ABSTRACT The last decade has seen the emergence of alternative sources of early-stage finance, which are radically changing and reshaping the start-up eco-system. These include incubators, accelerators, science and technology parks, university-affiliated seed funds, corporate seed funds, business angels – including “super-angels”, angel groups, business angel networks and angel investment funds – and both equity- and debt-based crowdfunding platforms. In parallel with this development, large financial institutions that have traditionally invested in late-stage and mature companies, have increasingly diversified their investment portfolios to “get into the venture game”, in some cases, through the traditional closed-end funds model and, in other cases through direct investments and co-investments alongside the closed-end funds. This paper reviews the main features, investment policies and risk-return profiles of the institutional and informal investors operating in the very early stage of the life cycle of entrepreneurial firms. It concludes that traditional closed-end venture capital funds continue to play an important role in early stage finance because of their unique competences (e.g. screening, negotiating and monitoring) in what has become a wider and more complex financing ecosystem.

中文翻译：

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风险投资在新兴的企业家金融生态系统中的作用：未来的威胁和机遇

摘要在过去的十年中，出现了早期融资的替代来源，这些融资正在从根本上改变和改造初创生态系统。其中包括孵化器，加速器，科技园，大学附属种子基金，企业种子基金，包括“超级天使”在内的天使投资人，天使集团，天使投资网络和天使投资基金，以及基于权益和债务的众筹平台。在这种发展的同时，传统上投资于后期和成熟公司的大型金融机构也越来越多样化其投资组合，以通过传统的封闭式基金模型在某些情况下“进入风险游戏”，并且在其他情况下，则通过直接投资和共同投资以及封闭式基金来实现。本文回顾了在创业公司生命周期的早期阶段运作的机构投资者和非正式投资者的主要特征，投资政策和风险收益状况。结论是，传统的封闭式风险投资基金由于在日益广泛和复杂的融资生态系统中具有独特的能力（例如筛选，谈判和监控）而继续在早期融资中发挥重要作用。