How does your voice impact the investment decision in entrepreneurial pitches?
Summary
ABSTRACT – This thesis studies the impact of the entrepreneurs’ voice in entrepreneurial pitches. The entrepreneurs’ voice influences how the characteristics of the entrepreneur are perceived by the investors. This is a crucial aspect of early-stage decision making, as investors look for signs of trust, dominance, confidence and competence. As these characteristics are seen as masculine, entrepreneurship is also perceived as a masculine domain. Consequently, female entrepreneurs experience a ‘gender-bias’ when they try to receive investments for their venture. Through a quantitative approach, a dataset containing investment pitches from the UK’s BBC program Dragons Den, season 3 (2006) till season 14 (2016) was studied. Our research question asks whether there is a link between the voice characteristics of the entrepreneurs and how many investment offers they will receive. Our results show that entrepreneurs with a lower fundamental frequency (F0) will receive more investment offers. In addition, in line with gender role congruity theory, investors penalize entrepreneurs of the same sex when they do not conform to the entrepreneurial stereotype. We find no support that women who conform to the male stereotype (having a lower F0), will receive more investment offers. Tailored policies to promote female entrepreneurship in a regional/national context can result in an increased participation of females in entrepreneurship domain. Female entrepreneurs recycling their knowledge, experience and wealth by becoming investors can result in a more equal playing field. Entrepreneurs should be aware of how their characteristics are perceived through their voice, and investors should be trained on the interferences they make based on the voice of the entrepreneur. Even if specific and effective policies are in place, the perception of inequality can increase the gender-gap. The Dragons Den production team can act as an example, by hosting an equal amount of female and male investors in their panel and inviting more female entrepreneurs.