ELSEVIER NEW VENTURE TEAMS' ASSESSMENT OF LEARNING ASSISTANCE FROM VENTURE CAPITAL FIRMS JAY B. BARNEY Ohio State University LOWELL W. BUSENITZ University of Houston JAMES O. FIET Clemson University DOUGLAS D. MOESEL Lehigh University EXECUTIVE Prior research examining whether venture capital firms (VCs) add value to S ~ Y the ventures in their portfolios by advising their new venture teams (NVTs) has led to inconclusive results. Whereas most prior studies have assumed that NVTs value VC assistance, this study tests for the possibility that they differentially value two different types of VC assistance-business manage- ment and operational. We collected data by surveying 837firms identified in the Venture Capital Journal that had received financing from venture capital firms. Only firms that received first-round financing were included in our analysis, which reduced our sample size to 205 firms. Our central finding is that systematic differences exist among NVTs in their evaluation of learning assistance from VCs. Even though VCs can chose their own level of involvement with an NVT, successfully improving venture performance through nonfinancial assistance at least partially depends upon the extent to which the NVT values VC input. Our results indicate that NVTs with more industry experience and longer team tenure in the current venture are negatively related to both business management advice and operational assistance offered by their VCs. However, when an NVT has previously worked together and when its primary experience is from another industry, it tends to welcome business management Address correspondence to Lowell W. Busenitz, Department of Management, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-6283. The authors wish to thank Harry Sapienza and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article. Journal of Business Venturing 11,257-272 © 1996 Elsevier Science Inc. 655 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10010 0883-9026/96/$ !5.00 SSD! 0883-9026(95)00111-5