An entrepreneur, with private information about his firm, contracts over two periods with an outside financier, a venture capitalist (VC) or angel. The financier can reduce his information disadvantage by learning about the firm over time. VC financing is scarce relative to angel financing. Further, unlike an angel, a VC may exert effort, which, together with the entrepreneur’s effort, increases the firm’s success probability. The equilibrium VC financing contract ensures optimal effort-exertion by both entrepreneur and VC. We characterize the firm’s equilibrium choice between VC and angel financing, its equilibrium contractual provisions, and the dynamic evolution of its financing contract.

We develop a model in which individual and institutional reputation concerns conflict with one another to study why investment bank reputation concerns may have diminished in recent years. Unproven but talented bankers have incentive to signal their ability through actions that may or may not best serve their clients. In the spirit of Kreps (1990), we treat the bank as a hierarchical firm whose only asset is its institutional reputation for curbing behavior that is suboptimal for the client. The conflict between individual and institutional reputation concerns is more likely to resolve in favor of institutional reputation when firms recruit only the most talented people, and less so when unique ability is especially valuable. We discuss how technological change has contributed to a “star” culture that is unfavorable toward preservation of institutional reputation.