Venture capital (VC) is financial capital provided to high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries. The typical venture capital investment occurs after the seed funding round as growth funding round. Venture capital is a subset of private equity. Therefore, all venture capital is private equity, but not all private equity is venture capital.
| History of private equity and venture capital |
|---|
| Early history |
| (Origins of modern private equity) |
| The 1980s |
| (Leveraged buyout boom) |
| The 1990s |
| (Leveraged buyout and the venture capital bubble) |
| The 2000s |
| (Dot-com bubble to the credit crunch) |
Venture capital (VC) is money provided to seed early-stage, emerging and emerging growth companies. Venture capital funds invest in companies in exchange for equity in the companies they invest in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as biotechnology and IT. The typical venture capital investment occurs after a seed funding round as the first round of institutional capital to fund growth (also referred to as Series A round) in the interest of generating a return through an eventual exit event, such as an IPO or trade sale of the company. Venture capital is a type of private equity.
In addition to angel investing, equity crowdfunding and other seed funding options, venture capital is attractive for new companies with limited operating history that are too small to raise capital in the public markets and have not reached the point where they are able to secure a bank loan or complete a debt offering. In exchange for the high risk that venture capitalists assume by investing in smaller and less mature companies, venture capitalists usually get significant control over company decisions, in addition to a significant portion of the companies' ownership (and consequently value).
Venture capital is also a way in which the private and public sectors can construct an institution that systematically creates networks for the new firms and industries, so that they can progress. This institution helps identify and combine business functions such as finance, technical expertise, marketing know-how, and business models. Once integrated, these enterprises succeed by becoming nodes in the search networks for designing and building products in their domain. However, venture capitalists' decisions are often biased, exhibiting for instance overconfidence and illusion of control, much like entrepreneurial decisions in general.
