Abstract:  As one of the supporting measures of “National Medium and Long-term Science and Technology Development Plan (2006-2020)”, the establishment of China’s Government Venture Capital Guiding Funds (GVCGFs) is aimed at promoting the venture capital (VC) market and entrepreneurship financing. Because the amount of GVCGFs is limited and multi-rounds of financing are needed for most entrepreneurial firms to grow and mature, it would be utterly inadequate just relying on GVCGFs investment to facilitate the entrepreneurship financing. Promoting follow-up financing of entrepreneurial firms through GVCGFs investment can not only alleviate the difficulties of entrepreneurial financing to a greater degree, but also enhance the guiding role of GVCGFs for social capital and the amplifying and leveraging function of fiscal funds.This paper investigates the mechanism of the influence of GVCGFs investment on entrepreneurial firms follow-up financing and explores the policy measures to facilitate entrepreneurial follow-up financing through GVCGFs investment. The basic methodology of this study is to contrast the differences of follow-up financing between GVCGFs-invested entrepreneurial firms and private venture capital funds (PVCFs) invested entrepreneurial firms, and the main contents of this study include three parts. Firstly, hypotheses are put forward from the perspective of incentive, certification and virtuous cycle. From the perspective of incentive,the revenue-related compensation would positively incentive venture capitalists to put more human capital into the entrepreneurial firms, the loss compensation would negatively incentive venture capitalists to put less human capital into the entrepreneurial firms, and the market-oriented mode of operation would have no incentive effect, neither positive nor negative. Thus, if GVCGFs provide the revenue-related compensation for private capital, the follow-up financing of entrepreneurial firms could be facilitated; nevertheless, if GVCGFs provide the loss compensation plus revenue-related compensation for private capital, or adopt the market-oriented mode of operation, the follow-up financing of entrepreneurial firms could not be facilitated. From the perspective of certification, GVCGFs would certify the quality of entrepreneurial firms, which can alleviate the financing difficulties caused by the information asymmetry between other investors and entrepreneurial firms. As a result, if GVCGFs invest in entrepreneurial firms of early-stage or in high-tech industry, the follow-up financing of entrepreneurial firms could be facilitated more significantly. From the perspective of virtuous cycle, the investment activities of GVCGFs in the early development stage of VC market will create a “virtuous circle” and pave the way for the later development of VC market. Hence, if GVCGFs invest in entrepreneurial firms in VC less-developed districts, the follow-up financing of entrepreneurial firms could be facilitated more significantly. Secondly, data are collected from Zero2IPO Database, which is the earliest and widely covered commercial VC database in China, and one-match samples are constructed with GVCGFs-invested entrepreneurial firms and PVCFs-invested entrepreneurial firms. The matching principle is that the GVCGFs-invested entrepreneurial firms and the PVCFs-invested entrepreneurial firms are of the same financing round, in the same month of financing timing, in the same industry, and in the same province. At last, hypotheses put forward above are tested empirically with the matching samples, and the empirical results support the incentive hypotheses, but do not support the hypotheses put forward from the certification perspective or from the virtuous cycle perspective. To sum up, the main empirical results of this paper are shown as follows: (1) If GVCGFs provide the revenue-related compensation for private capital, the possibilities of follow-up financing of GVCGFs-invested entrepreneurial firms are significantly higher than those of PVCFs-invested entrepreneurial firms within two years after the first round of financing, and the duration of GVCGFs-invested entrepreneurial firms between the first round financing and follow-up financing is significantly shorter than that of PVCFs-invested entrepreneurial firms; however, if GVCGFs provide the loss compensation plus revenue-related compensation for private capital, or adopt the market-oriented mode of operation, the differences of follow-up financing between GVCGFs-invested entrepreneurial firms and PVCFs-invested entrepreneurial firms are insignificant. (2) Whether GVCGFs invest in early-stage or later-stage entrepreneurial firms, the differences of follow-up financing between GVCGFs-invested entrepreneurial firms and PVCFs-invested entrepreneurial firms are insignificant. (3) Whether GVCGFs invest in high-tech industry or in non-high-tech industry, the differences of follow-up financing between GVCGFs-invested entrepreneurial firms and PVCFs-invested entrepreneurial firms are insignificant. (4) Whether GVCGFs invest in VC less-developed districts or in VC well-developed districts, the differences of follow-up financing between GVCGFs-invested entrepreneurial firms and PVCFs-invested entrepreneurial firms are insignificant.The contributions of this paper are twofold. At first, there are many international literatures studying the impact of government venture capital (GVC) on entrepreneurial firms by comparing the differences between GVC-invested entrepreneurial firms and private venture capital (PVC) invested entrepreneurial firms. However, little attention has been paid to the cause of the differences between them. This paper focuses on the incentive mechanism, certification mechanism and virtuous circle mechanism, which may lead to the differences between the two types of entrepreneurial firms. It is found that the incentive mechanism can explain the follow-on financing differences between GVC-invested entrepreneurial firms and PVC-invested entrepreneurial firms. This finding is the most important theoretical contribution of this paper. Secondly, Chinese domestic scholars have carried out a lot of research on the management mode, operation mode, investment mode, risk management, performance evaluation and guiding effect of the GVCGFs. However, there is almost no literature studying the impact of GVCGFs on entrepreneurial firms. This paper investigates the influence of GVCGFs on entrepreneurial firms by comparing the follow-on financing differences between GVCGFs-invested entrepreneurial firms and PVCFs-invested entrepreneurial firms, extending the academic research on GVCGFs.The policy implications of this paper can be summarized as follows: the key point to boost the follow-on financing of entrepreneurial firms through GVCGFs lies in the appropriate compensation mechanism for private capital. According to the results of this paper, the only way for GVCGFs to promote follow-on financing of entrepreneurial firms is to provide private capital with the revenue-related compensation. Furthermore, among the four kinds of the revenue-related compensations, the priority should be given to the fixed-revenue compensation because its policy effect is most significant, which exactly is what the government care about mostly, and its policy cost can be estimated very clearly in advance, which can reduce the operation uncertainty of GVCGFs and limit the risk of government.

Key words: government venture capital guiding funds (GVCGF), venture capital, startup, follow-up financing