Working paper version of the one in the article: https://www.nber.org/papers/w24489.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w24489.pdf Interesting tidnit from the dis

Working paper version of the one in the article: https://www.nber.org/papers/w24489.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w24489.pdf Interesting tidnit from the discussion section: V.D Venture Capitalist Behavior We also see that venture capitalists tend to bet on relatively young founders. Given that younger founders have substantially lower batting averages (see Figure 3), the founder age tendency in VC investments may be surprising. VCs may thus be seen as making bad bets, which may be consistent with empirical findings elsewhere suggesting that VCs have earned low returns (Kaplan and Lerner 2010). However, it may also be the case that young founders are more in need of early-stage external finance, thus leading to this relationship. More subtly, and noting that VCs are seeking high returns, which is not identical to high growth, it may be that younger founders tend to sell their equity at lower prices, and thus VCs are making optimal return decisions. Teasing apart why VCs bet young is an interesting area for further work. We can say now however that venture capital, a major source of early-stage financing that can help drive creative destruction and economy-wide growth, does not currently appear allocated to the firms with the highest growth potential.