Venture Capitalists’ Investment Criteria in Poland: Entrepreneurial Opportunities, Entrepreneurs, and Founding Teams
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Generally speaking, the study "Venture Capitalists' investment criteria in Poland: opportunity, entrepreneur and teams" is carefully designed and well-executed. The topic is also relevant and interesting. I have some specific comments on its content, which follow immediately.
Introduction
First off, the title can be crafted better. I suggest the option: "Venture Capitalists' investment criteria in Poland: What opportunities are there for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial teams?" Line 26: "This paper is dedicated to decision-making policy by VC funds in Poland." The first time VC appears in this sentence, it is recommended not to write the acronym. Please state its full words, followed by the acronym, instead.
Generally, the context and the research questions are clearly presented. However, the authors should proofread the article more carefully. Some sentences are just incomprehensible. For instance, lines 86-88: "They are pioneer and carried out later; are quantitative and qualitative; were conducted in the USA, Europe and in Asia. Special attention in paid to characteristics of entrepreneurs." Literature Review The authors need to provide a clear sense of time when describing how venture capital firms develop in Poland. For instance, in line 121-126: "The first decade of the Polish transformation was marked with restoring the free market framework, reshaping the rule of law and social changes. By this time the public market (Warsaw Stock Exchange) was restored, but initially it served mostly as a mechanism of privatization for state-owned companies. Investment funds of foreign origin, that operated in the private market, were also interested in investing in some of such former stated-owned companies." When exactly was the first decade of the Polish transformation? When exactly was the Warsaw Stock Exchange restored? Perhaps, it is worth for the authors to examine the sociocultural aspects regarding the likelihood of success and innovative tendencies of entrepreneurs, such as what is provided in this article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40064-016-2850-9 (so far the paper has only briefly mentioned these aspects, on page 3, without recognizing their potentially determining role as far as investments, and their outcomes, are concerned).
Materials and Methods
The presentation of the questionnaire and the characteristics of the sample can be changed into table format. A table is also easier to read, provided that explanations follow correctly and logically. Results, Discussion and Conclusions The report of findings is well-written. Meanwhile, the discussion needs to connect with previous findings in other countries. Moreover, are there any socioeconomic or cultural factors of Poland that might explain the results?
There are still typos and grammatical errors. Moreover, some sections can be presented better. Finally, the manuscript still needs to be proofread carefully to avoid grammatical errors and typos. (There are still such basic errors as: stated-owned companies, pg. 3, which should never be present in a submitted manuscript.)
I believe the authors can handle these issues in due course, and thus, am rendering my recommendation: Major revision.
Best wishes
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
thank you very much for your review. In the attached file I present my answers to the concerns raised in the review.
Ragards
Author
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Referee report on “Venture Capitalists' investment criteria in Poland: opportunity, entrepreneur and teams”.
The paper analyses the decision-making policy by Polish Venture Capital (VC) funds with special focus on their perception of entrepreneurs. The results show that VC managers highly value the honesty of the entrepreneur. Also VCs usually want to see a team of founders, rather than a single-person project, preferably consisting at least of persons familiar with technology and market. I believe that most of the results are quite intuitive and after some improvements the paper can be published.
Comments.
My comments are mostly related to the strength of the paper’s contribution and its connection to existing literature.
- The paper is about venture capital investments and is related to the analysis of information about firms that VC manager collects and analyzes when preparing for an investment decision. The authors focus on Polish firms. The topic of research is interesting but the literature review should be significantly improved. So I suggest, the authors provide a deeper review of theoretical literature on venture capital investment objectives, theories of relationships/contracts between VCs and entrepreneurs, information asymmetry problems existing between VC and entrepreneurs, moral hazard problems etc. Even though the paper is empirical, good papers (either theoretical or empirical) always provide a review of both types of papers related (perhaps from a slightly broader prospective) to their topic of study. The reasons for this are that different types of readers may be interested in reading the paper and more importantly it helps to better evaluate the merits of the paper’s contribution. An example is Kaplan-Stromberg (2003) paper that is empirical but has a very good review of theories etc.
.
- Research hypothesis are missing. The literature review section should identify gaps in literature or controversial areas and formulate hypothesis. Because research hypothesis are missing there is no connection between different sections. Literature review is too descriptive and not critical enough. The analysis section is also too descriptive and not sophisticated enough etc. The authors need to identify the areas of their focus, provide the literature review and identify gaps in literature or controversial areas, formulate hypothesis, select an appropriate methodology etc.
- The paper contribution and its novelty element should be better explained. The authors found that entrepreneur’s honesty is crucial. The problem is that it is hard to say whether it constitutes a major contribution to existing literature or just a minor improvement compared to existing ideas/theories. We know from the literature that ex-ante asymmetric information or ex-post in terms of moral hazard problems etc, are the key problems for these firms so in this sense the entrepreneurs honesty contributes to improving both these mentioned above problems. A better discussion should be presented that explains the importance of this finding; why do the authors think that this finding is not obvious and/or it has a sufficient element of “surprise”.
Etc.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
thank you very much for your review. In the attached file I present my answers to the concerns raised in the review.
Ragards
Author
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
Thank you for your resubmission of the revised manuscript. Generally speaking, I find it convincing and diligent.
Still, I suggest you look at the following example of an emerging economy that may exhibit similar aspects to those covered in your paper. The paper can be read here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40064-016-2850-9
Best regards,
Reviewer 2 Report
Referee report on “Venture Capitalists' investment criteria in Poland: opportunity, entrepreneur and teams” (resubmission).
The authors have made some changes related to referees’ comments on the initial submission. However unfortunately, they were not able to make all expected changes related to methodology questions, hypothesis and the paper contribution. I’m not sure that I’m completely comfortable with all the explanations provided.
