The CEO beauty premium: Founder CEO attractiveness and firm valuation in initial coin offerings

【Author】 Colombo, Massimo G.; Fisch, Christian; Momtaz, Paul P.; Vismara, Silvio

【Source】STRATEGIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP JOURNAL

【Abstract】Research summary We apply insights from research in social psychology and labor economics to the domain of entrepreneurial finance and investigate how founder chief executive officers' (founder CEOs') facial attractiveness influences firm valuation. Leveraging the novel context of initial coin offerings (ICOs), we document a pronounced founder CEO beauty premium, with a positive relationship between founder CEO attractiveness and firm valuation. We find only very limited evidence of stereotype-based evaluations, through the association of founder CEO attractiveness with latent traits such as competence, intelligence, likeability, or trustworthiness. Rather, attractiveness seems to bear economic value per se, especially in a context in which investors base their decisions on a limited information set. Indeed, attractiveness has a sustainable effect on post-ICO performance. Managerial summary ICOs allow ventures to collect funding from investors using blockchain technology. We leverage this novel funding context, in which information on the ventures and their future prospects is scarce, to empirically investigate whether the founder CEOs' physical attractiveness is associated with increased funding (i.e., amount raised) and post-funding performance (i.e., buy-and-hold returns). We find that ventures with more attractive founder CEOs outperform ventures with less attractive CEOs in both dimensions. For ICO investors, this suggests that ICOs of firms with more attractive founder CEOs are more appealing investment targets. Our findings are also interesting for startups seeking external finance in uncertain contexts, such as ICOs. If startups can appoint attractive leaders, they may have better access to growth capital.

【Keywords】beauty premium; CEO attractiveness; entrepreneurial finance; firm valuation; initial coin offering; token offering

【标题】CEO 漂亮贴水效应：创始人 CEO 吸引力和首次代币发行中的公司估值

【摘要】研究总结 我们将社会心理学和劳动经济学研究的见解应用于创业金融领域，并调查创始人首席执行官（创始人 CEO）的面部吸引力如何影响公司估值。利用首次代币发行 (ICO) 的新背景，我们记录了创始人 CEO 的显着漂亮贴水，创始人 CEO 的吸引力与公司估值之间存在正相关关系。通过将创始人 CEO 的吸引力与能力、智力、讨人喜欢或可信度等潜在特征联系起来，我们发现基于刻板印象的评估的证据非常有限。相反，吸引力本身似乎具有经济价值，尤其是在投资者基于有限信息集做出决策的情况下。事实上，吸引力对 ICO 后的表现具有可持续的影响。管理摘要 ICO 允许企业使用区块链技术从投资者那里收集资金。我们利用这种新的融资背景，其中有关企业及其未来前景的信息稀缺，以实证研究创始人 CEO 的身体吸引力是否与增加的资金（即筹集的金额）和融资后的表现（即购买- 并持有回报）。我们发现，创始人 CEO 更具吸引力的企业在两个方面都优于 CEO 吸引力较低的企业。对于 ICO 投资者而言，这表明创始人 CEO 更具吸引力的公司的 ICO 更具吸引力。我们的发现对于在不确定的环境中寻求外部融资的初创公司也很有趣，例如 ICO。如果初创公司可以任命有吸引力的领导者，他们可能会更好地获得成长资本。

【关键词】漂亮贴水； CEO的吸引力；创业融资；公司估值；首次代币发行；代币发行

【收录时间】2022-08-16

【文献类型】Article; Early Access

【论文大主题】FT50 / UTD24

【论文小主题】首次代币发行

【影响因子】5.761

【翻译者】陈煜菲