Why do business angels invest? Uncovering angels’ goals

Rui Falcão, Maria João Carneiro and António Carrizo Moreira

Cogent Business & Management, 2023, vol. 10, issue 2, 2234134

Abstract: Despite the increasing importance of business angels (BAs) as crucial players in the growth of high-potential early-stage startups, their motivations are not fully understood. Many of the perceptions of BAs deviate significantly from more conventional views of conventional economic and financial models. To gain a comprehensive understanding of BAs’ goals, qualitative techniques from marketing and consumer behaviour as additional lenses (including laddering and means-ends chains) were employed to allow currently active BAs to articulate their goals in ways that forced-choice, quantitative methods do not achieve. Additionally, to determine if entrepreneurs perceive BAs in the same way BAs see themselves, entrepreneurs were asked to provide their perspectives on why BAs choose to become angel investors, based on their experiences with BAs. The findings reveal that traditional financial viewpoints do not adequately capture the depth and driving force behind BAs’ goals, while entrepreneurs appear to be overly influenced by conventional assumptions about these goals. The study also provides valuable insights into the relationships and hierarchy among BAs’ goals, and on the relevance of each goal. The paper ends with reflections on the practical implications of this research for BAs, entrepreneurs and policymakers.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/23311975.2023.2234134 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:oabmxx:v:10:y:2023:i:2:p:2234134

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://cogentoa.tandfonline.com/journal/OABM20

DOI: 10.1080/23311975.2023.2234134

Access Statistics for this article

Cogent Business & Management is currently edited by Len Tiu Wright and Tahir Nisar

More articles in Cogent Business & Management from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().