סמינר מחלקתי משותף של התכנית בהתנהגות ארגונית ביחד עם התכנית לאסטרטגיה ניהולית

Prof. Gary Dushnitsk, London Business School

Investment in seed and early-stage ventures entails multiple risks including uncertainty regarding technological viability, product-market fit, business-model feasibility etc. Both the entrepreneur and the investor lack knowledge about these issues; namely both face high level of exogenous uncertainty. In such information scarce setting, an investment decision may be swayed by factors orthogonal to the intrinsic economic potential of the focal venture. We study one such friction; Sunshine. Our setting includes over 700 ventures graduating from London-based accelerators during the past decade. Every accelerator holds a Demo Day where graduating ventures pitch to investors. We find the likelihood of securing Demo Day funding round doubles for ventures graduating on Demo Day that is sunnier compared to those graduating on a less sunny day. Furthermore, the effect of sunshine is stronger in autumn and winter, for younger ventures, and ventures graduating as a part of sector-specialized cohorts. By peering into the micro-foundations of investor behavior in the realm of entrepreneurial finance, we complement the more agentic nature of discourse in management research.