Start up Perspective in Attracting Investors: Polito I3P Case Sudy

Entrepreneurial activities have been spread at a high rate in the last past years, attracting and increasing the attention of society and academia. Their presence has influenced economy, technology and social life. Start-ups are the initial step for further development of new young businesses with perspective to grow, become big and bring new technologies, new solutions, new ideas to the world, create employment and contribute in economy growth. To reach this success and have an interaction with the world these start-ups need support especially financial, they need capital and investors that provide this capital. As there is vast amount of existent work in investors characteristics and criteria, it is curious to see that literature works focuses on investors, start-ups success factors and failures neglecting start-ups perspective in attracting financial capital. This thesis aims to understand the process start-ups follow to attract investors attention and capital. The core goal is to recognize, analyse start up viewpoint and strategies they follow to generate funds. The study implements qualitative methods and focuses on Polito I3P start-ups, it presents 17 interviews conducted with start-up founders and teams, to identify the process they follow to reach financial support. Research shows that the process is very complex, and a combination of many steps and factors is needed to be successful. Personal network, new connections earned by participation in events, abilities and technical skills, goal alignment of team members, valuable product, market research and continues search for investors are among factors followed by start-ups in their path of accomplishment. Finally this study work contributes to academic work and literature on start ups and their journey to success, also contributes to Polito I3P start-ups, through this work they can review their position and take necessary steps to enhance their overall performance and procedure they pursue to attract capital.