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    Venture Capitalists and COVID-19
    17 Nov 2020Working Paper Summaries

    Venture Capitalists and COVID-19

    by Paul A. Gompers, Will Gornall, Steven N. Kaplan, and Ilya A. Strebulaev
    This survey of more than 1,000 venture capitalists finds that the VC industry and its portfolio companies have reduced their activity less than in previous recessions and have been more resilient than many other sectors of the global economy.
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    Author Abstract

    We survey over 1,000 institutional and corporate venture capitalists (VCs) at more than 900 different firms to learn how their decisions and investments have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We compare their survey answers to those provided by a large sample of VCs in early 2016 and analyzed in Gompers, Gornall, Kaplan, and Strebulaev (2020). VCs have slowed their investment pace (71% of normal) and expect to invest at 81% of their normal pace over the coming year. Not surprisingly, they have devoted more time to guiding the portfolio companies through the pandemic. VCs report that 52% of their portfolio companies are positively affected or unaffected by the pandemic; 38% are negatively affected; and 10% are severely negatively affected. Overall, they expect the pandemic to have a small negative effect on their fund internal rates of return (IRRs) (-1.6%) and multiples on invested capital (MOICs) (-0.07). Surprisingly, we find little change in the allocation of their time to helping portfolio companies relative to looking for new investments. In general, we find only modest differences between institutional and corporate VCs.

    Paper Information

    • Full Working Paper Text
    • Working Paper Publication Date: September 2020
    • HBS Working Paper Number: NBER Working Paper Series, No. 27824
    • Faculty Unit(s): Finance; Entrepreneurial Management
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    Paul A. Gompers
    Paul A. Gompers
    Eugene Holman Professor of Business Administration
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