The Why Podcast: Why would an investor back a failed entrepreneur?

Most ventures fail – so what happens when an entrepreneur goes to investors seeking backing for their next new business? In this episode of The Why Podcast, Gary Dushnitsky describes how he set out to discover, in the context of equity crowdfunding, whether investors would shy away from failed entrepreneurs, or if they would take additional information into account when they considered whether to fund them anyway. Success takes skill and luck, he says; failure only needs error or misfortune.

Gary Dushnitsky is Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School. He teaches on electives for MBA, Executive MBA and Masters in Finance students including Financing the Entrepreneurial Business and The Entrepreneurship Lab.

Read the full paper here: How do investors evaluate past entrepreneurial failure? Unpacking failure due to lack of skill versus bad luck.