Corporate & Securities Law

Venture Capital Geography & Performance

By Ryan Roberts

I’ve always been skeptical of the “you have to be in the Valley” to be a successful startup. Well here’s some potential ammo for those of you being pressured into moving, whether from Dallas to Boston, or Rancho Cucamonga to the Valley:

Non-local investments made by venture capital firms based in the Valley, Boston, and New York outperform their local investments.

This is according to a working paper titled “Buy Local? The Geography of Successful and Unsuccessful Venture Capital Expansion” just published by Henry Chen, Paul Gompers, Anna Kovener, and Josh Lerner.

The authors conjecture that local underperformance is due to venture capital firms having higher hurdle rates for non-local investments. But I’m pretty sure most of you entrepreneurs are thinking it has something to do with less visits from the VC.

Overall, the working paper attempts to demonstrate how geography affects performance of venture capital firms. It’s a somewhat long, but very interesting read.

PEHUB posted the entire working paper on Scribd here.

Full post as published by The Startup Lawyer on June 22, 2009 (boomark / email).