The Brown Center invites you to our Faculty Spotlight on Monday, October 30th at 12:00 PM on Zoom. The spotlight series is a showcase of research, creative inquiry, and other scholarly engagement of the campus community. Stop by and learn about the research of our talented Stetson community!
Sign-Up Link:
https://forms.office.com/r/zvb3A1r81b
Dr. Kevin Taylor – Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, Management
Department of Business
Flourishing and frustrations during early-stage fundraising: The effects of the Big Two on founder emotions
The importance of new venture founders’ emotions is receiving increasing acknowledgement. An understanding of the dynamic nature of the relationship between entrepreneurs and emotion, though, is lacking. This study examines how an entrepreneur’s emotions fluctuate during a period of time that is fraught with risk and uncertainty, the one-year proximal to completing a first external fundraise from business angels and venture capitalists. In examining one year of Twitter posts of 491 founders using computer-aided text analysis, the study investigates how the agency and communion of founders is associated with the change in emotion. The study shows that communion is related to increased (decreased) positive (negative) emotion, while agency is related to increased negative emotion during the fundraising period. These findings contribute to the literature on entrepreneur wellbeing and venture fundraising and provide insights useful to coaches, mentors, and advisors preparing founders to raise venture funding.
Dr. Kevin P. Taylor is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship at Stetson University. His research interests include organizational behavior, emotions, and wellbeing in early-stage ventures. Prior to academia, Taylor had a career as a technology entrepreneur, consultant and venture investor. He holds a Doctorate in Business Administration from DePaul University.