How Do Investors Evaluate Past Entrepreneurial Failure? Unpacking Failure Due to Lack of Skill versus Bad Luck

Research shows most ventures fail, yet there is limited work on investors’ views of entrepreneurs who have failed in the past. We address this gap and call attention to an innate asymmetry between past failure and success. That is because success requires skill and luck jointly, whereas failure materializes due to either lack of skill (mistakes) or bad luck (misfortune). We ask: Are investors ‘failure-averse’ and discount a failed entrepreneur even in the presence of additional information about entrepreneurial skill? Or do they make ‘rational inferences’ in light of the additional skill information and proceed to fund the new startup? To test whether investors are ‘failure-averse’ or engage in ‘rational inference,’ we use experiments in the context of equity crowdfunding. The results suggest that prospective crowdfunding investors rationally integrate informational cues regarding past outcomes and entrepreneurial skill.