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Neuer Artikel im EJOR

09.09.2024

Neuer Artikel im European Journal of Operational Research

Das neue Paper von Abdurahman Maarouf und Prof. Dr. Stefan Feuerriegel aus unserem Team, zusammen mit Prof. Dr. Nicolas Pröllochs (Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), wurde zur Veröffentlichung im European Journal of Operational Research angenommen.

Title: A Fused Large Language Model for Predicting Startup Success

Abstract: Investors are continuously seeking profitable investment opportunities in startups and, hence, for effective decision-making, need to predict a startup's probability of success. Nowadays, investors can use not only various fundamental information about a startup (e.g., the age of the startup, the number of founders, and the business sector) but also textual description of a startup's innovation and business model, which is widely available through online venture capital (VC) platforms such as Crunchbase. To support the decision-making of investors, we develop a machine learning approach with the aim of locating successful startups on VC platforms. Specifically, we develop, train, and evaluate a tailored, fused large language model to predict startup success. Thereby, we assess to what extent self-descriptions on VC platforms are predictive of startup success. Using 20,172 online profiles from Crunchbase, we find that our fused large language model can predict startup success, with textual self-descriptions being responsible for a significant part of the predictive power. Our work provides a decision support tool for investors to find profitable investment opportunities.

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