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4.3 Limitación
This chapter contains a number of limitations that suggest avenues for further research. First, whereas we argue that the signaling and protection values of trademarks differ in their effects, our data do not allow us to clearly differentiating between these value dimen- sions. Future research should aim to disentangle the two value dimensions and analyze their development over the course of the firm’s development. Second, trademark applica-
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tions are merely a broad proxy for a start-up’s marketing activities. It would be interesting to use more inclusive information concerning a start-up’s marketing expenditures, its level of market orientation, and its customer base. Although our work addressed the role of IP in greater detail by using trademarks, future research should use different measures (e.g., ad- vertising spending or marketing expenditures) when exploring the role of marketing in start-ups. Third, our final dataset, which held the IP portfolios of VC-funded start-ups, had to be constructed from several data sources. This process relied on the manual creation of company name patterns and the matching of trademark and patent applications. Although this method proved to be highly reliable and was individually checked with the records in the USPTO trademark register, we cannot completely rule out possible mismatches or the failure to include relevant IP applications in our dataset (we were able to identify patent or trademark data for 87.4% of the start-ups taken from VentureXpert). Fourth, this research exclusively focuses on publicly available data and does not include information on the characteristics of the start-up team, such as its quality and composition (Baum and Silverman, 2004; Beckman et al., 2007; Franke et al., 2006; 2008). It is, for example, plau- sible to suppose that if the firm's team is composed of members with a high level of experi- ence in the marketing field, the presence of a trademark portfolio and perhaps its breadth are less important (Munari and Toschi, 2011). We also lack information on the background of the start-up (e.g., academic vs. non-academic spin-off) and the motivations of start-ups’ trademarking and other marketing activities that go along with them. Further research should include such factors to improve our understanding of the dynamics and motivations that underlie such observable data. Another interesting aspect concerns the start-ups’ moti- vations for filing trademarks. We expect there are a number of different motivations for start-ups to file trademarks, such as signaling, value appropriation, and marketing orienta- tion. Survey-based research could be conducted to categorize these different motivations to file trademarks. Finally, we adopted a rather general approach using a sample covering a broad range of industries. Future research could address the role of trademarks for innova- tive start-ups across different industries and customer types. Improvements in marketing activities might be more relevant in consumer-intensive, service-related industries that have large numbers of buyers and sellers (Malmberg, 2005; Mendonça et al., 2004). With re- spect to customer types, the value reflected by the trademarks might differ between start- ups that serve consumers and those that serve other businesses (i.e., “business to con- sumer” vs. “business to business” relationships). Another related research direction could concern the type of Nice classes in which the trademarks are filed. Compared with the trademarks filed in service Nice classes (11 classes), those filed in Nice classes that are re- lated to goods (34 classes) might have a different relationship with VC valuations. Fur-
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thermore, beyond the VC valuation of start-ups, it would be interesting to examine the rela- tionship between a start-up’s IP and its progress throughout the VC cycle. Although Mann and Sager (2007) examine patents in relation to several measures, such as a start-up’s lon- gevity, its arrival in later development stages and its total amount of funds and rounds re- ceived, future scholars should jointly examine these measures for trademarks and patents. It has been suggested that trademarks and patents are complementary (Rujas, 1999).
4.8 Conclusions
Based on trademark and patent data on 4,816 funding rounds for 2,341 start-ups, we show that trademarks are strong predictors of the VC valuations of start-ups. We argue that trademarks not only have a protection value but are also signals of start-ups’ market orien- tations. The number of trademarks and the breadth of their applications, as reflected by the Nice classes, provide additional information on the scope and direction of the start-ups’ marketing strategies. These effects are positive, but decreasing, because of the marginal additional information they provide beyond a certain point. The findings also indicate that the signaling value of trademarks decreases over the venture cycle; when more tangible success factors become available, the VC gains deeper insight into the start-up and begins to exert influence on its strategies. We believe that the findings of this study will motivate further research on the role of IP rights in the VC financing of start-ups. Future research should, for example, disentangle the signaling and protection values of trademarks and their development over time. Future studies should also shed further light on the relative impacts of trademarks and patents at this early stage of the firm development. We believe it is especially promising to collect data on actual R&D and marketing activity or strategies to better understand the underlying mechanisms.