Venture capital's protege son: Venture back IPO performance

Venture capital enhances the performance of initial public offerings if the venture capital firm is a specialist within the initial public offering’s industry.  Survival rates and IPO performance are higher among specialists as opposed to venture capital firms which invest across multiple industries. Other characteristics observed in this study did not bolster performance or survivability.  Specifically, venture capital firms which do not just focus on a single stage of development (e.g., seed capital only or early stage only) do not seem to enhance the survival rate of their IPO offspring. The results also support the hypothesis stated elsewhere that underwriter prestige improves the survival and performance of initial public offerings. This study benefits from data, specifically the Capital IQ venture capital dataset, which due to difficulty with formatting and structure, has not been used in other studies.  In additional, the paper's IPO performance results relies on CRSP data.