The study extends the body of literature in marketing finance interface (Luo, 2008; Srinivasan & Hanssens, 2009), and specifically new venture funding (Homburg et al., 2014) by investigating the influence of characteristics of entrepreneurial team on pitch success. More specifically, we investigate the impact of first impressions and entrepreneur appearance on acquiring venture capital. To do this, this study examines the impact of first impressions and entrepreneurial appearance on financing outcomes using a large sample of real investment pitches from a major European startup event. Here, non-investors on Amazon’s MTurk are given a task to rate entrepreneurial pitches on three dimensions: the appearance of competence, trustworthiness and attractiveness and test whether these ratings are associated with the probability of a company receiving early-stage investment. Companies run by entrepreneurs who are rated as one-standard-deviation more competent looking are almost 20% more likely to receive funding. The other measures of appearance, such as the appearance of trustworthiness and attractiveness as well as an overall “Perception”-measure (which averages all three ratings) also have some predictive power. All in all, the evidence suggests that first impressions and appearance can lead to improved financing outcomes for startups despite the extensive due diligence that goes into early-stage investments.

• Mikael Paaso(Aalto University Business School, Finland)
• Elina Koivisto(Aalto University Business School, Finland)