WHY CORPORATES INVEST IN THE SAME START-UP AN EXPLORATIVE ANALYSIS OF CVC SYNDICATIONS

Abstract

This study investigates why two or more corporates co-invest in the same start-up syndicating their CVC activities. Based on two strands of literature, the CVC and the alliance, we propose a research framework that explores the possible antecedents of CVC syndications. Particularly, grounded on alliance literature, we look at the CVC syndication by combining two dimensions, relational and technological: the relational dimension describes the competitive or cooperative nature of the relationship between partners of CVC syndications, while the technological one represents the exploitative or explorative technological objectives that corporates could pursue when coinvesting in a start-up. We argued that exploitative and explorative CVC syndications between corporates that compete in the same market can be explained by competitive strategic reasons, while exploitative and explorative CVC syndications between corporates that operate in different markets are driven by cooperative strategic motives. By using data gathered from VentureXpert database, we conduct an exploratory cluster analysis to investigate the CVC syndication activities of 100 corporates that engaged more frequently in CVC syndications in a twenty-year time window (1995 - 2015). We found the existence of four possible strategies that p ’ p by C C y p O work offers important implications, both to theory and practice.