不確定下之夥伴選策略與投資績效:創業投資之實證研究

Abstract

創業投資資金對於高不確定性新創事業提供融資。而新創企業不像公開上市公司有 公開資訊可供參考。為了獲得創投基金的投資，創業者對他們的事業擁有私有資訊但誇 大未來的獲利，此不確定性導致資訊不對稱與代理問題。創投產業存在的理由之一即為 降低創業者與投資者之間的資訊不對稱與代理成本。傳統代理理論已被採用在解釋代理 人(創業者)對於委託人(創投)的有害行為。而本研究的動機來自聯合投資網絡的存在與 創投投資過程中參與的多方，作法為延伸傳統的委託代理分析至多方委託代理架構去理 解創投投資的組織行為與其績效表現。 本研究以創投所面對的地理與產業構面的空間不確定性開始，來解釋當地理與產業 不確定存在時，降低資訊不對稱的困難。利用美國創業投資從1980 到2008 年的投資資 料庫，本研究發現地理與產業不確定存在對於投資績效有負向影響。本研究進而發展多 方委託代理架構來分析創業投資中，決定獨立創投(IVCs)與公司創投(CVCs)夥伴選擇策 略與其績效，牽涉的合作與協調所產生的目標與行動的調準，以及互補性資源。實證結 果顯示，在其他條件不變之下，獨立創投與公司創投投資案，若有較高選擇獨立創投為 合作夥伴的傾向，則會產生較好的績效。 在形成企業之間合作關係中，明智的夥伴選擇策略可以降低空間限制並導致較好的 投資績效。本研究結果顯示具產業不確定的獨立創投投資案，若有較高選擇公司創投的 傾向，因為可以接近並取得公司特有的互補資源與能力，能有較佳的績效表現。此外， 具地理不確定的公司創投投資案，若有較高選擇其他公司創投的傾向，因能促進協調活 動或降低競爭強度，有較佳的績效表現。

Venture Capital (VC) typically finances specific ventures under plenty of uncertainties since rare public information is available as public listed companies. The uncertainty leads to information asymmetries and agency problems when the entrepreneurs who have private information on their business but often overstate the future profitability to secure the supply of financial capital from the VCs. One of the reasons for the VC industry to exist is to reduce information asymmetries and agency costs between entrepreneurs and investors. Traditional agency theory has been adopted to prescribe actions that focus on the protection of the investment of the principals (VCs) against the harmful behavior of the agents (entrepreneurs). Nevertheless, the emergence of syndication networks and the involvement of multiple parties in the VC investment motivate us to extend the principal-agent analysis to a multiple principal-agency framework to reason the organizing behavior of VC investments and their consequential performance. To develop theoretical arguments for hypotheses construction, this dissertation starts with spatial uncertainties at the industrial and the geographic dimensions that the VC confronts, explains the difficulty to reduce information asymmetries when industrial and geographic uncertainties exists. Using a comprehensive dataset of U.S. VC investments from 1980 and 2008, we find that existence of industrial and geographic uncertainties affect negatively on the performance of VC investments. Next, we develop a multiple principal-agency framework to analyze the alignment of goals and the alignment of actions deriving from cooperation and coordination as well as the influence of complementary resources determining the strategy of partner selection and performance outcomes for both IVCs and CVCs. Our empirical results suggest that, other things being equal, the preference to select IVCs as partners leads to superior performance for both IVCs and CVCs investments. Smart partner selection in the formation of interfirm relationships may reduce spatial limitations and lead to superior investment performance. The results in this dissertation show that superior performance in the IVC investment project with industrial uncertainties stems from a high tendency to syndicate with CVCs to access the corporate specific complementary resources and capabilities. Moreover, to obtain superior performance in the investment project with geographic uncertainties, the CVC investment should has a high propensity to syndicate with the other CVCs to facilitate coordination activities or reduce competitive intensity.