Waiting for the Payday? The Market for Startups and the Timing of Entrepreneurial Exit

Ashish Arora (ashish.arora@duke.edu), Andrea Fosfuri and Thomas Roende

No 24350, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Most technology startups are set up for exit through acquisition by large corporations. In choosing when to sell, startups face a tradeoff. Early acquisition reduces execution errors but later acquisition improves the likelihood of finding a better match since in the early market, there are fewer buyers because early acquisition requires costly absorptive capacity. Moreover, the buyer’s decision to invest in absorptive capacity is related to the startup’s decision about the timing of the exit sale. In this paper, we build a model to capture this complexity and the related tradeoffs. We find that the early market for startups is inefficiently thin if the timing of exit is a strategic choice, i.e. startups have to commit to whether to exit early or late. Too few startups are sold early, and too few buyers invest in absorptive capacity. Paradoxically, venture capital aggravates the inefficiency. However, if the timing of exit is a tactical choice, i.e. startups can choose to go late after observing the early offers, there are too many early acquisitions and too much investment in absorptive capacity by incumbents

JEL-codes: L26 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent and nep-ino
Note: PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Ashish Arora & Andrea Fosfuri & Thomas Rønde, 2021. "Waiting for the Payday? The Market for Startups and the Timing of Entrepreneurial Exit," Management Science, vol 67(3), pages 1453-1467.

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Working Paper: Waiting for the payday? The market for startups and the timing of entrepreneurial exit (2018)
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