Financial Management Hypothesis for Growth-Oriented Entrepreneurial Ventures

This article presents a substantive hypothesis that consolidates some of the findings and conclusions from my PhD dissertation, including a review of three distinct bodies of literature (VC investing, management teams, and financial management in entrepreneurship). It is offered to entrepreneurship and VC-investment researchers for reflection, discussion, and testing – most importantly with respect to eCFOs’ prevalence, impact on team effectiveness, and their direct (e.g. through financial management of liquidity & growth) and indirect (e.g. through team effectiveness or dynamic duodom with entrepreneur-leaders) impacts on enterprise performance. The hypothesis has seven elements describing entrepreneurship, the venture life cycle, requirements for different types of teams in different development phases, and the concepts of the ‘entrepreneurial management team’, ‘team effectiveness’, the impact of the ‘entrepreneurial CFO’ and his/her relationship with the entrepreneur-leader.