A Note on Financing Entrepreneurial Ventures in Developing Economies

In recent years the world has witnessed a growing wave of entrepreneurial ventures in developing economies. CB Insights reports as of March 2020, developing economies have produced 160 unicorns, equivalent to 35 percent of all unicorns in the world. Much of the success of these unicorns can be attributed to entrepreneurs having increasing access to financing. Our study, however, found that access to financing varied significantly across developing economies and remained as a key challenge for entrepreneurs in most of those economies. Differences in legal structures, operating conditions, talent pools, and available capital sources created myriad conditions for entrepreneurs to navigate when seeking funding to build and scale their ventures.