Social and knowledge brokerage by venture capitalists and co-patenting by portfolio startups

Startups rely on external resource providers when seeking collaborative arrangements for their inventive activities. Venture capitalists (VCs) often act as brokers for their portfolio startups, facilitating their collaboration for co-inventive activities. We suggest that independent venture capitalists (IVCs) act as social brokers who increase the frequency of co-inventing activities among their portfolio startups. In contrast, corporate venture capitalists (CVCs) act as knowledge brokers who may selectively connect their portfolio startups into collaborative co-inventing activities; when they do, firms connected through CVCs tend to produce more impactful but less novel inventions. We corroborate these predictions using a sample of 677 startups in the U.S. semiconductor sector that received funding from 570 IVCs and/or 90 CVCs between 2000 and 2014. In doing so, this study provides new insights into how different types of brokers facilitate or inhibit inventive outcomes of ventures to which they are connected and the characteristics of inventions that result from the brokerage.