What makes external financial supporters engage in university spin-off seed investments: entrepreneurs' capabilities or social networks?

This study aims to enrich our knowledge of the influences that social networks and capabilities of entrepreneurial teams have on the engagement of external seed investors by exploring academic entrepreneurial teams. It analyses the capabilities and characteristics of social networks of entrepreneurial teams based upon resource-based view and the conceptual model of social networks. The results from an examination of the sample of 181 Spanish university spin-offs demonstrate that by exploiting social networks an entrepreneurial team can shape its capabilities which, in turn, improve its ability to access various types of external seed capital sources. Thus, the paper has implications for universities in training and policy development to support spin-offs' activities, especially to build entrepreneurial teams with capabilities to pitch for external seed capital.