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Open research questions in Private Equity and Venture Capital

119 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 1,481 Private Equity and Venture Capital papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • The paper identifies the challenge of evaluating the ex ante quality of business plans, particularly for technology-based ventures. It notes the difficulty of quantifying the relative importance of statistical discrimination and bias in the funding gap. The paper also highlights the challenge of addressing the lack of traditional success markers among Black founders, such as patents or entrepreneurial experience.

    Funding Black High‐Growth Startups · 2026 · DOI

  • further study on the impact of omitted variables, - investigation of the relationship between observed controls and unobserved variables, - analysis of the sources of bias in VC funding

    Funding Black High‐Growth Startups · 2026 · DOI

  • The main reasons why entrepreneurial ventures hold cash remain poorly understood to date.

    Beyond survival: why entrepreneurial ventures hold excess cash · 2026 · DOI

  • Despite the importance of signaling in entrepreneurship, little is known about what and how to effectively signal to attract investor interest in small ventures that develop sustainable technologies.

    Mapping the signaling environment between sustainability‐focused entrepreneurship and investment inputs: A topic modeling approach · 2024 · DOI

  • The paper identifies a gap in the understanding of the practices of European and American venture capitalists. The study highlights the need for further research on the investment strategies and decision-making processes of VC investors.

    Practices of European and American venture capitalists: homogeneity and heterogeneity at work · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of a continuous capital loop that synchronizes commercial commerce with philanthropic funding. The need for a high-efficiency capital loop that operates across three nodes.

    Stones Certainty Principle · 2026 · DOI

  • Access to adequate and affordable financing. Limited investor awareness and weak regulatory support. Inadequate investment readiness among local entrepreneurs.

    Venture capital, angel investment, and SME empowerment in emerging urban economies · 2026 · DOI

  • Limited to Akure Metropolis, Ondo State, Nigeria. Small sample size of 53 SME owners and five investors. Lack of quantitative data on the impact of VC and AI financing on SMEs.

    Venture capital, angel investment, and SME empowerment in emerging urban economies · 2026 · DOI

  • While recent research acknowledges AI’s unique learning capabilities and the necessity to integrate AI within firms’ business model contexts, it remains unclear how firms create economic value using AI.

    Towards Value Creation Of Ai Startup Business Models: A Typology And Their Interdependencies · 2026

  • The effect of VC investors' exit horizon on syndicate size and success probability has not been thoroughly discussed. The relationship between lead VCst's investment horizon preference and optimal syndicate size has not been analyzed.

    Syndication, investment horizon, and managerial effort in venture capital · 2026 · DOI

  • The study identifies a gap in current research on the long-term sustainability of university-originated ventures in emerging innovation ecosystems. The study notes that less attention has been devoted to understanding ASO survival.

    Machine Learning-Based Feature Selection Analysis of Academic Spin-Off Survival in Technoparks Located in Türkiye · 2026 · DOI

  • Future studies should explore which types of SMEs are particularly attractive to both ETA entrepreneurs and PE firms. Future research should examine the outcomes of co-investment between ETA entrepreneurs and PE firms. Future studies should investigate the role of human capital in the collaboration between ETA entrepreneurs and PE firms.

    Entrepreneurial acquisitions and small-cap private equity overlaps: A resource-based view · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a gap in academic attention to the overlap between ETA and small- and micro-cap PE. Prior research has not fully explored the competitive and collaborative dynamics between ETA and PE firms.

    Entrepreneurial acquisitions and small-cap private equity overlaps: A resource-based view · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper identifies a gap in the literature on the relationship between rent-seeking entrepreneurship and environmental outcomes. The study highlights the need for further research on the non-economic costs of rent-seeking entrepreneurship.

    Does rent-seeking entrepreneurship hurt the environment? Historical insights from the US meatpacking industry · 2026 · DOI

  • The role of artificial intelligence in shaping the future of entrepreneurship, - The impact of venture capital on the concentration of wealth and power, - The potential for innovation to address social and ethical concerns

    Entrepreneurship in the age of AI and venture capital · 2026 · DOI

  • The gap between the potential of innovation and the actual impact on society, - The need for entrepreneurs and investors to prioritize social impact and ethical considerations

    Entrepreneurship in the age of AI and venture capital · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper identifies a gap in the literature, namely the lack of research on the impact of government venture capital on firm innovation. The study identifies a gap in the literature, namely the lack of research on the underlying mechanisms, including public-private synergy and hierarchical governance.

    Lead investor effects, public–private synergy, and hierarchical governance: how government venture capital drives substantive innovation · 2026 · DOI

  • However, a critical question remains underexplored: is the contribution of VC investments geographically limited to their financially supported startups? We attempt to address this question by examining the effects of VC investments on urban entrepreneurship from a novel perspective of urban spatial structures.

    Business venturing meets urban planning: How do urban spatial structures reshape the landscape of VC-backed entrepreneurship · 2026 · DOI

  • The current answer to why a recession happens is only partially satisfactory as the source of recession is assumed as exogenous. There is a lack of understanding of how large firms' synchronized lumpy investments shape an economy's fragility to negative TFP shocks. The existing solution algorithms fail to accurately compute the solution to nonlinear dynamic stochastic general equilibrium.

    Striking While the Iron is Cold: Fragility after a Surge of Lumpy Investments · 2026 · DOI

  • For instance, there is a lack of evidence regarding the psychological changes and direct decisions of enterprise management in the face of “non-delisting” risk warnings from peer enterprises, as well as whether there are significant changes in the risk assessment activities of banks and other creditors when facing other enterprises in the same city as those with “non-delisting” risk warnings.

    “Non-delisting”: risk warning and research and development expenditure · 2025 · DOI

  • This study expands our understanding of the role of uncertainty in investment decisions, offers deeper insight into how language operates in financial markets, and sheds light on the increasingly popular, but understudied, SPAC vehicle.

    Communication under Uncertainty and the Role of Founders’ Information Advantage: Evidence from SPAC IPOs · 2024 · DOI

  • Yet little is known about what happens to patent assets when startups go out of business: Do the assets have a “second life” through redeployment to new owners? Based on 264 failed VC‐backed startups, we document an active market for the patents both as standalone assets and through co‐movement with inventors to the purchasing organization.

    Do patent assets have a second life when startups fail? An analysis of the redeployment likelihood and mode of transfer · 2024 · DOI

  • Our evidence highlights the importance of public financial statements in the decision-making of PE investors, an important and understudied segment of the private firm financing market.

    Do Public Financial Statements Influence Private Equity and Venture Capital Financing? · 2024 · DOI

  • Originality/value Although major statistical work to test the authors’ typology of SE models remains to be carried out, mainly through the exploitation of the international ICSEM database (which covers over 700 SEs from more than 40 countries), this paper represents a first—although limited—attempt to collect empirical evidence for testing this typology.

    Mapping social enterprise models: some evidence from the “ICSEM” project · 2017 · DOI

  • " While there is no consensus definition of this term, we believe that it is best understood, for purposes of legal analysis, as "an organization that utilizes an earned income strategy to accomplish a primary organizational mission of creating value for one or more stakeholders besides the organizations' shareholders or owners.

    Social Enterprise, Corporate Objectives, and the Corporate Governance Narrative · 2015 · DOI

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119 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 1,481 Private Equity and Venture Capital papers in our 4.5M-paper local library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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