Industry Research: Venture Capital & Private Equity

Venture capital is a financial investment of capital funds made by professional investors (venture capitalists) in start-up businesses, R&D ventures, or new product launches.  New product launches have a perceived potential for significant growth but have no access to capital markets and do not have a record of proven performance.  Investors may have some say in the company's management and are compensated with a combination of profits, preferred shares, or royalties.

Note: Private equity differs in that it provides equity capital to enterprises not quoted on a stock market and refers to all stages of industry, including venture capital.

See Also: Marshall School of Business' Enterpreneurship resource guide

This is a list of the key business databases at USC.  Another list with the WRDS datasets broken out can be found here.

Betas can be found on 3 of USC's databases (see below), however Barra Betas are not available at this time.

Definitions:  Beta versus Barra Beta:

Beta is an estimated measure of the expected response of a stock, bond, or portfolio to the overall market. If a company has a beta of 1.3 has an expected excess return of 1.3 times the market excess return. Beta provides a means for measuring portfolio risk and provides a strong relationship of expected return.

Predicted beta, the beta BARRA derives from its risk model, is a forecast of a stock's sensitivity to the market. It is also known as fundamental beta, because it is derived from fundamental risk factors. In the BARRA model these risk factors include 13 attributes—such as size, yield, and price/earnings ratio—plus industry exposure allocated across a maximum of 6 of 55 industry groups. 

• Barra Betas can be found on the database FactSet.  Information on access to Factset and getting your own account can be found on the FactSet Research Guide

Beta's can also be found on Bloomberg: See our Bloomberg Research Guide.  Instructions can be found under Sample Searches - EQUITIES BETA is the Mnemonic for Beta)

Forbes' recommended VC blogs