The Big Three of Entrepreneurial Financing: Crowdfunding, Angel Investment, and Venture Capital

Securing sufficient capital is an imperative for any entrepreneurial venture’s growth, development, and survival. As such, it should be of little surprise that scholars have dedicated significant time and journal real estate to exploring the antecedents to, and implications of, different types of entrepreneurial investments. While many nascent entrepreneurial endeavors utilize a combination of both equity and debt financing, the former is indicative of greater entrepreneurial growth and as a result, has garnered much more interest from scholars. Equity financing can consist of a single investment type or multiple, but typically has at least one of the “Big Three:” venture capital, angel investment, or crowdfunding. As such, we focus our symposium discussion specifically on these investment types, including discussing the current and future directions of financing research, the influence of global pandemics, such as COVID-19, on the availability of funding, and other avenues for financing research outside of the equity investment space (e.g., accelerators, government funding programs).