Venture Capital 20 years on: reflections on the evolution of a field

This paper reviews the circumstances surrounding the launch of Venture Capital: An International Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance in 1999. It highlights a number of significant changes in the structure of the entrepreneurial finance market over the past 20 years, notably the decline of‘classic’ venture capital, the effective closure of the small-cap IPO market, the scale-up problem and the emergence of a second equity gap, and the institutionalisation of the business angel market. A number of new players in the market – coinvestment schemes, equity crowdfunding platforms and blockchain technology-based Initial Coin Offerings – are discussed and the challenges and opportunities they pose for investors, entrepreneurs, policy makers, regulators and academic researchers are assessed. Against this background, a number of key features of the evolution of the content and focus of the Journal are discussed. The paper finishes with a summary of the papers included in this Special Issue.