Managing conflicting agendas: serial entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in the IPO process

Venture capital firms play a crucial role in entrepreneurial success. Similarly, due to their experience and expertise, serial entrepreneurs have been shown to have positive but diminishing effects on the firms with which they are involved. However, what is the effect of mixing serial entrepreneurs with venture capitalists? This study advances our knowledge of venture capitalists and serial entrepreneurs by adopting a human capital-driven multi-agency theoretical framework for their interplay on performance and process issues. Counterintuitively, we find that serial entrepreneur involvement correlates with lower IPO values, but consistent with MAT theory, it lengthens the time to IPO.