How and When Investment Horizons Determine Venture Capital Firms’ Attention Breadth to Portfolio Companies

This study develops and tests a theory about the antecedents of venture capital firms’ (VCs’) attention breadth to their portfolio companies (PFCs). We find that VCs expand their attention breadth but only up to a certain level of expected investment horizons for each PFC, after which attention breadth narrows. We also find that this inverted U-shaped relationship is contingent upon the VC investment horizon dispersion and the number of...