AUTHOR
Mathison, Mikael; Widing, Fredrik

DATE
2001-02-07

DEPARTMENT
Business Administration and Social Sciences / Industrial Marketing

SUMMARY
The responsibility to bring forth venture capital is generally not a task for the marketing department. Procurement of capital is however one with marketing related activity, but how does the capital-seeking company know what information is interesting, and what communication channels investors prefer to adopt? This investigation seeks to describe how venture capital companies gather information on capital-seeking companies in the identification phase. The investigation was executed through qualitative case studies of three venture capital companies within the Information Technology business, ITACT, Startupfactory and Ledstiernan and was based on personal interviews. The results indicated that information on management was most interesting to investors, but also information on business idea, market, concept and company planning. The most highly ranked communication channels were the network and references, but other channels were used as well. Selection of channels was mainly determined by its application and valuation, yet other criteria were identified as well.

ISSN 1404-5508 / ISRN LTU-SHU-EX--01/018--SE / NR 2001:018