This paper studies venture capitalists' (VCs') sequential investment decisions in a real options model. We account for VCs' risk aversion, agency costs, and VC activism. We identify two separate investment policies: when startups have positive cash flows, more risk averse and more active VCs expedite their investments while higher agency costs delay staged investments. The opposite is true for negative‐cash‐flow startups. The model predicts a negative relation between risk aversion and stage length in line with the idea that VCs use stage length as a monitoring tool. We also show that higher growth rates and lower volatility encourage earlier investments.

中文翻译：

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初创公司现金流量和风险资本投资：实物期权方法

本文研究了实物期权模型中的风险资本家（VCs）的顺序投资决策。我们考虑了风险投资人的风险规避，代理成本和风险投资积极性。我们确定了两种不同的投资政策：当初创公司拥有正现金流量时，更多的风险规避者和更活跃的风险投资人会加快他们的投资，而更高的代理成本会延迟分阶段投资。负现金流量的初创企业则相反。该模型预测风险规避与阶段长度之间存在负相关关系，这与风险投资人使用阶段长度作为监视工具的想法一致。我们还表明，较高的增长率和较低的波动性鼓励了较早的投资。