Women entrepreneurs securing business angel financing: tales from the field

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

While women-led businesses are the fastest growing segment of venture creation in the US economy, the amount of private equity capital investment they receive is disproportionately small. Informal venture capital, or business angel, investment is as large as venture capital activity, and business angels provide the majority of the critical seed and start-up stage capital. This research explores the investment decision process involving women entrepreneurs and business angels from the perspective of demand. Successful strategies of women entrepreneurs are investigated using in-depth interviews. In particular, pre-investment processes, trust, comprehensiveness, the post-investment relationship and gender are examined.