Seed Financing for Early Stage Ventures firms from an organizational resource perspective

Abstract

It’s the objective of this research to empirically identify the effect of some of the firm resources on seed capital acquisition within early stage research based startups. This research uses 10 propositions to identify some of the fundamental resource combination to financial resource accumulation.

Based on the resource theory, this research empirically tests for the effect of team atmosphere, team education, entrepreneurial leadership experience, cooperation with competitors, patents, commitment of entrepreneurial team and functional diversity on team likelihood of obtaining seed capital. Contrary to existing literature, this research finds that functional diversity of the entrepreneurial team is least likely to guarantee financial resource accumulation. This research further finds that firms able to nurture a combination of social, human and technological capital are more likely to acquire seed capital thereby affirming that process of bootstrapping firm resources is socially complex, tacit and path dependent.