Early-stage financing of university spin-offs: The impact of entrepreneurial capabilities and social networks of founding teams during start-ups

University spin-offs have increasingly received attention from academia, governments, and policymakers in studying the financing policies, venture capital investment decision making, the roles of venture capitalist in the development of new ventures, and the contributions of entrepreneur's social capital to the fundraising activities. However, the limited number of studies in understanding of the contribution made by the entrepreneurial capabilities and social networks of a founding team to its fundraising ability remains, especially within university spin-off context. Employing resource-based view theory and social networks approach, this paper enriches the knowledge by exploring university spin-offs in Spain. The results of this study empirically demonstrate that by exploiting social networks a founding team can improve its entrepreneurial capabilities, which in turn enhance its fundraising ability.