Idiosyncratic portfolio characteristics of seed and venture capital funds

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the strategic nature of formal seed capital in Norway as opposed to equally sized venture capital firms.

As the population of Norwegian seed capital firms is embedded in this study, a differential approach is taken when contrasting these seed capital firms with venture capital firms of approximately the same size.

The findings indicate that seed capital firms take higher market risk than their counterparts, and that they diversify to a larger extent than comparable venture capital firms. The latter appears to be a function of the former.

This study reviews previous categorizations of seed capital providers, henceforth building towards an overall taxonomy of seed capital.