Does More Certification Always Benefit a Venture?

The authors thank W. Richard Scott, David Audretsch, Andrew Nelson, and Marc Schneiberg for reviewing earlier versions of this paper and offering valuable comments. The authors thank Georgiy Sichinava, Emily Plews, Jung-hyun Kwon, and Aaron McDonald for their diligent research assistance. They also thank Dan Gingert and his team at PrivCo for assisting with the private financing match. Finally, the authors thank Wes Sine and three anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly advanced this paper. This paper benefitted from discussions with seminar participants at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, the 2016 West Coast Research Symposium, the 2016 Kauffman Scholar’s Conference, the Department of Management’s research seminar at the Lundquist College of Business in 2016, and the Department of Management seminar at Portland State University’s School of Business in 2016. Both authors contributed equally to this work. This work builds on L. Lanahan's dissertation. All errors are the authors’ own.