Wolff, YaroYaroWolff2023-04-132023-04-132022-02-21https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/108989This dissertation investigates the phenomenon that venture performance and even early indicators for venture performance remain hard to grasp for scholars and practitioners alike. This is driven by a lack of transparency and strong information asymmetries between investors (principals) and entrepreneurs (agents) in the venture capital (VC) industry. Although research investigates venture performance since decades, empirical research based on archival data remains the exception. Therefore, this dissertation contributes to literature through novel insights about investors and entrepreneurs decision-making, derived from unprecedented real-world evidence, including several thousands of actual, recorded, deal screenings and evaluations, data that is usually sealed from scholars. The first article contributes to literature and practice by improving the understanding of how and when VC investment criteria are applied along the investment decision process. Thereby, we expose and proof some common myths of the industry while refuting others, including: the effect of so-called quality deal flow, the importance of teams, the timing of the VC-fund depending on the fund-life cycle, the leapfrogging to VC decision-makers, and the disguising behavior of being an outlier venture case. The second article contributes to literature by using the principal-agent theory to explain the investment decision-making along the multi-staged venture selection process of VCs. Further, it provides an explanation for the inconclusiveness of results on relative criteria importance from prior studies (i.e., which is more important, the jockey or the horse). Finally, it contributes to the VC literature by separating the effect of deal sourcing and deal selection activities, i.e., is VC performance driven by having access to a universe of high-quality deal flow, or by picking the winners from the universe. The third article shows that the entrepreneur-investor relationship has a strong need for transparency in form of formal reporting structures and benchmarks. For this reason, this dissertation provides a useful how-to-guide to early-stage investor on how to design efficient and effective formal venture reporting processes, which (a) manage the tension between unique ventures and generalizable knowledge, and (b) support investors overall decision-making. Further, this dissertation provides to certain ventures (e.g., Software as a Service and eCommerce ventures) useful benchmarks on measurable venture KPIs and their relationships to venture milestones along the life cycle, such as funding events. By that, this dissertation strengthens the not yet sufficiently established link between observable venture KPIs and eventual venture performance.enVenture-ManagementRisikokapitalInvestitionsentscheidungPerformance ManagementEDIS-5205Performance ManagementVenture CapitalVenture PerformanceInvestment Decision-MakingRisikokapitalInvestitionsentscheidungdoctoral thesis