Thesis

A matter of size? Quantification of the effect of market size on the received venture funding including Case Study Application

Obviously, the size of the target market has an impact on the attractiveness of a start-up for investors and as such also on its valuation. However, the valuation process entailed in every funding round often appears to be rather an art, than a science.

To shed some more light on the impact of market size on a venture’s funding success, this thesis shall concretely quantify the relationship between both variables. Empirically, the analysis could be conducted using the premier database Crunchbase, enriched with information on the respective market sizes. In a second step, the results shall be applied to the case study of BioThrust. BioThrust is a deep-tech spin-off from the AVT of RWTH Aachen developing two innovative product lines for the fumigation of bioreactors. This case study application should entail a calculation of BioThrust’s market size, which is then used as an input for predicting the company valuation.

Please send your application via mail to Konstantin Kurz (BioThrust, konstantin.kurz@biothrust.de) with Liljan Schrameier cc (RWTH, schrameier@time.rwth-aachen.de).


Literature for initial reading:
a) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11301-017-0131-5
b) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13691066.2012.667907
c) https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbr035
d) https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-1821.2005.00243.x
e) https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/content/paper/6c418d60-en
f) https://books.google.de/books/about/Entrepreneurship.html?id=3h_RDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Keywords: Market-Size, Market-Sizing, Company Valuation, Case-Study