Values of Student-Developed Businesses in Attracting Investors Market Potential, Founder Competencies, and Networks in a University Business Incubator
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Abstract
University business incubators support student-developed businesses by providing learning, mentoring, resources, and networks, yet little is known about which values make these ventures attractive to investors. This qualitative case study examines the values that student-developed businesses need to develop in order to become attractive to potential investors. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with 44 alumni of a university business incubator who were still managing their businesses, selected from 1,184 student-developed businesses, and were analyzed with NVivo. Responses were grouped by similarity into themes, and coding co-occurrences were used descriptively to explore how participants connected concepts. Drawing on the resource-based view and signaling theory, the findings show that student-developed businesses followed different trajectories after incubation and that founders perceived three dimensions as enhancing investor appeal: market potential, founder competencies, and network opportunities. Participants discussed investment readiness more often in relation to incubator support (21 co-occurrences) than in relation to the student-developed business itself (six), and they discussed scalability and investor attractiveness mostly in separate narrative contexts (three co-occurrences). These patterns suggest that investor-relevant value is not inherent in student ventures but is progressively developed and communicated through investment readiness. Because the evidence consists of founders' perceptions from surviving ventures, the findings are exploratory and should not be read as causal. The study offers practical implications for designing incubation programs that prepare student entrepreneurs for external investment.
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