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Abstract Research SummaryUniversity spinoffs (USOs) translate scientific advancement to economic gains, but the role of the university's governance as a public or private institution is infrequently explored. With a novel dataset of academic entrepreneurs with National Science Foundation I‐Corps training, we examine institutional governance as a fundraising signal. We demonstrate how angel investors and venture capitalists (VCs) show a preference for private USOs. However, with different investment objectives, the groups conduct distinct sensemaking that weighs this cue differently. For angels, industry moderates the effect such that they prefer private university life science firms to public USOs. However, industry mediates the effect for VCs, who prefer life sciences to engineering. We describe this variation as mixed salience—when a signal yields differences in decision‐making for distinct audiences. Managerial SummaryUniversity spinoffs (USOs) are important for economic growth, but little is known about differences between USOs from public and private universities. We study how angel investors and venture capitalists (VCs) fund USOs of public and private schools. These two investor groups make funding decisions with different priorities and approaches. Both groups appear to prefer private universities. A deeper look reveals that angel investors prefer private university life science teams to the public university counterparts. On the other hand, VCs prefer life sciences teams to engineering teams—and life sciences teams are more likely to come from private schools. Evidently, the two investor audiences respond to the public/private distinction in different ways. 

Abstract Early-stage science-based ventures (SBVs) require a wide range of intellectual resources and practical know-how to successfully commercialize their technologies. Often SBV founders actively gain this knowledge through advisory relationships providing business and technology guidance. We explore the effects of both business and technology advisors in combination with the founder’s entrepreneurial and technology experience. We measure early-stage success in an SBV using application readiness, a novel concept that encompasses progress in both technology discovery and validation as well as market identification and application. Using hand-collected longitudinal data from 112 emerging science-based ventures associated with American universities, we find that business advisors have a positive impact on application readiness, while technology advisors delay it; and these effects are moderated by the founder’s experience. Remarkably, a small number of advisors can have the same impact as decades of experience. Our article unpacks underexplored mechanisms through which advisors—an often-used policy tool supporting entrepreneurship—are implemented in emerging science-based ventures and makes academic contributions to the literatures on technology commercialization, advisors and human capital. 

Peer-reviewed publications and patents serve as important signatures of knowledge generation, and therefore the authors and their organizations can represent agents of intellectual transformation. Accurate tracking of these players enables scholars to follow knowledge evolution. However, while author name disambiguation has been discussed extensively, less is known about the impact of organization name on bibliometric studies. We expand here on the recently defined phenomenon of "onomastic profusion," high-frequency words used in organization names for semantic reasons, and thus contributing a non-random source of error to bibliographic studies. We use the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I awardees of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a use case in the field of engineering innovation. We find that firms in California or Massachusetts experience a six percent decrease in the likelihood of using the word "Technologies" in their names. Furthermore, use of the words "Research" and "Science" is linked to doubling the number of awards. We illustrate that, in aggregate, firms executing rational strategic naming decisions can create deterministic bibliometric challenges.