ABSTRACT
This research compares risk avoidance strategies employed by business angels and venture capital firm investors. It finds that differences in their approaches to evaluating risk lead them to hold predictably different views of the dangers of market and agency risk. The former tend to rely upon the entrepreneur to protect them from losses due to market risk. Consequently, they are more concerned with agency risk than market risk. The latter are more concerned with market risk because they have learned to protect themselves contractually from agency risk using boilerplate contractual terms and conditions. A likely result of their different approaches to avoiding risk is a segmentation of venture capital markets, which has important implications for both entrepreneurs and future research.
