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Investigating the Roles of Advisory Boards in German Technology-Based Startups

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The author shows that advisory boards in technology-based startups have seven different roles and functions: control, advice, networking, signalling, capital provision, co-management, coordination. It is shown that venture capital investors try to influence the importance of these roles in favour of control, coordination and co-management. Contrary to this, the satisfaction of founders as well as advisory board members increases with a higher importance of advice, networking and signalling. This analysis provides both qualitative and quantitative empirical data on the usage of those boards in practice.

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Literature Review of Research on Governing Boards.- Roles of Governing Boards Explained through Agency Theory, Resource Dependency Theory, Stewardship Theory, Stakeholder Theory, Institutional Theory and Managerial Hegemony.- Exploring Roles Using Qualitative and Quantitative Methods.- Recommendations How to Use Advisory Boards in Practice.

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Eric Weber co-founded SpinLab - The HHL Accelerator, a program that supports technology-based entrepreneurs in cooperation with HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, where he worked as research associate and startup coach and dealt with the field of entrepreneurship from both a practical and theoretical perspective.

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