Date: 13 February 2026, Friday
Time: 13.30 – 14.30
Place: MA-330
“Human Capital Breadth and the Financing of Innovative Startups”
by
Teodor Duevski
HEC Paris
Abstract
I examine how the breadth of venture capital (VC) partners’ human capital influences investment selection, startup performance, and innovation. Partners with broader human capital are more likely to lead investments in novel startups with previously unexplored business models and significantly increase their likelihood of major success; however, they underperform when leading non-novel deals. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in partner time constraints as a shock to the within-VC firm likelihood of leading a deal, I provide causal evidence for these effects. A theoretical model endogenizes startup creation, partner assignment, and investment to rationalize the empirical findings and provide additional
testable predictions. The results highlight the nuanced value of human capital breadth in financing innovation.
Bio
Teodor Duevski is a PhD Candidate in Finance at HEC Paris. His research focuses on private markets, venture capital, and entrepreneurial finance, with particular emphasis on how human capital, incentives, and competition shape capital allocation and innovation. His job market paper studies the role of venture capital partners’ human capital breadth in financing novel startups, combining causal empirical analysis with a theoretical model. He has been a visiting PhD student at Harvard Business School and Northwestern University. His work has been presented at leading international conferences and seminars and has received several awards, including Best Doctoral Student Paper Awards and competitive research grants. He holds an MSc in Theoretical and Computational Methods from the University of Helsinki and a BSc in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Amsterdam.