How to fly in a Storm : A qualitative study on business angel investment during a financial crisis

This study is concerned with business angel investments and how business angels handle their investments during a financial crisis. The problem question is formulated as follows “How do business angels in Sweden handle their investments during troubled financial times, more specifically during the recent financial crisis?” The overall goal of this thesis is to find out in which way the financial crisis influences business angels investments. The goal is consequently to give entrepreneurs a view of how some potential investors, business angels, handle their investment behavior during troubled financial times. Another goal is to look into how business angels perceive the laws and regulations of Sweden in terms of encouraging or discouraging investments. Accordingly we desire to find out if some governmental incentives for business angel investing are called for, and if so this could be of interest to regulative organs. We have used theories on the subject of business angels and studies concerning investments during economic downturns as a framework when developing our study. Factors important in theses studies have then been used in order to develop the theory chapter. The data was collected by conducting semi-structured interviews with five business angels. The respondents were sent an interview guide in advance in order to have the possibility to prepare for the interviews. We chose to conduct semi-structured interviews because we wanted the respondents to describe how they conducted their investments and tell us more about the underlying reasons for their choices. The respondents were found through business angel networks and the selection of business angels characterizes a fair representation of the group. The thesis has been conducted in an academically correct way and has been validated and confirmed by the respondents. From our interviews with the business angels we found that they did not to a large extent handle their investments differently during economic downturns. The respondents pointed to that an economic downturn like the on upon us now is an opportunity to make new investments. Some of the result was in conjunction with the theory chapter, while we also found some unique aspects not mentioned in previous studies. The thesis is concluded with providing entrepreneurs an overview about how business angels handle their investments and react during economic downturns