Browsing by Author "Flint, Kim Rosa Amanda"
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- How loudly should an entrepreneur communicate their sustainability claim to investors in order to successfully receive funding?Publication . Flint, Kim Rosa Amanda; Costa, CláudiaToday, the impact a business activity has on the larger society is experiencing a growing amount of importance. Stronger environmental expectations from different stakeholders such as gov-ernments, consumers and employees result from the increasing ecological issues our world is currently facing. As a reaction to this, companies and big cooperations change their strategies, putting a greater focus on CSR or adding environmental innovations. At the same time, we can observe a new breed of social entrepreneurs emerging in the market, creating commercial for-profit organizations integrating the sustainability aspect into the center of their business models as they see it as a business opportunity. To date, research on the communication of startups sustainability claim in front of different stakeholders has remained scarce. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how this new breed of entrepreneurs communicate their sustainability claim to investors in order to successfully attract funding. The focus is on whether the startup needs to change the strength of it, and therefore communicates a different value proposition to their investors compared to their customers. An inductive multiple case study of five startups who are part of the Climate-KIC platform was performed. The analysis revealed that how strong a startup decides to communicate its sustainability claim to investors always depends on what investor type they are approaching. Whilst always telling the “truth”, with knowing who they are communicating to, startups constantly adjust their pitch deck ac-cordingly, putting a weaker or stronger focus on it. The study enhances valuable insights and guidelines for startups who integrate a sustainability aspect into their business model in order better approach investors and therefore to successfully attract funding.