Research shows most ventures fail, yet there is limited work on investors’ views of entrepreneurs who have failed in the past. We address this gap and call attention to an innate asymmetry between past failure and success. That is because success requires skill and luck jointly; whereas failure materializes due to either lack of skill (mistakes) or bad luck (misfortune). We ask: Are investors ‘failure-averse’ and discount a failed entrepreneur even in the presence of additional information about entrepreneurial skill? Or do they make ‘rational inferences’ in light of the additional skill information and proceed to fund the new startup? To test whether investors are ‘failure-averse’ or engage in ‘rational inference,’ we use experiments in the context of equity crowdfunding. The results suggest that prospective crowdfunding investors rationally integrate informational cues regarding past outcomes and entrepreneurial skill.

中文翻译：

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投资者如何评估过去的创业失败？由于缺乏技能而不是运气不佳导致开箱失败

研究表明，大多数企业都失败了，但关于投资者对过去失败的企业家的看法的研究却很有限。我们解决了这一差距，并呼吁关注过去的失败和成功之间的先天不对称。那是因为成功需要技巧和运气共同作用；而失败是由于缺乏技能（错误）或运气不好（不幸）而发生的。我们问：即使存在关于创业技能的额外信息，投资者是否“厌恶失败”并低估失败的企业家？或者他们是否根据额外的技能信息做出“合理推断”并继续为新创业公司提供资金？为了测试投资者是“厌恶失败”还是进行“理性推理”，我们在股权众筹的背景下进行了实验。