From Acceleration to Equity Funding: The Role of Human Capital in Startup Financing Outcomes — Evidence from Le Village by Crédit Agricole

This thesis investigates how founders’ human capital (HC) influences the chances of accelerated startups securing external equity funding, regarded as a signal of quality and investor trust, rather than merely a financial milestone. The analysis focuses on venture capitalist (VC) and business angel (BA) rounds as KPIs. After framing HC as a key component in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, connected to productivity, long-term value creation and innovation, the thesis looks at how accelerators support early-stage ventures by alleviating constraints, fostering knowledge contamination, catalyzing venture growth and enhancing investor readiness. Nevertheless, isolating HC’s effect is challenging, mostly when overlapping with financial and social factors and due to lack of standardized metrics. The empirical analysis is based on a cross-country dataset of 156 startups that entered acceleration programs in Italy and France between 2014 and 2022, all part of Le Village by Crédit Agricole, an international accelerator network serving territorial and open innovation. Founders’ personal, educational and professional profiles were reconstructed through secondary data sources (LinkedIn and startup websites). Using logistic regression models, the analysis finds that startups are more likely to attract funding from at least one of VCs and BAs, or specifically from VCs, when the founding team exhibits a higher average level of advanced formal education, a stronger initial capital and is accelerated in France. However, no significant effect emerges for BA-specific investments, possibly due to smaller number of such cases in the dataset. Robustness checks, using a more specific variable, indicate that prior consulting experience reduces funding likelihood. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how specific founder attributes shape fundraising outcomes within the context of accelerators. The study opens avenues for future research by questioning how AI might complement HC gaps and encourages further investigation into the development of national ecosystems and the evolving role of accelerators.