Poster - EMS Doctoral Consortium Insights from non-financial factors

1. What is the in
f
luence of human
behavior in the startup valuation at
an early stage?
Seeking the roots of new venture valuations:
Insights from non-
f
inancial factors.
Findings
Theoretical
framing
Methodology Conclusions Implications Future work
Unit of analysis: Individuals (investors), with an
in
f
luential role in the valuation decision-making
process of tech startups at early-stage funding
rounds (pre-seed, seed and Series A)
Data collection: 58 Semi-structured open
interviews.
Data analysis: Open coding, axial coding,
selective coding and theory construction
• Research has documented the in
f
luence of
human behavior variables in the investor's
perspective at early-stage investments.
• If the information is not available to support
model assumptions, investors recur to
previous experiences or current paradigms
about the future (heuristics & biases).
• Limited rationality and the inconsistent
behavior.
• Challenge traditional perspective about
valuations.
• Brings the attention of researchers,
investors, and entrepreneurs to the non-
f
inancial side of valuations.
• Establish a theoretical foundation for further
exploring this human behavior in
f
luence's
nature and its implications on the valuation
process.
• Introducing a new perspective to explore
valuation methods and their e
ff
ectiveness.
• Question dictation voice.
• Explore the investor decision-making process
using ethnographic research techniques to
validate investor answers.
• Validate current claims with quantitative
research based on surveys, available data in
the industry, and decision-making
experiments.
• Study the entrepreneur's perspective of the
same phenomena.
• Observe whether the e
ff
ect is strengthened
or weakened over di
ff
erent investment
rounds.
Luis Almanza
lma77@case.edu
+52 444 510 9619
Areas of feedback
• Feedback, advice, or new ideas.
• Dissemination options (journals, magazines,
books).
• Interested VCs for behavior experiments
(winter 2021, summer 2022).
• Secondary data access.
• Early-stage investors for data collection
(surveys).
• Research funds or sponsors.