Speaker: Sunghan RYU 

Date: 10:00, Fri. 18th, June 2021

Venue: Room 208, Tongji Building A

Abstract:

This study examines how crowdfunding (relative to angel financing) influences subsequent venture capital (VC) investments for startups from a signaling theory perspective. We find that crowdfunded startups and angel-backed startups have no statistically significant difference in receiving subsequent venture capital investments after addressing the potential endogeneity using a bivariate Probit model with the propensity score matching. When considering different startup characteristics, we found startups located in non-VC cluster cities fail to overcome the disadvantage in obtaining subsequent VC investments, even after successful crowdfunding campaigns. Interestingly, corporate venture capitalists (CVCs) tend to favor crowdfunded startups, while independent venture capitalists (IVCs) prefer angel-funded startups. Our study contributes to the IS literature and related disciplines on crowdfunding, and more broadly, the transformative effects of IT-enabled platforms. Practical implications for the role of crowdfunding in the startup finance ecosystem are discussed.

Speaker’s Bio：

Sunghan RYU is an associate professor at USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry (ICCI) in Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). He is also the founding director of the Center for Digital Creative Enterprise Research and serves as the series editor for the Digital Entertainment series of Sage Business Cases. He held visiting professor positions at the University of Southern California, US, and Warwick University, UK. Before joining SJTU, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Creative Media and Department of Information Systems, College of Business in the City University of Hong Kong.

His research and teaching interests include digital innovations in cultural and creative domains and effective digital technology applications in the creative entrepreneurial context. He is the author of the book “Beauty of Crowdfunding: Blooming Creativity and Innovation in the Digital Era” (Routledge, 2019). His research works appeared in top academic journals, including Journal of Strategic Information Systems, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Internet Research, Current Issues in Tourism, Electronic Markets, Arts and the Market, and Electronic Commerce Research & Applications and were presented at prestigious conferences such as ICIS, HICSS, Annual ICA Conference, and AOM Annual Meeting. He is the recipient of the 47th HICSS Best Paper Award, SJTU Candlelight Award (2nd Prize), SJTU Kaiyuan Top Faculty Award (Runner-up), and other multiple grants/awards for both research and teaching.