ABSTRACT This paper re-visits the traditional model of the finance escalator, which outlines alternative financial pathways for entrepreneurs depending on their aspirations and stage of development. Building on social, spatial and institutional embeddedness perspectives, the dynamic and interactional challenges of financial decisions are captured through an exploratory interpretivist approach. Ten early funding journeys of entrepreneurs in Scotland, all of whom sought external funding, were scrutinized with the objective of revealing motivations, reasoning, and patterns behind funding decisions. Surprisingly, these entrepreneurs all initially sought value-added financial capital, but issues including control (perceived as ownership), speed of access, and external environmental pressures caused them to accept offers (often unsolicited) from familiar sources. As a result, a revised finance escalator is proposed. The extent to which these findings are context specific is discussed.

中文翻译：

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创业金融之旅：嵌入性和金融自动扶梯

摘要本文重新审视了金融自动扶梯的传统模型，该模型概述了根据企业家的志向和发展阶段为企业家提供的替代性财务途径。基于社会，空间和制度的嵌入性观点，通过探索性解释主义方法来把握财务决策的动态和互动挑战。仔细研究了苏格兰企业家的十个早期筹资旅程，他们所有人都寻求外部资金，目的是揭示筹资决策背后的动机，理由和模式。出乎意料的是，这些企业家最初都寻求增值的金融资本，但问题包括控制（被视为所有权），获取速度，以及外部环境压力使他们接受了熟悉来源的报价（通常是主动提供）。结果，提出了修改后的财务自动扶梯。讨论了这些发现在多大程度上取决于具体情况。