Publication

Certification or cash prize: the heterogeneous effect of venture competitions

2026

Abstract

Venture competitions usually reward winners with a certification of their startup’s quality and a cash prize. We model and estimate the impact of these rewards on startups’ performances using original data on about 1000 startups that have participated in the leading Swiss venture competition. We find that winning in the competition improves startups’ business success on average. However, it does not affect all startups equally. Certification has a long-term positive effect on startups whose quality can be reliably assessed by the competition’s judges. The cash prize, however, only has a short-term impact on startups with low running costs.

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/d1e9fea2-0330-4927-87b5-390c95f5a8f6

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2026

Abstract

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/d1e9fea2-0330-4927-87b5-390c95f5a8f6

About this result

Related concepts (23)

Startup company

A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder. At the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential.

Venture capital

Venture capital (commonly abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth (in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc). Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake.

Competition

Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, individuals, economic and social groups, etc. The rivalry can be over attainment of any exclusive goal, including recognition. Competition occurs in nature, between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. Animals compete over water supplies, food, mates, and other biological resources.

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Certification or cash prize: the heterogeneous effect of venture competitions

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