The Venture Capital Feedback Cycle: A Critical Review and Future Directions

A framework of the venture capital (VC) process, encompassing the (1) pre-investment phase, (2) management phase, (3) exit phase, and the interrelationships between them was developed into a cycle using the exit phase in a feedback loop. The review of 166 articles from top-tier, Grade 4, journals suggests that most prominent Entrepreneurial & Management (E&M) literature assesses the VC operating environment, and the managerial expertise and skills of both VC firms and entrepreneurs independently. Finance Literature, however, centers its independent analysis on contracts, risk, returns and VC governance. A network analysis follows comparing E&M and Finance literature VC research agendas by country, author, institution, and journal. Finally, the manuscript identifies trends and future areas for VC cycle research by comparing and exploring the current state and progress of the VC cycle in Entrepreneurial literature.