none this these with a greater likelihood if they have done it before. This is true even on a relative basis among partners inside the same rm. Furthermore, we nd generally that the rm level attributes are unimportant for performance compared to partner human capital. This suggests that partners might join together to the extent that it lowered transaction costs such as accounting, or other support services or surrounding fund raising. However, assortative matching due to complementarities seems to be relatively unimportant. Partners could have different abilities and better partners could simply be allocated a larger share of profits. Finally, our ndings imply that rms would not become large as there is no need to leverage rm level attributes. Thus, our ndings tend to support a Coase (1937)
5 See

Lerner, Schoar and Wongsunwai (2007) for work on LP decisions and their ability to select funds.

APRIL 2012

view of the rms that do venture capital. The balance of the paper is organized as follows. First, we explore the data and variables of interest. This is presented in Section 1. Next, we study persistence at the partner-level across a range of outcomes. This is presented in Section 2. In Section 3, we estimate a full xed effects model. Then, in Section 4 we present robustness results for all estimates. Section 5 concludes.

I.

Data description

We use the database of venture capital nancings, investors and entrepreneurial rms maintained by VentureSource. Using quarterly surveys, press releases and required nancial documents, VentureSource provides a relatively comprehensive picture of the venture capital market. The full database covers 1987 to 2011 and includes 27,079 nancings in 16,897 entrepreneurial rms nanced by 3,777 investing rms. We complement this with data provided by several venture capital rms and publiclyavailable information about funds and investments. Further, the data on board membership required an extensive cleaning to match VC partner to entrepreneurial rm. We focus on a panel of individual VC partner board seats, their dates, investment characteristics and outcomes. The panel of venture capital partner board members covers 1987 to 2011 where a board member is any investor listed on an entrepreneurial board and associated with a venture capital or other investing rm. This denition excludes outside board members or any of the management team of the entrepreneurial rm. A board seat is assigned a date based on either the date reported in the database or if missing, assumed to be the rst date the rm the board member works for made an investment. We only include board members in the data that have at least two board seats on entrepreneurial rms founded prior to 2006 and whose investing rm has made at least four investments over the whole sample. The latter restriction eliminates small VCs, those that rarely take board seats and many corporate venture capitalists. The major

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

sample includes 19,018 nancings, 11,877 entrepreneurial rms, 1,547 investing rms and 5,225 unique VC partners.6 The average board member has 6 board seats (median 4). There are several dependent variables of interest that we use throughout the analysis. We initially follow the literature and characterize success by whether the entrepreneurial rm had an initial public offering. Some 13% of entrepreneurial rms in the sample and 10% of board seats had such an exit (i.e. some entrepreneurial rms have multiple observations because there are multiple board seats). Figure 2 shows that the IPO dependent variable is a weaker measure of success since 2002 as 85% of exits were acquisitions. We also consider success through acquisitions. We create a dummy variable for successful acquisition which is 1 if the entrepreneurial rm sold via a merger or acquisition at a value at least twice the total capital invested. We cannot determine actual returns for acquisitions because we do not know the amount returned to the VC at exit, but if the total returned was more than twice the amount invested it is likely to be a more successful exit on average than exits with a smaller exit value to investment ratio.7 We also cannot use all acquisition outcomes because some do not report a value and many appear to be disguised failures. However, the largest acquisitions (greatest successes) tend to have reported values because the acquisition is material to the public acquirer and thus required to be disclosed. Combining IPOs and successful acquisitions the fraction of success is 24% for entrepreneurial rms and 19% for board seats. Along with these two successful outcomes, a dummy variable Failure is set to 1 if the rm shutdown or was still private by the end of the sample (2011). In total there are 6 possibilities for an investment in our sample: IPO, successful acquisition, low acquisition, no-reported-value acquisition, failure, or still private. As a nal measure, we summarize all outcomes into one
call these individuals VCs although some work for private equity rms or are angel investors. that this variable has a 0 for initial public offerings. The results are insensitive to dening successful as 1.5 3X of total capital raised.
7 Note 6 We

10

APRIL 2012

variable using the log of exit value zero for failures combined with IPO and reported acquisition values. Since some rms have yet to exit or have a missing exit valuations, we deal with these rms in two ways. For our main analysis we treat them as zeros but we also drop them from the sample and nd similar results.8
II. Results

A large literature demonstrates that both the VC partner and VC rm are important explanatory variables in the cross-section of outcomes. VC fund performance persistence as detailed in Kaplan and Schoar (2005) shows that top (bottom) performing venture capital funds consistently outperform (underperform) their peers. We extend this nding by examining the partner-investment level outcomes to assess the extent to which the fund-level persistence manifests itself at the partner level and exit type, while controlling for deal, partner, and VC rm level attributes not possible before.
A. VC Partner Performance Persistence

When a venture capital rm makes an investment in an entrepreneurial rm, the partner who led the investment at the venture capital rm often takes a seat on the board. For each of these events, we calculate the venture capital partners investment history. Frac. IPO t 1 measures the fraction of the partners investments made prior to t that exited via an initial public offering. Performance persistence implies that past performance has predictive power for future outcomes. Our analysis of persistence tracks the relationship between a partners investment success and the outcome of the current board seat investment (IPOt ). Thus, we ask whether or not venture capital partners who have made more investments that IPOd in the past are more likely to IPO their current investment. Figure 1 shows that studying persistence using pooled outcomes investment at t and t + 1 introduces selection issues. There is a strong, positive relationship be8 Firms that have not exited are often thought to be the living dead and rms that dont report exit values tend to have smaller exits. This suggest we should treat them as zeros.

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

11

tween IPO success rate and board seat experience. To avoid a spurious relationship between past success and future outcomes, the following regressions only consider cross-sections within the set of partners with t investments. That is, we are asking if for partners with at least three (or 5 or 7) investments if those with a greater fraction of IPOs in their rst two (or 4 or 6) investments are more likely to IPO their third (or fth or seventh) investment. Our results will therefore be the persistence conditional on having a level of partner experience in number of investments. Only considering partners with a xed experience level may lead to an underestimate of persistence. Most likely those partners that fail to make it to t investments are on average below average and correctly prevented from continuing to invest. Without such attrition, the t t h investment would likely have under performed and in turn increase estimated persistence for better partners. So by comparing persistence among partners who were good enough to make t investments we are only estimating the correlation between past and future performance among a higher quality set of partners. Discovering persistence in this subgroup still requires an additional subset of partners to outperform their (selected) peers. Table 1 reports the results of a probit regression on cross-sections of partner experience for the second, third, fth and seventh investment. Controls include the age of the VC rm, the time the VC has been taking board seats and entrepreneurial rm characteristics such as industry, investment year, dollars investment and development stage. The estimates imply a strong relationship between a partners earlier investment outcomes and current success. A one standard deviation increase in the the fraction of IPOs for investments made prior to t implies a 14%, 15% and 28% increase in the predicted IPO probability for investments 3,5 and 7 respectively. The increase in persistence as the number of required investments increases reveals additional dynamics. The coefcient is from a comparison with other investors who made the same number of investments. For example, the coefcient estimate for the 7 investment group compares investors who took board seats on 7 investments against

12

APRIL 2012

other investors who also took 7 board seats. Thus, we are nding that some investors are able to persistently outperform other investors even among this very experienced group. Note also that we specically use the eventual outcome of the earlier investments even if the exit has not yet occurred by the t th investment. This is because we are not asking if the quality of the VC was in the public information set but only whether VCs who do investments that eventually IPO are more likely to IPO their next investment. Table 4 introduces a longer history to the persistence regressions such as the partners IPO rate as of two investments previous (IPOt 2 ). Longer lags remain statistically signicant, while the size falls as we go further back in the partners investment history. In unreported results, we also repeat the analysis in Table 1 with public IPO or the fraction of board seats with known success as of the current board seat. The results are qualitatively similar.

ALTERNATIVE OUTCOME MEASURES

While the IPO is an accepted measure of partner and VC rm type, there is a large range of other outcome variables for entrepreneurial investments. Consider the three additional outcome variables discussed above: successful acquisition, failure and exit valuation. For each, we create an analogue to Frac. IPO t 1 that summarizes a partners fraction of success or failure. Acq. rate t-1 is the fraction of the partners investments made prior to t that had a successful acquisition. Fail rate t-1 measures the same, but uses investment failure. Finally, Avg. Exit value t 1 uses the average exit value of all investments made prior to t (logged). Columns 1 and 3 of Table 2 again show a strong correlation between the success (or failure) of earlier investments and future outcomes. Recall that a one standard deviation increase in IPO at investment three implies a 14% increase in future success probability. The predicted impacts for successful acquisition is 11% and 3% for failures. For the fth investment these magnitudes are 12%, 13% and 7%. The analogous

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

13

predictions for exit value at investment three and ve are 14% and 10%. The results show that additional measures of quality further our understanding of partner performance persistence. Persistence in returns is not simply at the portfolio level, but also investment by investment at the partner-level for IPOs, high acquisition exits and failure. Thus, partners seem to have an exit style. Although we cannot examine fund level returns as Kaplan and Schoar (2005) do, we can control for partner, rm, industry and time-varying characteristics in a way that was not possible in other work.

PERSISTENCE AND THE VC FIRM

A partners performance as measured by IPOs, acquisitions or exit values exhibits strong, economically meaningful persistence. These estimations control for the experience of the venture capital rm, but lack additional variables that could explain the results. For example, VC partners could simply match to high quality rms and inherit the rms deal ow and resources (e.g. Sorensen (2007)). We partially address this issue by including the past performance of the other partners in the rm. Dene %VC IPO (i ) as the fraction of board seats for the partners VC rm that had an IPO excluding those investments made by the partner. If a partner is merely successful in the past and future because of the rm, then the inclusion of this control should eliminate or at least dramatically lower the coefcient on the partners past success. Table 3 repeats the estimation of Table 1 with this additional control. Estimates in columns 2,4,6 and 8 show a general pattern of lower persistence related to partner past success, but the economic magnitudes are relatively unchanged. Although the inclusion of the other partner VC performance does not dramatically alter the explanatory power of the partners past investment success, both measures are statistically meaningful in nearly all specications. The evidence suggests that both the partner and the rm play a role in investment outcomes, but additional analysis is required to separate the two.

14

APRIL 2012

VC FIRM FIXED EFFECTS

Tables 2 and 3 illustrate that there is information embedded in the performance of a partners past investments about the quality of their future investments. When we include the past performance of the other partners in the rm we see that both the rm and the partner matter for outcome prediction. We next introduce a venture capital fund xed effect to compare partners in the same rm investing at the same time. Venture capital rms are long-lived, while their activity revolves around funds with limited lifespans. Lacking a comprehensive mapping of fund to board seat, we create an alternative VC fund xed effect. For each VC rm in the sample, we create cohorts of active VC partners by ve-year windows. Starting from the rst investment made by the VC rm, each ve years creates a new VC rm. The cohorts closely mimics VC funds, increasing the sample of VC rms from 1,307 to 1,806. An important identication condition of this xed effect estimator is differences in outcomes between partner performance within rm. If partner performance is identical, the VC xed effect absorbs anything associated with partner performance. Table 5 presents VC xed effect results for each of the exit outcomes from Table 2. The limited dependent variable restricts the use of a probit, so estimation uses the conditional logit. Estimates show that the success of earlier investments as measured by either IPO or successful acquisition predicts higher probabilities of such events in the future for IPOs and successful acquisitions. The results for failure persistence are weaker and statistically non-existent, while the exit value results in columns 7 and 8 remain strong. Intuitively, those partners within a VC fund investing cohort who have better past performance are more likely to have better future performance. Simply, the typical VC fund has signicant partner performance heterogeneity that is persistent. The results demonstrate both that the partner matters and that assortative matching among partners is signicantly less than perfect - partners have observably

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

15

different abilities. Next we move to a full three-way xed effect specication rst detailed by Abowd, Kramarz and Margolis (1999) to identify the relative importance of the partner and the rm.

III.

Three-way xed effects model

The results in Tables 1 - 3 indicate that both the venture capital rm and partner are important variables in the cross-section of outcomes. The results in Table 5 with the inclusion of VC rm xed effects has two interpretations. One, time invariant VC rm characteristics explain part of the partner performance persistence. Or alternatively, partners with signicant time-invariant xed effects match together with similar (but not perfectly similar) partners. Separating the rm and partner in investment outcomes requires moving away from study of persistence to a general cross-section analysis with xed effects for both actors. Consider the following linear model of exit valuation Vi k j t :

(1)

Vi j k t = 1 X i t + 2Z j t + 3Uk t + i + j + t + i k t .

In equation (1), i denotes the VC partner, j the VC rm, k the entrepreneurial rm and t the date of the investment. t is the investment year xed effect. The variables X i t , Z j t and Uk t include time-varying controls for each. The unit of observation is the rst board seat taken by the venture capital partner i at entrepreneurial rm k . Our focus is the retrieval of the partner and rm xed effects i and j , which requires movements of partners between rms.

MOVERS AND THE AKM METHOD

If venture capital partners remained at one rm their entire career, one could not separate of the partner xed effect i and rm xed effect j . The average perfor-

16

APRIL 2012

mance of the rms investments IPOs, failures or exit values would map directly to the average of the partners outcomes. Movers from existing rms to new rms or between existing rms presents the required variation. For the venture capital sample, some 20% of partners worked at two or more VC rms.9 Bertrand and Schoar (2003) use movers within a sample of CEOs to identify whether individual xed effects can explain cross-sectional variation in corporate policy variables. We use the Abowd, Kramarz and Margolis (1999) (hereafter, AKM) renement of this methodology to estimate the xed effects for both movers and stayers. The estimation technique allows analysis of partners that both leave, arrive and stay with a rm.

The xed effects estimator used to separate a rm and person effect and proposed by Abowd, Kramarz and Margolis (1999), has two major features. First, the set of individuals moving between rms creates sets of connected rms. Any two rms that have a mover that worked at or moved to are connected and in turn, all the nonmovers are connected. AKM show that connections invite estimation of the rm and person xed effects for each connected group, relative to some within-group benchmark. Second, the movers not only generate the set of rms and persons that can be analyzed but also provide the variation for identication of the xed effects (see next section for details). For this analysis, the benet of the AKM method is the ability to estimate the partner xed effects for both movers and non-movers. Such a set is more representative if movers are very different on both observables and unobservables. A limited set of movers also mechanically lowers the joint signicance of rm xed effects, therefore the analysis should have a large set of movers for generality. The analysis of managerial compensation in Graham, Li and Qui (2011) has signicantly more detail on the methodology, its strengths and its limitations.

9 These

numbers are between 15-30% depending on the estimation sample.

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

17

MECHANICS OF AKM

It is useful to understand the basic features of how the AKM method separately identies the partner and rm effect using the movers.10 Dene the variable Fi j t as a dummy variable equal to one if partner i works at rm j at time t , and zero otherwise. We can rewrite equation (1) as:
J

(2)

Vi k t = 1 X i t + 2Z j t + 3Uk t + i +
j =1

Fi j t j + t + i k t .

The AKM method rst sweeps out the partner xed effect by averaging over the partners investments to get:
J

(3)

i = 1 X i + 2Z i + 3U i + V
j =1

i j j + i + t + i . F

Next, demean (2) with (3) to get:

i =1 (X i t X i ) + 2 (Z i j t Z i ) + 3 (Uk t U i ) Vi k t V (4) +
j =1 J

i j ) j + (t t ) + (i k t i ). (Fi j t F

First note that the partner xed effects have been removed with demeaning. Second, i j ) j makes clear that the VC rm xed effect is only estimated using the term (Fi j t F i j ). Analogous to the description in Graham, Li and partners that move (i.e. Fi j t = F Qui (2011), the differences in performance for partners changing VC rms allow us to estimate the rm xed effects for the rms where the mover was a partner. Finally, we can recover the partner xed effects using the estimates from the stan-

10 We

follow the same process as Graham, Li and Qui (2011).

18

APRIL 2012

dard least square dummy variable regression in (4) and the following equation:
J j =1

(5)

1 X 2Z 3U i i i i i = V

j . i j F

Equation (5) uses the beta estimates and rm xed effect estimates from equation (4) and multiplies them by partner i s average characteristics. It is interesting to note that the last term ensures that the partner xed effects are reduced by the rm xed effect estimates of all the rms where the partner worked multiplied by the fraction of his time he spent at each rm.

ECONOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF AKM

The xed effect estimates from the AKM method have several important econometric properties. First, both the rm and partner xed effects are unbiased and efcient, however, they are inconsistent. Simply, consistency requires a large T panel which is infeasible. Most estimators such as the one used by Bertrand and Schoar (2003) also lack consistency. Next, the linear assumption of the model limits the types of functional forms that are often used in limited dependent variable settings. For the outcome variables IPO, Acquisition and Failure we use the linear probability model. Non-linear models that do not suffer from the incidental parameters problem, such as the conditional logit, do not invite the rich analysis of separating the person and rm xed effects. The major cost of the linear probability model are bounded xed ef be the predicted values from a general model with this form. fects estimates. Let X i Here, the estimates of the one-way xed effects are bounded X i i 1 x i . This restriction forces us to focus the discussion of the AKM results to the continuous variable outcome Exit valuation, while still reporting those of the linear probability specication for illustration.

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

19

FIXED EFFECT RESULTS

Estimation of equation (1) starts with the data on the board seat and its investment outcome for VC partners with least four investments. This restriction ensures an ample set of outcomes to estimate both a partner and rm xed effect. Next, the connectedness grouping eliminates all partners and rms that lack a mover to or from during the sample period. In the end, the sample in the AKM estimates for exit valuation has 2,142 partners, 649 VC rms and 645 movers. Estimation of the full xed effects model includes time-varying controls for VC rm experience, entrepreneurial rm stage, dollars invested and VC partner experience. Additionally, the model has year xed effects, but excludes industry xed effects because most partners and rms rarely switch industries.11 We use the four major outcome variables from above, however, limitations of combining linear probability and xed effects restrict inference from IPO, acquisition and failure outcomes. Thus, our focus will mainly be on the estimates from the log exit valuation regressions. The 60% correlation between valuation and the IPO dummy show the variable contains much of the information in the standard outcome measure. Table 6 presents the results of estimating equation (1) using the AKM method. We focus on the p-values from a test that the set xed effects are jointly zero and those estimates relative contribution to the model R 2 . The p-value from the F-test that all the partner xed effects are zero is rejected in all but the successful acquisitions specications. The p-value for the analogous test on VC rm xed effects consistently fails to reject the null. The estimates imply that the average partner has explanatory power in the outcome regressions. These stark differences manifest themselves in the relative contribution of the xed effects to the R 2 . The
cov (Y ,p a r t n e r F E ) v a r (Y )

in Table 6 reports

the covariance of the dependent variable with the partner and rm xed effects, each scaled by the dependent variable variance. These measures in turn present the frac11 The

xed effect cannot be separated from any industry dummy variable.

20

APRIL 2012

tion of the total R 2 attributable to each. The partner xed effects explain 3 - 6 times more of the cross-sectional variation in the outcomes than the VC rm xed effects. For exit valuation, some 38% of the total R 2 is attributable to the estimated partner xed effects (the omitted category are the other control variables).12 Not only do the estimated xed effects point to the relative importance of rm and partner, but they also provide a picture on the heterogeneity of partners. The plot of the demeaned partner xed effects from the largest connected group in Figure 4 provides economic magnitudes to the estimates.13 The reported xed effects are in units of log exit valuation. The largest connected group 86% of the full AKM sample exhibits signicant variation in the xed effect estimates. For example, using the levels analogue of the estimates, a move from the bottom quartile to top quartile partner xed effect implies a $140m increase in predicted exit valuation. With 55% of exit valuations resulting in zero and a mean of $100m (median 0), this difference in xed effect suggests large and economically meaningful differences in partners.
IV. Partners and rm formation

With the estimates of the partner xed effects in hand, we can partially address if and how certain types of partners form venture capital rms. Any analysis requires a counter-factual sample, which we set as the outcome of randomly matching partners to rms for the existing VC rm size distribution. Simply, we x the number of partners ever active at the 563 rms in the AKM sample and randomly reassign them to rms 100 times. If the partner xed effect estimates from AKM measure VC partner type, then any assortative matching by partners into rms will exhibit itself through different distributions of partners in these two samples. Consider the distribution of top partners, which we dene as VC partners with top quartile xed effects. The columns Random Match in Table 7 show the predicted fraction of VC rms with
12 We also repeated the analysis using the more memory-intensive method of including dummy variables for partner, rm and year. The results, as expected, are the same. 13 Any report of the estimated xed effects from AKM must conditional on such a grouping because the estimates are relative to a within-group reference xed effect.

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

21

zero, one, two, etc. top partners under random matching. The columns Sample shows the true distribution. Two features stand out comparing the distribution of top partners across rms. First, the true sample has over twice the number of rms with no top partners as predicted by random matching (54% vs. 23%). Second, there are signicantly more VC rms in the sample with many top partners than found in the random sample. These two facts suggest there is some matching of top partners to rms and low-type partners to rms. Similarly, the within-rm standard deviation of the partner xed effects in these two sample and nd that the random sample has approximately twice the variation as found in the data. VC rms are comprised of more similar partners than partner composition formed through random matching. The evidence suggests that there is some sorting of partners in the tails to rms, which as we discuss below would tend to produce a large VC rm xed effect.

V.

Robustness

The results above are robust to a wide array of specications. According to Figures 2 and 3 there is a large set of investments that lack an outcome. We treat these rms as either non-IPOs, zero exit values or failed acquisitions depending on the specication of the regression. This treatment is reasonable because we only considered entrepreneurial rms founded prior to 2006 so most of the better rms will have exited. Nonetheless, it is possible this assumption is driving some of the results. So we repeat each estimation without investments that lack an exit event as of the end of the sample. The results persistence, F-tests and R 2 contributions are similar for exit value, successful acquisitions and IPO/acquisitions. The results for IPOs are weaker for the partner xed effects in the AKM model, which is likely driven by the near absence of IPOs post-2001. We conclude that the major results are not driven by our assumptions on outcomes for non-exited investments. One potential concern of the AKM method is the use of movers. Their movement

22

APRIL 2012

provides the variation to estimate the VC rm xed effects and in turn, those of nonmovers. Perhaps these movers decisions are endogenous to their own performance or that of their past rm. Table 8 details features of the rms that are the source of movers, the destination of movers and those that have both. Not surprisingly, rms that movers leave are larger and older. These rms also invest in earlier stage companies and relatively few information technology rms. These differences do not pose a problem for the representativeness of the VC xed effect because both the moved to and from rm have a xed effect estimate. Table 8 highlights other features of rms that movers move from and to: for example, performance is higher at rms people leave and lower at rms they go to. This suggests that partners are being red from good rms or leaving and starting poor rms. However, in unreported results, we nd that exclusion of the year xed effects in the AKM specication dramatically increases the size and importance of VC xed effects. This difference implies that much of the partner movement is correlated with changes in investment performance over time, i.e., partners seem to leave around (before and after) a peak in VC performance. Thus, the inclusion of year xed effects is important. Next, table 9 compares the characteristics of movers, stayers and those partners excluded from the analysis (i.e. they had too few board seats or were not in a connected group). Movers and stayers are similar across most dimensions, excluding their rms board seat experience (Total VC board seats). As expected, partners excluded from the analysis invested less often and worked at smaller VC rms. Table 10, presents a similar comparison at the rm-level. The AKM rm sample comprises 55% (608) of VC rms with at least two partners who sat on at least 4 board seats. The excluded rms are those that never had a mover move to or from the rm. Such rms are likely very young or those that failed after their rst fund. The exit value and IPO rate differences show that the included rms are larger and generally more successful.

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

23

The AKM method is also robust to the time-varying performance measures used in Tables 1 and 2, which Graham, Li and Qui (2011) note help control for any assortative matching between rms and movers. Inclusion of both the lagged partner performance and rm performance from Table 2 has no measurable impact on the conclusion that the partner xed effects are non-zero and explain a large fraction of the R 2 . The inclusion of these variables does improve the p-value on the F-test that the rm xed effects are all zero. The AKM results control year xed effects, however, one might argue that much of the large exit values generated in the asset class were driven by those in the late 1990s. If we exclude all nancings in 1997-1999, the results in Table 6 are quantitatively similar. The p-value on the F-test for VC rm xed effects is smaller (9%), however, the partner xed effects are still jointly signicant and explain much of the variation in exit valuation. The estimation of Table 6 produces xed effect estimates relative to a benchmark within each group in the connected sample. Therefore, the comparison of estimated FE between these groups is problematic. We address these concerns following Graham, Li and Qui (2011) by re-estimating the full model with the largest connected group. That group comprised 86% of the sample and in turn invites a more accurate comparison of the xed effects distribution. Both the qualitative results in Table 6 and the distribution in Figure 4 are unchanged. The rm and partner xed effects estimates in Table 6 suggest that the average partner explains more of the variation in the cross-section of exit values than the rm. However, there is a large heterogeneity in VCs which may have been lost in the pooling of all rms and partners. To address this, we create a sub-sample of the most active VC rms dened by those in the top quartile of deal volume done from 1987 to 2011 and repeat the AKM regressions with this sub-sample. Note that the connectedness requirement for the AKM estimator implies that the samples in the resulting estimates will be smaller than the full set of VCs. Generally, the VC rm effect is rela-

24

APRIL 2012

tively more signicant in this sub-sample. For the exit-value regression, a p-value of .5 for the F-test on rm FE goes to .06 in this sub-sample. Importantly, there are 1/3 as many rms, so clearly the average rm in the most active VC sample matters relatively more than the average rm in explaining outcomes. Although the joint signicance is higher for VC rm xed effect, the fraction of R 2 they explain is basically unchanged from the full sample. Overall, the results are robust to considering only the most active rms.
A. Endogeneity concerns

Table 9 shows that movers and stayers are similar across many dimensions, while Table 10 demonstrates rms in the AKM sample are active VC rms. If rms and partners in the AKM sample are still unobservably different, it could limit our inference. We now discuss resulting predictions from such non-randomness about VC rm and partner xed effect estimates. Recall that identication of the VC rm xed effects comes from changes in mover performance around the move as shown in equation (4). Consider rst that movers are simply partners red by their past rms. If such partners move to worse rms postexit, then the AKM method will nd a large rm xed effect. Now suppose that movers are on average high quality partners seeking better prospects at relatively better rms. Again, if these partners move to better rms, the AKM will attribute this to a larger average rm xed effect. These two extreme scenarios show that concerns about nonrandom movement leads to a predicted non-zero VC rm xed effect. Our inability to nd a signicant VC rm xed effect means that, on average, either rms have no rm xed effect or movers simply move to rms that have nearly identical (but non-zero) rm xed effects as their previous rm. It is not possible to rule out this possibility, however, both data and intuition suggest it is not a likely explanation. First, Table 8 shows that these rms are different in many ways. Furthermore, given that the largest connected sample in the AKM specication is 86% of the sample,

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

25

movement to identical rms means that 86% of VC rms have the same xed effects. Thus, virtually all VC rms must have the same xed effect likely zero but possibly any other number. Importantly however, such a fact also leads to the conclusion that the average VC rm is not important in cross-section of outcomes as they are all the same. We conclude that neither non-randomness of movers nor endogenous timing of rm changes can explain the results in Table 6. Movers can also exit their rms because of the characteristics of their partners. The specication in equation (1) ignores any externalities between VC partners. For example, all partners may benet from working with top partners (i.e. both improve) and movers will want to exploit this by working with them. Any positive externalities would increase in the partners performance, which the AKM method attributes to the VC rm xed effect. The converse argument holds when bad partners exit rms because they do not provide the externalities. However, as Table 6 makes clear, most specications nd an insignicant average VC rm xed effect. Thus, externalities must not be important relative to individual partner characteristics. Similar arguments also demonstrate that any mean-reversion in VC partner performance will bias the estimated VC rm xed effect to be non-zero. If partners who are lucky and leave to start or go to a different rm will subsequently mean-revert. This change in performance across the move will result in a large rm xed effect. Alternatively, if partners who are unlucky get red and go to a new rm, they will also meanrevert. This change would again result in a large rm xed effect. Both effects would lead the AKM regressions to over estimate the importance of the VC rm, however we nd a statistically small average VC rm xed effects. Overall, each potential endogeneity issue that we can think of should articially attribute too large an effect to the VC rm. Thus, our rm xed effect estimates are likely too large. Since our main nding is that the average rm has little impact on performance, these endogeneity concerns reinforce our main conclusion.

26

APRIL 2012

VI.

Conclusion

The venture capital partner can explain a large fraction of the cross-sectional variation in investment outcomes. The partners performance is persistent over time, even after controlling for a large set of individual and VC rm controls. Overall our work provides strong support for the persistence ndings of Kaplan and Schoar (2005) as well as new insights into the allocation of performance to the rm or partner. We nd that the partner xed effects are jointly signicant across IPO, failure and exit valuation outcomes. In contrast, the estimates cannot reject the null that the VC rm xed effects are all zero. The ability of these two xed effects to explain crosssectional variation in exit valuation is just as stark. The partner xed effect estimates explain three to six times the variation in the size of an exit than VC rm xed effects. Thus, performance seems to be largely attributable to the partner and rm characteristics seem to matter little in venture capital investing. The estimates of partner xed effects also demonstrate signicant heterogeneity in partner type, with the top and bottom quartile partner separated by a predicted $140m difference in exit value (whose mean is $100m and median 0). Venture capital partners, it seems, have a style of exit and are more likely to IPO, have a high value exit, fail or do none this these with a greater likelihood if they have done it before. This is true even on a relative basis among partners inside the same rm. Furthermore, we nd generally that the rm level attributes are unimportant for performance compared to partner human capital. This implies partners would join together, but only to the extent that it lowered transaction costs such as accounting, or other support services or surrounding fund raising. Our results suggest that venture capital partnerships are not much more than the sum of their partners. Partners are often signicantly different from each other, but good rms are those with a group of better partners. Thus, rms that have maintained high performance across many funds may have simply been able to hire/retain

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

27

high quality partners rather than actually provide those partners with much in the way of fundamental help.

REFERENCES

Abowd, John M., Francis Kramarz, and David N. Margolis. 1999. High Wage Workers and High Wage Firms. Econometrica, 67: 251333. Abowd, John M., Robert H. Creecy, and Francis Kramarz. 2002. Computing Person and Firm Effects Using Linked Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data. Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau Technical Papers 2002-06. Becker, Gary S. 1981. Treatise on the Family. Cambridge:Harvard University Press. Bertrand, Marianne, and Antoinette Schoar. 2003. Managing With Style: The Effect Of Managers On Firm Policies. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(4): 1169 1208. Burdett, Kenneth, and Melvyn G. Coles. 1997. Marriage and Class. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112: 141168. Coase, Ronald H. 1937. The Nature of the Firm. Economica n.s., 4: 386. Coase, Ronald H. 1988. The Nature of the Firm: Origin, Meaning, Inuence. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 4. Cornelissen, Thomas. 2008. The Stata command felsdvreg to t a linear model with two high-dimensional xed effects. Stata Journal, 8(2): 170189. Gompers, Paul, Anna Kovner, and Josh Lerner. 2009. Specialization and Success: Evidence from Venture Capital. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 18(3): 817844.

28

APRIL 2012

Gompers, Paul, Anna Kovner, Josh Lerner, and David Scharfstein. 2010. Performance persistence in entrepreneurship. Journal of Financial Economics, 96(1): 18 32. Graham, John, Li, and Qui. 2011. Managerial Attributes and Executive Compensation. NBER working paper. Hart, Oliver. 1989. An Economists Perspective on the Theory of the Firm. Columbia Law Review, 89(7): 17571774. Hellmann, Thomas, and Manju Puri. 2002. Venture Capital and the Professionalization of Start-Up Firms: Empirical Evidence. Journal of Finance, 57(1): 169197. Hochberg, Yael, Alexander Ljungqvist, and Yang Lu. 2007. Whom You Know Matters: Venture Capital Networks and Investment Performance. Journal of Finance, 62(1). Kaplan, Steven N., and Antoinette Schoar. 2005. Private Equity Performance: Returns, Persistence, and Capital Flows. Journal of Finance, 60(4). Klein, Benjamin. 1988. Vertical Integration as Organizational Ownership: The Fisher Body-General Motors Relationship Revisited. Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 4(1): 199213. Kremer, Michael. 1993. The O-ring theory of economic development. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 103: 551575. Lerner, Josh, Antoinette Schoar, and Wan Wongsunwai. 2007. Smart Institutions, Foolish Choices: The Limited Partner Performance Puzzle. Journal of Finance, 62(2): 731764. Ljungqvist, Alexander, Yael Hochberg, and Yang Lu. 2010. Networking as a Barrier to Entry and the Competitive Supply of Venture Capital. Journal of Finance, 65: 829 859.

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

29

Sahlman, William. 2010. Risk and Reward in Venture Capital. Harvard Business School Note 811-036, 137. Shimer, Robert, and Lones Smith. 2000. Assortative matching and search. Econometrica, 68: 343369. Sorensen, Morton. 2007. How smart is smart money? An empirical two-sided matching model of venture capital. Journal of Finance, 62: 272562. Williamson, Oliver E., and Sidney G. Winter, ed. 1993. The Nature of the Frim, Origins, Evolutions, and Development. London:Oxford University Press. Zingales, Luigi, and Ragu Rajan. 1998. Power in a Theory of the Firm. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 113: 387432.

30

APRIL 2012

VII.

Tables and Figures

FIGURE 1. PERFORMANCE AND EXPERIENCE OF VC PARTNERS

Notes: Figure displays the fraction of a VC partners investments that have gone public as of their N th investment. For example, for the average partner with at least four investments, the line shows the fraction of IPOs in these partners history. Active partners shows the number of partners with at least N board seats.

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

31

FIGURE 2. EXITS OVER TIME

Notes: Figure displays the fraction of exits that occur from 1990-2011. Includes all rms that were founded prior to 2006 and are no longer private as of the end of the sample. % Acquisitions (high) are the fraction of exits that were acquisitions with prices that exceeded twice the total capital raised. % Acquisitions (low) are the fraction of exits that were acquisitions with values lower than twice capital raised or missing.

32

APRIL 2012

FIGURE 3. EXITS OVER TIME BY FINANCING YEAR

Notes: Figure displays the fraction of exits for each board investment year and entrepreneurial observation. A given year reports the fraction of exit types for investments made in that year as of the end of the sample (2011). Includes all rms that were founded prior to 2006. % Acquisitions (high) are the fraction of exits that were acquisitions with prices that exceeded twice the total capital raised. % Acquisitions (low) are the fraction of exits that were acquisitions with values lower than twice capital raised. % Acquisitions miss are the fraction of exits with acquisitions that are also missing exit valuations.

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

33

FIGURE 4. FIXED EFFECT DISTRIBUTION: EXIT VALUE

Notes: Figure displays the distribution of the de-meaned estimated xed effects from the AKM regression using log valuation for IPO or successful acquisition as the dependent variable (0 if no exit, failure or unreported). The sample of estimated xed effects only includes those in the largest connected sample (i.e. sets of rms connected by movers) that comprise 86% of VC partners in the full specication. This restriction ensures that the xed effects estimates are comparable.

34

APRIL 2012

TABLE 1PARTNER PERFORMANCE PERSISTENCE

Notes: Dependent variable is 1 for columns if the investment that the VC had a board seat at time t on exited via IPO by the end of the sample. All specications are probit. Each column only includes one observation per partner, who each were only observed at one VC rm so that all control variables are dened. Frac. IPO t 1 is the VC partners IPO success rate as of the investment at t . Log yrs. partner experience is the years since the partner took the rst board seat as of t + 1. VC total deals (log) if the log of the total board seats taken by the VC rm of the partner as of t . Log round # is the log of the nancing round sequence number. $ raised is the capital invested in the nancing when the board seat was taken. Years since previous board is the time between the t + 1 and t investment. Year FE are xed effects for the year of the investment at the date of the dependent variable t . Industry FE are dummies for Information Technology, Healthcare and Other dened by the entrepreneurial rm invested in at time t . Standard errors clustered at the investment year. Signicance: p < 0.10, p < 0.05, p < 0.01.

IPO2 (1) Frac. IPO t-1 0.258 (0.0785)

IPO3 (2) 0.386 (0.118) -0.00264 (0.0447)

IPO5 (3) 0.640 (0.230) -0.0948 (0.0691) 0.1000 (0.0436) 0.300 (0.142) 0.0134 (0.00351)

IPO7 (4) 1.195 (0.209) 0.00173 (0.0875) 0.0540 (0.0722) 0.240 (0.101) 0.0126 (0.00372) -0.103 (0.0513) -2.673 (0.356) 1054 0.211 Y Y Probit

Log years partner exp.

VC total deals (log)

0.0281 (0.0233) 0.459 (0.0616) 0.00283 (0.00173)

0.00451 (0.0248) 0.290 (0.0610) 0.00658 (0.00253)

Log round #

$ raised

Years since previous board

-0.00111 (0.0151) -2.831 (0.159) 3743 0.179 Y Y Probit

0.0152 (0.0292) -2.470 (0.155) 2590 0.195 Y Y Probit

-0.0191 (0.0448) -2.576 (0.293) 1462 0.234 Y Y Probit

Constant Observations Pseudo R 2 Year FE? Industry FE? Estimation

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

35

TABLE 2PARTNER PERFORMANCE PERSISTENCE BY EXIT TYPES

Notes: Probit regressions (OLS for columns 3 and 6) of three different dependent variables with the same specication as Table 1. Each column only includes one observation per partner who were observed at only one VC rm. ACQ t is 1 if the partners t th board seat investment resulted in a successful acquisition (i.e. sold for at least twice capital invested) and Fail is 1 if it resulted in an failure or the rm had yet to exit by the end of the sample. Exit value t is the log of the exit value at sale of the entrepreneurial rm (0 if failure). Acq. rate t 1 is the fraction of the partners investments prior to t that has a successful acquisition. Fail rate t 1 is the same, but the fraction that failed. Avg. Exit value t 1 is the average exit values (log of average) prior to this investment. Partner exper. is the log of the years of partner experience as a board member. See Table 1 for the remaining control variable denitions. Standard errors clustered at the investment year. Signicance: p < 0.10, p < 0.05, p < 0.01. ACQ3 Fai l3 Exit Value3 ACQ5 Fail5 Exit value5 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) main Acq. rate t-1 0.276 0.416 (0.130) (0.188)

Fail rate t-1

0.208 (0.0555) 0.0872 (0.0133) -0.00115 (0.0285) 0.0518 (0.0240) -0.135 (0.0498) -0.000274 (0.00189) -0.0127 (0.0281) -0.0506 (0.0134) -0.220 (0.0563) -0.00335 (0.00184) -0.0623 (0.0537) 0.0420 (0.0238) 0.326 (0.0710) 0.0119 (0.00661) -0.0484 (0.0583) 0.00450 (0.0321) 0.0313 (0.0653) -0.00360 (0.00182)

0.235 (0.139) 0.0745 (0.0291) 0.0677 (0.0380) -0.0692 (0.0252) -0.286 (0.0604) -0.00406 (0.00257) -0.118 (0.0882) 0.105 (0.0421) 0.413 (0.106) 0.0183 (0.00664)

Avg. Exit value t-1

Log years partner exp.

VC total deals (log)

Log round #

$ raised

Years since previous board

-0.00300 (0.0336) -2.040 (0.145) 3294 0.043 Y Y Probit

0.0108 (0.0124) 1.743 (0.0885) 3294 0.056 Y Y Probit

0.0412 (0.0396) -0.933 (0.153) 3294 0.101 Y Y OLS

-0.0170 (0.0527) -1.800 (0.237) 2144 0.042 Y Y Probit

0.0157 (0.0317) 1.192 (0.189) 2144 0.083 Y Y Probit

-0.0174 (0.0456) 1.008 (0.253) 2144 0.143 Y Y OLS

Constant Observations R2 Pseudo R 2 Year FE? Industry FE? Model

TABLE 3PARTNER PERFORMANCE PERSISTENCE WITH VC FIRM CONTROLS

Notes: Dependent variable is 1 for columns if the investment that the VC had a board seat at time t on exited via IPO by the end of the sample. All specications are probit. Each column only includes one observation per partner, who each were only observed at one VC rm so that all control variables are dened. Frac. IPO t 1 is the VC partners IPO success rate as of the investment at t . % VC IPO (-i) is the IPO success rate for the VC rm excluding those investments and outcomes associated with the VC partner. All other controls as dened in Table 1. Standard errors clustered at the investment year. Signicance: p < 0.10, p < 0.05, p < 0.01.

APRIL 2012

IPO2 (1) Frac. IPO t-1 0.534 (0.175) -0.00264 (0.0447) 0.0281 (0.0233) 0.459 (0.0616) 0.00283 (0.00173) 0.00960 (0.0268) 0.443 (0.0611) 0.00259 (0.00183) 0.00451 (0.0248) 0.290 (0.0610) 0.00658 (0.00253) 0.258 (0.0785) 0.191 (0.0989) 0.386 (0.118)

IPO2 (2)

IPO3 (3)

IPO3 (4) 0.321 (0.132) 0.192 (0.186) -0.00966 (0.0464) 0.000346 (0.0287) 0.317 (0.0547) 0.00612 (0.00269)

IPO5 (5) 0.640 (0.230)

IPO5 (6) 0.530 (0.246) 0.564 (0.206) -0.0948 (0.0691) 0.1000 (0.0436) 0.300 (0.142) 0.0134 (0.00351) -0.0496 (0.0723) 0.0866 (0.0526) 0.261 (0.142) 0.0128 (0.00341)

IPO7 (7) 1.195 (0.209)

IPO7 (8)

1.164 (0.213)

% VC IPO (-i)

0.696 (0.300) 0.00173 (0.0875) 0.0540 (0.0722) 0.240 (0.101) 0.0126 (0.00372) -0.103 (0.0513)

Log years partner exp.

-0.0310 (0.102)

VC total deals (log)

0.00150 (0.0808)

Log round #

0.250 (0.107)

$ raised

0.0146 (0.00499)

Years since previous board

-0.00111 (0.0151) -2.831 (0.159) 3743 0.179 Y Y Probit

0.00567 (0.0168) -2.777 (0.161) 3643 0.180 Y Y Probit

0.0152 (0.0292) -2.470 (0.155) 2590 0.195 Y Y Probit

0.0170 (0.0323) -2.486 (0.144) 2510 0.196 Y Y Probit

-0.0191 (0.0448) -2.576 (0.293) 1462 0.234 Y Y Probit

-0.0432 (0.0412) -2.833 (0.345) 1415 0.239 Y Y Probit

-0.111 (0.0623) -2.673 (0.356) 1054 0.211 Y Y Probit

Constant Observations Pseudo R 2 Year FE? Industry FE? Estimation

36

-2.529 (0.343) 1027 0.231 Y Y Probit

TABLE 4PARTNER PERFORMANCE PERSISTENCE WITH VC FIRM CONTROLS:

ADDITIONAL LAGS

Notes: Dependent variable is 1 for columns if the investment that the VC had a board seat at time t on exited via IPO by the end of the sample. All specications are probit. Each column only includes one observation per partner, who each were only observed at one VC rm so that all control variables are dened. Frac. IPO t 1 is the VC partners IPO success rate as of the investment at t . Frac. IPO t 2 is the fraction of the partners t = 1, 2, . . . , t 2 investments. Frac. IPO t 3 is the fraction of the partners t = 1, 2, . . . , t 3 investments. All other controls as dened in Table 1. Standard errors clustered at the investment year. Signicance: p < 0.10, p < 0.05, p < 0.01.

IPO3 (1) 0.386 (0.118) 0.237 (0.0933) 0.260 (0.160) -0.00264 (0.0447) 0.00451 (0.0248) 0.290 (0.0610) 0.00658 (0.00253) 0.00659 (0.00253) 0.0134 (0.00351) 0.0137 (0.00355) 0.292 (0.0617) 0.300 (0.142) 0.299 (0.142) 0.00616 (0.0248) 0.1000 (0.0436) 0.104 (0.0435) 0.105 (0.0432) 0.301 (0.142) 0.0139 (0.00361) -0.00438 (0.0453) -0.0948 (0.0691) -0.0962 (0.0714) -0.0832 (0.0700) 0.00173 (0.0875) 0.0540 (0.0722) 0.240 (0.101) 0.0126 (0.00372) -0.00828 (0.0866) 0.0515 (0.0722) 0.245 (0.102) 0.0130 (0.00396) 0.439 (0.195) 1.126 (0.193) 1.023 (0.183) -0.0192 (0.0896) 0.0587 (0.0703) 0.238 (0.104) 0.0132 (0.00392) 0.640 (0.230) 1.195 (0.209)

IPO3 (2)

IPO5 (3)

IPO5 (4)

IPO5 (5)

IPO7 (6)

IPO7 (7)

IPO7 (8)

Frac. IPO t-1

Frac. IPO t-2

Frac. IPO t-3

Log years partner exp.

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

VC total deals (log)

Log round #

$ raised

Years since previous board 0.0152 (0.0292) 0.0185 (0.0293)

-0.0191 (0.0448)

-0.0157 (0.0450)

-0.0121 (0.0455)

-0.103 (0.0513)

-0.105 (0.0512)

-0.0955 (0.0504)

Constant

37

Observations Pseudo R 2 Year FE? Industry FE? Estimation

-2.470 (0.155) 2590 0.195 Y Y Probit

-2.466 (0.154) 2590 0.193 Y Y Probit

-2.576 (0.293) 1462 0.234 Y Y Probit

-2.558 (0.293) 1462 0.231 Y Y Probit

-2.592 (0.292) 1462 0.229 Y Y Probit

-2.673 (0.356) 1054 0.211 Y Y Probit

-2.664 (0.347) 1054 0.212 Y Y Probit

-2.694 (0.352) 1054 0.211 Y Y Probit

TABLE 5PARTNER PERFORMANCE PERSISTENCE VC FIRM FIXED EFFECTS

Notes: Fixed effects regression where the unit is the VC rm in ve-year investment windows (i.e. VC cohort). Estimation uses the conditional logit specication for the limited dependent variable I POt which is equal to one if the entrepreneurial rm the VC partner sat on the board at t went public. ACQ t is equal to 1 if the investment was a successful acquisition. F a i l t is equal to 1 if the investment failed. The conditional logit requires some variation in the dependent variable for each partner, which is why the samples sizes differ across specications. Exit value is the log of the nal exit valuation (0 if failure). The model in columns 7 and 8 are simple xed effects estimators. The VC rm cohort must have at least 3 active partners to be included. Frac. IPO t 1 is the VC partners IPO success rate as of the investment at t . Acq. rate t 1 is the fraction of the partners investments prior to t that has a successful acquisition. Fail rate t 1 is the same, but the fraction that failed. Year FE and Industry FE are investment year and industry of the entrepreneurial rm invested in at time t . Additonal controls include the log of the round number, dollars invested and years since previous board seat as dened in Table 1. Standard errors clustered at the investment year. Signicance: p < 0.10, p < 0.05, p < 0.01.

APRIL 2012

IPO3 (1) main Frac. IPO t-1 0.597 (0.270) 0.967 (0.541) 0.595 (0.323)

IPO5 (2)

ACQ3 (3)

ACQ5 (4)

Fail3 (5)

Fail5 (6)

Exit value3 (7)

Exit value5 (8)

Acq. rate t-1

1.472 (0.628) 0.0564 (0.152) 0.347 (0.319)

Fail rate t-1

Avg. Exit value t-1 0.151 (0.0853) 0.0665 (0.0709) -0.739 (0.133) 1479 0.093 290 Y N Y Y Cond. Logit
38

0.0625 (0.0240) -0.0564 (0.144) -1.151 (0.285) 620 0.092 147 Y N Y Y Cond. Logit 0.102 (0.0706) -0.109 (0.140) 1348 0.013 265 Y N Y Y Cond. Logit -0.167 (0.130) -0.229 (0.207) 578 0.050 138 Y N Y Y Cond. Logit 0.0148 (0.0432) 0.224 (0.0803) 2792 0.020 638 Y N Y Y Cond. Logit

0.0545 (0.0456)

Log years partner exp.

0.0852 (0.0494) 0.310 (0.151) 1218 0.027 315 Y N Y Y Cond. Logit

-0.0913 (0.0968)

VC total deals (log) Observations R2 Pseudo R 2 Total VC Cohorts VC Cohort FE? Year FE? Industry FE? Additional controls? Estimation

-0.429 (0.0886) 4375 0.034

-0.808 (0.157) 2090 0.050

1716 Y N Y Y OLS

948 Y N Y Y OLS

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

39

TABLE 6PARTNER AND VC FIRM FIXED EFFECTS

Notes: Three-way xed effects regressions using the method detailed in Abowd, Creecy and Kramarz (2002) and Abowd, Kramarz and Margolis (1999) to estimate both the VC rm and VC partner xed effects. Estimation implemented using the Stata code felsdvreg as described in Cornelissen (2008). The unit of observation is the VC partner, board seat and entrepreneurial rm outcome. Column 1 uses log of any acquisition valuation or the IPO valuation as the dependent variable (0 if failed or missing). Column 2 uses the dummy variable IPO as the dependent variable and column 3 uses successful acquisition ( 2 times capital invested) as the dummy variable. Column 4 uses the dummy variable dened to be 1 if the investment failed. Firms without an IPO or successful acquisition have a 0 as the dependent variable in columns 1 - 3. Log round # is the log of the nancing sequence number, Log $ invested is the log of the total dollars invested in the nancing round when the board seat is taken and Total VC Experience (log) is the log of the total board seats made by the VC rm as of the current investment. Log partner exp. is the log of the total boards seats taken by the VC partner as of the investment. Log fund sequence is the log of the fund sequence, set to the ve-year windows since VC founding. Year FE are year xed effects for the investment year of the board seat.. Industry FE are dummies for the investment industry. Mean dep. var reports the mean of the dependent variable. The rows for F-test on FE report the p-value from the null that the Pa r t n e r F E ) estimated VC partner or VC rm xed effects are jointly zero. cov (Y ,v reports the a r (Y ) beta for the partner FE (similarly for the last row and VC FE). The percentages in parentheses report the fraction of the R 2 that are attributable to the rm and partner FEs (see Graham, Li and Qui (2011) for details). Total VC rms is the total VC rms in the sample, however, only 563 have estimated FE because each connected group has a benchmark. Signicance: p < 0.10, p < 0.05, p < 0.01.

Log round #

Exit Valuation (1) 0.290 (0.0577) 0.292 (0.0493) -0.117 (0.0393) -0.0698 (0.0485) 0.163 (0.0966) 20693 .302 $2.11 645 2142 649 Y N

IPO (2) 0.0490 (0.00917) 0.0332 (0.00609) -0.00759 (0.00614) -0.00973 (0.00817) 0.0202 (0.0146) 20693 .278 .161 645 2142 649 Y N

Acquisition (3) -0.00598 (0.00690) -0.00150 (0.00539) -0.0120 (0.00672) -0.00985 (0.00604) 0.0233 (0.0115) 20693 .151 .11 645 2142 649 Y N

Failure (4) -0.0716 (0.00923) -0.0421 (0.00734) 0.0191 (0.0101) 0.00105 (0.0165) -0.0412 (0.0186) 20693 .233 .27 645 2142 649 Y N

Log dollars invested

Total VC experience

Log partner experience

Log fund sequence

Observations R2 Mean dep. var # Movers # Partners # VC Firms Year FE? Industry FE? F-test on FE (p-value) VC Partner FE 0.003 0.071 0.808 0.00 VC Firm FE 0.5062 0.6451 0.4069 0.6788 Relative importance of estimates inR 2 . %s are fraction R 2 explained by covariate. cov (Y ,Pa r t n e r F E ) 0.137 (38%) 0.101 (36%) 0.109 (75%) 0.127 (53%) v a r (Y )
cov (Y ,V C F E ) v a r (Y )

0.04 (8%)

0.024 (8%)

0.03 (23%)

0.03 (6.5%)

40

APRIL 2012

TABLE 7MATCHING OF TOP PARTNERS TO VC FIRMS

Notes: Table compares the sorting of top VC partners to rms in the sample and one created through random matching. A top VC partner is dened by having a top quartile estimates partner xed effect from the AKM regression. The partner and VC rm must be in the largest connected group (i.e. group of rms connected by movement of partners). Further, we only consider VC rms with at least 3 active partners. # of top quartile partners is the number of total top quartile VC partners ever active at a VC rm. Column (2) N reports these numbers and (3) the fraction of all VC rms. Columns (4) and (5) report the result of 100 random matchings of partners to rms for the known VC rm size distribution. VC rms are assumed the same size and an algorithm randomly re-orders partners to rms. Column (4) calculates the fraction of rms is each sub-group that had n partners. A large positive (negative) difference between the percentages reported in column (3) and (5) suggest that rms in the sample have an over-representation (under-) of top quartile partners relative to that predicted from random matching.

# top quartile partners 0 1 2 3 4 5 6+ Total VC rms

Sample N % rms 133 54.3% 34 13.9% 17 6.97% 25 10.3% 13 5.3% 5 2% 18 7.4% 245

Random match N % rms 58.1 23.7% 80 32.7% 53.7 21.9% 26.2 10.7% 13.7 5.6% 6.6 2.7% 6.8 2.8% 245

SUM OF VC PARTNERS?

41

TABLE 8CHARACTERISTICS OF FIRMS MOVED TO AND FROM

Notes: Characteristics of rms that movers left and moved to. A mover is a VC partner that switched VC rms during the sample period. Observations are entrepreneurial rm and VC investor with board seat, where the former received its rst capital prior to 2006. Numbers reported are the mean across each sub-sample. Moved To are the sample of rms that only ever had a mover move to that rm. Moved From are the rms that only ever had a mover leave the rm and Moved To/From is the set of rms that had movers both come and go. Exit valuation is the total dollars the entrepreneurial rm sold for at exit (0 if failure or still private by end of sample). % IPO is the fraction of the VCs investments with board seats that had an IPO. $ invested is the average investment amount when the VC took the board seat. Round # is the average round number when the VC took the board seat. and Year rst inv. is the rst year the VC is observed taking the board seat. Information Technology is the fraction of board seats on companies in the IT industry. Total investments is the total number of boards seats taken by the VC rm.

Exit value $m % IPO $ invested Round # Investment year Year rst inv. Information Tech. Total investments Observations

Moved To 40.954 0.058 15.738 2.529 2002.459 1999.793 0.528 8.912 319

Moved From 59.232 0.177 11.540 1.794 1996.442 1991.982 0.434 7.450 171

Moved To/From 66.857 0.130 16.143 2.057 1999.300 1992.844 0.511 15.510 302

42

APRIL 2012

TABLE 9CHARACTERISTICS OF PARTNERS IN AND OUT OF AKM SAMPLE

Notes: Table reports the characteristics of partners in and out of the full xed effect regressions. Numbers reported are the mean across each sub-sample. Mover are the partners that moved at least once. Stayer are the partners that are in the connected sample (i.e. worked at a rm with a mover). Dropped are those partners excluded from the sample due to insufcient experience (at least 4 investments) or worked at a VC rm without a mover. Fraction IPO is the fraction of the partners investments that had an IPO. Exit value $m is the dollars the investment sold for at exit (0 if failure). Total board seats is the total board seats for the partner and Round # is the average round number when the partner took the board seat. $ invested is the average investment amount when the partner took the board seat and Year career start is the rst year the partner is observed taking the board seat. Fraction IT investments is the fraction of board seats on companies in the IT industry.

Fraction IPO Exit value (log) Total board seats Total VC board seats Round # $ invested Year career start Fraction IT investments Observations

Mover 0.139 1.554 10.812 31.355 2.054 11.267 1999.300 0.512 645

Stayer 0.130 1.507 10.008 49.156 1.965 12.306 1999.446 0.536 1498

Dropped 0.090 1.158 3.511 20.602 2.141 13.509 2000.478 0.502 3113

TABLE 10CHARACTERISTICS OF VC FIRMS IN AND OUT OF AKM SAMPLE

Notes: Characteristics of VC rms in and out of the full xed effect regressions in Table 6. Numbers reported are the mean across each sub-sample. Non-AKM Sample are the VC rms that had a partner with at least four board seats, but lacked a mover to/from the rm. AKM Sample are those rms in Table 6. Fraction IPO is the fraction of the VCs investments that had an IPO. Exit value $m is the dollars the investment sold for at exit (0 if failure). $ invested is the average investment amount when the VC took the board seat. Round # is the average round number when the VC took the board seat. Investment year is the investment year of the board seat and Year rst inv. is the rst year the VC is observed ever taking the board seat. Fraction IT investments is the fraction of board seats with companies in the IT industry.

Fraction IPO Exit value $ invested Round # Investment year Year rst inv. Information Tech. Total investments Observations

AKM Sample 0.128 60.767 12.509 2.129 1999.546 1995.179 0.496 12.032 649

Non-AKM Sample 0.098 41.100 11.466 2.047 2000.051 1997.040 0.508 6.858 478