Getting off to a Good Start: Emerging Scientific Fields and External Financing

This paper examines whether increased involvement by scientists and investors in a scientific field affects the initial external financing received by new ventures in these fields. We argue that ventures perceived to be associated with emerging scientific fields are more likely to get initial external capital than ventures that do not have such associations. Our results indicate that being associated with emerging scientific fields increases the likelihood of acquiring needed resources for new ventures. However, we found that ventures perceived as associated with fields that showed growing investments in the past do not have a higher likelihood of obtaining initial external investments.