Business Angels and Crowdinvestors for Startups’ Human Capital

The project aims at developing both an advancement on the extant research on the role of Human Capital (HC) within two major actors of the entrepreneurial finance ecosystem, Business Angels (BAs) and Crowdinvestors (CIs) and an original set of competencies generated by a partnership of academic and non-academic institutions. Direct objective of the project is building a competence network able to improve employability and career prospects both in and outside academia in the entrepreneurship and finance sector, thanks to a fully international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral mobility of EU researchers. A total of 91 out-going secondments and 91 in-coming secondments of researchers will be committed from the partners involved in three Countries. The objective of the project is to design, develop and maintain a EU dataset on different dimensions of BAs’ and CIs’ innovative HC characteristics and their impact on startup survival and success performances. Research on the relationship between investors' HC and the growth and performance of startups within the entrepreneurial finance ecosystem is still at a seminal level, considering the the impact of digitization, the study of competences related to green and sustainability investing, and female entrepreneurship. The project will help advancing these research streams, going beyond traditional HC features and assessing their impact on startup survival, subsequent financing channels and a comprehensive set of financial and non-financial performance indicators, through its training and dissemination activities. The project is expected to generate a large scientific, economic, and societal impact. The results will offer useful suggestions to market operators and policy-makers for emphasizing the contribution of BAs and CIs towards digitization and green transition in the finance sector.