It’s possible to get financing from top tier investors if you’re located outside Silicon Valley, New York or Boston, but if you land venture or angel investments from remote investors, expect to go back to investors often for more rounds of cash. A recent study by Indiana University finance professor Xuan Tian found that entrepreneurs who raised capital from investors located more than 25 miles away were forced to raise smaller amounts, with a shorter duration between each fundraising round, than those with nearby investors.
Comparing 28,000 venture-backed companies who raised funds between 1980 and 2006, Tian studied whether venture firms could use technology to monitor investments just as well from a distance. “We saw that visiting a company day to day made a real difference, and investors were willing to write bigger checks if they could do that,” he says. From Tian’s research, venture firms don’t necessarily abide by the so-called 20 minute rule, where venture capital firms typically want to invest in startups located within a 20 minute drive of their office, but a greater distance does make a VC hold on tighter to its purse strings. On average during this time period, firms raised 3.6 rounds of financing with 20 months in between rounds and $72.7 million in total.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Venture Capital and Distance - Maureen Farrell - Scaling Up - Forbes
Author: Maureen Farrell
